Tennessee is Entering An Era of Yes. Your Place Can Too.
(Image source: John Zeanah on LinkedIn.)
For years, housing production has favored large-scale developers. They can tap into tax breaks, subsidies and specialized financing tools that are often out of reach for smaller, local builders. Furthermore, zoning codes often favor large-scale, single-use developments over small-scale, incremental growth.
Meanwhile, smaller, local builders — like the homeowner trying to build an addition on their property or the community builder who sees an opportunity for infill housing — face an uphill battle, constrained by a tangle of land-use laws and regulatory hurdles that make it nearly impossible to compete.
Take mandatory parking minimums: Large developers can afford the legal fees and drawn-out variance requests to get an exception. For them, an extra three months of delays won’t make or break a project. But for a small-scale builder, the legal fees, application costs and risk of denial at the last minute can be devastating. The result? A system that systematically privileges corporate developers while shutting out everyone else. Fixing up the run-down lot next door becomes financially unfeasible. Adding a small rental unit to a home turns into a bureaucratic nightmare. Meanwhile, yet another wave of subdivisions gets rubber-stamped on the city’s outskirts.
But change is coming. Cities are beginning to recognize the structural biases embedded in their own policies and are taking steps to level the playing field. Memphis and Shelby County in Tennessee are the latest to embrace reform.
According to John Zeanah, the director of the Memphis and Shelby County Division of Planning and Development, these reforms will go into place starting March 3, 2025:
✅ Builders can submit residential building plans and stock plans for preapproved use for multiple projects.
✅ Once plans receive initial review and preapproval, they can be reused without full plan review for each new permit.
✅ Each preapproved plan receives a unique file number that follows it through all future permits, creating a simplified path for builders.
Previously, small-scale builders — and those in local government responsible for signing off their projects — had to restart the permitting process from scratch every single time. That additional work and uncertainty burdened homegrown housing production. The result was a permitting system fundamentally at odds with the region’s housing goals.
“Over the past years, Memphis, like many other cities, has experienced a housing crisis that is at a critical state,” noted a project document for Memphis’ Middle-Income Housing Pilot Program. “Memphis continues to have a shortage of available quality housing units. Out-of-town investment has driven up housing costs, especially in respect to housing for residents in the middle-income bracket.”
Middle-income households — those who don’t qualify for financial assistance but are also increasingly shut out of homeownership — have become a focus of recent policy efforts. And according to Zeanah, streamlining preapprovals is just the first step in what he calls the “Era of Yes.” Next on the agenda: a public library of preapproved designs.
Cities like Roanoke, Virginia; South Bend, Indiana; and Sacramento, California have used similar strategies to cut approval times from weeks to mere hours. The result? Homeowners, small-scale developers, and community builders are empowered to take the lead in shaping their neighborhoods.
By simplifying the process, Memphis and Shelby County are making it easier for local builders — not just large corporate developers — to have a hand in Tennessee's future. That’s the kind of change that builds stronger towns.
What Is Your Town Waiting For?
Many cities say they want more housing, but their permitting process tells a different story. Endless red tape, expensive design requirements and unpredictable approvals make small-scale development nearly impossible for the average property owner or incremental builder.
Preapproved building plans are a simple and effective first step toward becoming a Housing-Ready City. By offering ready-to-go designs for backyard cottages, duplexes or small multiplexes, cities remove one of the biggest barriers to missing middle housing: uncertainty. With predictable costs and faster approvals, these plans make it easier for homeowners and small-scale developers — not just big investors — to add much-needed housing.
This approach doesn’t just speed up construction; it encourages development in a way that strengthens neighborhoods from the inside out. Instead of waiting for megaprojects that may never come, cities can enable thousands of small, incremental investments that add up to real change.
Learn more strategies for enabling incremental housing in “The Housing-Ready City: A Toolkit for Local Code Reform.”
If you want more direct guidance, sign up for the Strong Towns Accelerator to get 1-on-1 coaching from Chuck Marohn himself, as well as group coaching from other Strong Towns experts.
