County invests in emerging developers to ease housing crunch

Key Takeaways

Terica Lamb was at a Shelby County, Tenn. library examining fire insurance maps dating back to 1915. The maps showed rows of homes surrounding the four lots she had recently purchased in South Memphis. Today, those blocks are about half as full, illustrating the housing challenge in the county, which has seen its population nearly quadruple since 1915. 

Lamb is one of 23 members in the inaugural cohort of the county’s Emerging Developers Academy. She is planning to build six homes and a community green space on the newly acquired property, which will also be equipped with EV chargers and a solar-ready design. 

 “I could not have done it without this program,” she said. 

Emerging Developers Academy 

The Shelby County Board of Commissioners launched the Emerging Developers Academy in 2025 to support small, local developers in Shelby County with technical assistance, practical resources and professional relationships that prepare them to deliver housing units. The academy is a signature piece in Shelby County’s strategic plan to tackle its housing shortage of 40,000 units, tied to long-standing disinvestment and aging housing stock.  

The cohort completes a weeklong “bootcamp” on housing development fundamentals, covering topics from permitting to financing. Cohort members are matched with leaders in the industry who serve as mentors and pitch coaches to help them create an academy deliverable: a residential development proposal. It remains an active network as members progress in project delivery. 

For real estate developer Brooke Boone, the cohort approach has been valuable because it allows her to learn from her peers’ recommendations and firsthand experiences with contractors as they navigate their development projects together. She has come away from the academy with a pipeline of relationships and contacts with architects, builders, financial institutions and other resources for each step of her development roadmap ahead. 

Another element to the academy’s success is its practice of tailoring support based on real-time feedback. Alliance for Housing Progress (AHP), the non-profit program operator for the academy, has organized workshops based on cohort members’ needs and interests, ranging from environmental rehabilitation to leveraging tax credits.  

Rasheedah Jones, AHP’s executive director, also tracks the developers’ breakthroughs and obstacles. For instance, if a cohort member was first denied by one banking partner but approved by another, AHP will investigate the banks’ evaluations to identify what contributed to the different outcomes to inform future proposals.

“The program… is not just a one-and-done,” Lamb said. 

Momentum powered by county dollars 

In some areas, weak comparable sales (or comps) are a driving factor constraining Shelby County’s housing production.

Developers, lenders and realtors are deterred by limited data on property values and risk, which deepens existing patterns of underinvestment. For Commissioner Erika Sugarmon, Shelby County has the fiscal and land banking tools to change those patterns. To turn vacant, underused land into new housing, areas with no comps need “the government… [to] activate it.”

With public investment also comes the opportunity to rethink Shelby County’s housing landscape, including community-driven development and inclusive homeownership. The Emerging Developers Academy was launched to encourage individuals with local ties, and thus a larger stake in neighborhood revitalization, to participate in the housing market. 

Shelby County’s current initiatives can be traced to its participation in NACo’s Counties for Housing Solutions program, which supports counties in tackling housing affordability. In partnership with NACo, Shelby County identified county-owned land with the potential for housing development. The county also passed a local ordinance that would transfer this land to residential developers to stimulate housing production in disinvested neighborhoods. 

As that land is developed, it will generate property tax revenue for the county. 

A subsequent county-sponsored housing summit sparked a connection between the county and AHP that led to the creation of the Emerging Developers Academy. 

As Jones put it, county investments “[brought] the academy to life”.  

“It’s very difficult to convince private funders, lenders, CDFI partners… [to] meet the needs of our market dynamics without the municipal investment,” she said. 

As the program wraps up its pilot year, the academy has nurtured emerging developers and new visions for the future of Shelby County. 

Lessons from the pilot 

Shelby County can advance its housing priorities through aligning resources and expertise — such as with NACo and industry forums — and leveraging public-private and intergovernmental partnerships.  

No county can do it alone: Shelby County is currently working with the City of Memphis on the Joint Housing Policy Plan. The plan outlines measurable targets to achieve by 2030, including 7,000 new homeowners, 6,400 missing-middle rental units and 4,600 renovations. In fact, Mayor Paul Young was an instructor for the academy’s first bootcamp class, serving as an intergovernmental endorsement to one part of the broader efforts to achieve those goals. 

Sugarmon said other counties can draw on positive results from Shelby County’s example, including the relationships built in the process, the results apparent in the housing starts and the buy-in from everyone involved in the academy. But it’s a learning process.  

To a county introducing a new initiative, “sometimes… it’s unrewarding in the very beginning… financially… but as people hear about the opportunity to buy homes or [invest] in property, as the word gets out, that builds more and more support. You’ve got to make sure that you keep people interested in the projects,” Sugarmon said. 

Looking ahead 

The Emerging Developers Academy will be back with a second cohort in the fall, this time with funding from Memphis. AHP is starting to hold information sessions in July. With the second cohort, they are working to build even stronger relationships with financial partners to pre-qualify the academy’s emerging developers. 

Meanwhile, Lamb is traveling to New York City to attend a national pitch competition that could help her attain capital financing for the project she developed through the academy. The pitch competition is organized by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation.  

At the same time, Boone is preparing to present to the county and city council on her project to turn 18 acres of surplus land from the school board into 180 units of workforce housing — not to exceed 120% of the area median income — with 85% designated for ownership and 15% for rental. The property would include a pickleball court, walking trails and other amenities. 

Boone also voiced a need for public investment in infrastructure to boost housing production. In areas that have been underdeveloped, funding for related utilities and public infrastructure is also a key component for a complete strategic housing plan. 

Public investments in sewage lines, storm water drainage and adjacent streets and roads make an area more feasible for a small developer like herself. 

“People want to have affordable housing, and housing that is nice. It doesn’t have to be super expensive, but somewhere that’s decent, and I think that the people of Memphis deserve that,” she said.