Media Release
Contact: Kyle Buda, Matt for Mayor
Kyle@Wiltshire.com, 517-862-1107
NASHVILLE, TN – Following Mayor John Cooper’s announcement not to seek re-election, affordable housing leader Matt Wiltshire issued the following statement.
“I appreciate Mayor Cooper’s service to our city and his efforts to strengthen it during some very challenging times,” said Matt Wilshire. I wish Mayor Cooper the best as he finishes this term.”
“This doesn’t change our campaign or approach to improving this city. I chose to run for the future of this city and not against any one person. I love this city and know we have what it takes to tackle the big challenges we face in affordable housing and transit, to make Metro Nashville Public Schools the best in the nation, and to ensure everyone in our city has the opportunity to thrive. I’m looking forward to continuing my conversations with Nashvillians about how we can strengthen our city together.”
Background on Matt Wiltshire:
Matt Wiltshire was born and raised in Nashville and attended public schools growing up here. He gave up a successful private sector career to work on economic and community development for Mayor Karl Dean after the great recession when the unemployment rate was over 8%. During his tenure, Nashville added 42,000 jobs, the city developed incentives for small businesses investing in diverse neighborhoods, and the unemployment rate dropped to 2%, which was the lowest of any metropolitan area in the country. After a tenure that resulted in local small businesses expanding and national companies relocating to Nashville, Wiltshire saw housing attainability as an increasing issue and volunteered to move to the city’s housing authority to develop more affordable housing through public-private partnerships. Amazon recently announced that it will invest more than $7 million as a part of the latest mixed-income redevelopment project at Cayce Homes, one of the last projects Wiltshire handled as the Chief Strategy Officer at MDHA.