Start with the conservation overlays.
A neighborhood conservation zoning overlay is a mapped district where neighbors have already done the work of drawing a boundary around residential character. That is an organizing base. It is not a short-term rental ban.
An overlay does not ban the use
Metro’s neighborhood conservation design guidelines say their primary purpose is to prevent demolition of historic buildings and character-defining features. The guidelines apply to exteriors, new construction, demolition, and moving a building. The Short Term Rental Appeals Board (opens in a new tab) is a different body from the Historic Zoning Commission. Nothing on the Metro Historic Zoning Commission district page (opens in a new tab) says a conservation overlay prohibits transient rental.
The underlying zoning still decides whether a permit can be issued. This page does not assign a base zoning district to any overlay. Look the parcel up. The demand is a use restriction for non-commercially zoned residential property. The overlay is where organized neighbors force that restriction onto the council agenda.
Why these districts go first
- The boundary already exists. People know whether they are inside it.
- The district was adopted to protect residential character, not to host a lodging use.
- Neighborhood groups can coordinate one reporting standard and one council message instead of forty separate complaints with forty different asks.
If your group is inside one of these districts, use the same three moves: file every incident on hubNashville, keep the case numbers, and send council the ban demand with overlays named first. Associations outside an overlay should do the same. The ban we want is for non-commercially zoned residential areas, not only for houses that already have design review.
The districts Metro lists
Names below are the ones on the Historic Zoning Commission district page, last updated September 9, 2026. No adoption year is attached here, because the commission’s district names and the design-guidelines table of contents do not match in every case.
Turn-of-the-century overlays
- Belle Meade Links Triangle
- Blakemore PUD
- Bowling House District
- Cherokee Park
- Eastdale
- Eastwood
- Edgehill
- Elmington
- Greenwood
- Inglewood Place
- Kenner
- Lockeland Springs-East End
- Maxwell
- Park & Elkins
- Richland-West End
- Richland-West End Extension
- Salemtown
- South Music Row
- Waverly-Belmont
- Whitland
- Woodlawn West
Mid-century overlays
- Haynes Heights
- Haynes Manor
- Lathan-Youngs
- Marlin Meadows
Overlays with their own guidelines
- Belmont-Hillsboro
- Hillsboro-West End
Each of these is a design district. The note is the same for all of them: the overlay reviews construction and demolition. It does not decide who sleeps in the house tonight.
What a neighborhood group should do
- Pick one person to hold the case-number list. Not a public roster of neighbors.
- Report every incident with dates, times, and whatever photos or video you can take without filming people in their homes.
- Send the council template from as many households as will sign their own names to their own member. Ask for the full residential ban, overlays first.
- Join the list so the next hearing is not a surprise.
Sources: districts and design guidelines (opens in a new tab) , turn-of-the-century guidelines, Part I (PDF) (opens in a new tab) , and Metro historic zoning (opens in a new tab) . A district is omitted here if it is not on that official district list. Historic preservation overlays, including Germantown and Edgefield, are a different category and are not listed above.