For everything on this page, the need is documented and the project doesn't exist yet: 27 rural hospitals a national model flags as vulnerable to closure — 61% of Tennessee's total, the highest share of any state — 138,619 missing homes for the poorest renters, and 44,345 locations still waiting for adequate broadband. Each measure below names its dataset, its year, and what kind of number it is — counted, modeled, or assessed. The companion tally of what's actually underway is in What's Being Built: Tennessee.
How to read this page: the class chip on every measure is the honesty label. Counted = an inspection or enumeration record. Modeled = a study's projection or risk score — printed with the modeler's name. Assessed = a structured survey of required investment — needs as documented, not measurements of decay. Figures keep the form their source gave them; years are printed on every measure.
Click any category to expand it — every measure with its figure, what it means in plain language, and its source.
What's here: the headline measure(s) for each of the nine categories, from the datasets audited for this section (INRIX, NLIHC, THDA, Sheps Center, Chartis, USDA ERS Atlas, EPA needs surveys via ASCE, TVA, TRIP/FHWA NBI, National Inventory of Dams, NTIA/TNECD BEAD). 18 measures, each verified Oct 25, 2026.
Known gaps in this pass: three honest blanks. Tennessee publishes no state-only power-need figure (TVA reports a seven-state service area — the page prints that figure with its geography labeled). No current statewide count of residents in food-desert tracts exists — the food category runs on 2015-vintage Atlas data and says so in its note. And the National Inventory of Dams withholds or lacks condition data for much of Tennessee's dam fleet, so the poor-condition share is printed alongside the size of the unknown share. County- and corridor-level detail is Phase 2.
Flagged sources: the TVA build-out figure (news-reported from TVA's investor reporting), the Chartis at-risk count (via trade press) and the dams poor-condition share (a secondary analysis of federal inventory data) are labeled in their rows and here, until the primary publications are linked directly.
Not needs, and not here: anything already funded and underway lives in What's Being Built: Tennessee. When a need on this page gets a funded project, the measure stays visible with its edition year and gains a link to the project answering it.
Last updated: October 25, 2026. Figures are re-verified against their sources as new editions land.