Honorable Mayor Karl Dean
Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors
City Council and Citizens of Nashville
AFFORDABLE HOUSING BENEFIT CONCERT PROPOSAL
As would be expected, the significant cost for providing adequate affordable housing for the poor is a primary concern to the city. This
proposal seeks to address and alleviate that concern by offering a viable non-partisan alternative to such a project being funded at city expense.
Because the City of Nashville has a vested interest in the popular music industry and likewise, because the music industry is entwined with the greater
Nashville community, we believe there exists a unique and viable opportunity to raise a considerable amount of funding for the purposes of
constructing low-cost affordable housing for the poor.
The City of Nashville, in conjunction with the ownership of LP Field, could join with prominent music artists who call the greater Nashville area home
and, host a weekend benefit concert in the stadium, perhaps beginning on a Friday evening and ending on Sunday. A video film could be made of
the event, along with a double CD release, both of which could be sold in traditional retail outlets and via the internet, on both a national and
international level.
There are several name artists who have been actively involved with many charitable and civic events conducted in the Nashville area and we believe
that if civic and community leaders would get behind such a project, that many artists would be willing to participate in such a worthy cause. Both
local business leaders and larger, national corporate sponsors could be approached to underwrite the cost of security, distribution and promotion.
Because of fairly recent modern communication advances—the internet and various wireless devices—sales of videos, CDs and song downloads from such an
event could total many millions, as well as it could be shown as a prime-time special on network television and perhaps, in theaters.
The City of Nashville could thus, obtain more than enough funding to provide low-cost housing for impoverished people in our area. A model
low-cost program, as has already been successfully demonstrated in other cities, could charge one-third of a participant’s total income and require
that they actively seek employment if not elderly or severely disabled, thus guarding against significant abuse and providing incentive for those
with enough income to move on into private sector housing.
Additionally, the Nashville music industry and city would be setting an example of what could be done in other states that various popular music
artists call their home. There are many music artists and other entertainers who have displayed a certain affinity for their own state or
city of residence and it could encourage some of them to conduct a similar benefit for a large city in their own home state.
Likewise, it could greatly encourage both children and adults on a national level, to come to the aid of America’s impoverished citizens in a
beneficial and viable way. A non-partisan way Americans of all religious, political and other beliefs can embrace, that does not rely on
tax-payer funded city and state coffers.
Please help our homeless citizens, for we are all God's children and, we all have known and can relate to pain, hunger, loneliness, despair and
other human suffering. May God bless the City of Nashville and our nation, as we come to the aid of our sick, poor and most vulnerable among us.
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