Leaders in Northern Kentucky gathered Monday to discuss the region's housing shortage.
The four-hour session hosted by the Northern Kentucky Area Development District, nonprofit Brighton Center and other groups covered current housing market conditions and a so-called "draft menu" of options for filling gaps in housing supply. A number of elected officials as well as business and nonprofit leaders spoke.
Boone County Fiscal Court Judge/Executive Gary Moore says it's vital for Northern Kentucky to better meet its residents housing needs. Without attention, he said, the region could become less attractive to prospective residents and businesses.
"The communities that get this right are the communities that will succeed as we move forward," Moore said.
A study last year by the Northern Kentucky Area Development District found more than half of residents in the area pay more than they can afford for housing. Leaders put forth what they're calling a draft menu of options for communities to consider in order to close that gap.
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The study looked at Boone, Campbell, Carroll, Gallatin, Grant, Kenton, Owen and Pendleton counties.
The region needs about 6,650 units of housing to meet the current and projected demand, the NKADD report says. About 60% of employees in Northern Kentucky make less than $60,000 a year, a level that qualifies as moderate income. That's expected to grow in the future — and with it, so will demand for housing affordable at that income level.
After the report was released, NKADD and Brighton Center spent months doing public engagement efforts, including 12 data walks where residents in Newport, Covington, Erlanger, Independence, Florence, Carrollton and Falmouth were invited to view the study's results and provide feedback about potential solutions.
"They were open to everyone, but we wanted to try to focus on getting feedback from people who were making $15 to $25 an hour," Brighton Center President and CEO Wonda Winkler said. "We had diversity in age, gender, race, ethnicity, positions held, income levels who came in."
Respondents highlighted a number of needs, including demand for more one- and two-bedroom apartments; more units suitable for people sizing down in their housing; need for more landlords who accept HUD's Housing Choice Vouchers; access to transportation and other concerns.
Panels featured elected officials and business leaders reflecting on the challenges from their perspective.
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"I was a little surprised at some of the numbers and how far we seem to be sliding," Independence Mayor Chris Reinersman said. That city has been wrangling with balancing a need for new housing with opposition from some residents who are worried about change. Reinersman spoke about concerns residents had to a recent moderate-income condo development in Independence.
Not every community needs the same kind of housing. Grant County Deputy Judge/Executive Colton Simpson says his county is struggling with housing for people making about $150,000 a year. Part of that challenge is the popularity of short-term rentals, he says.
"A huge challenge facing Grant County is the number of short-term rental properties," he said. "I'm not against short-term rentals, but when our short-term rentals rival those of Boone and Kenton counties, which have seven times the population we have, think about the number of single-family homes that is."
The event also included statewide perspectives. Kentucky Housing Corporation Deputy Executive Director Wendy Smith says the state of Kentucky overall needs about 206,00 units of housing now. Unless something changes, that gap will widen to 287,000 units in five years.
Smith says the housing shortage is serious across both urban and rural counties, and that consideration of both the overall number of units and the ratio of units per person in areas should be considered to capture housing needs in less populated counties. But Northern Kentucky sticks out in both metrics, she says.
"It is a painful issue in many parts of the state," Smith says. "But we still have a lot of Northern Kentucky counties topping the list."
Smith says Kentucky's housing shortage has created a unique situation in which advocates for those experiencing homelessness, bankers and realtors are all focused on the same issue. There are a lot of reasons for the shortage, Smith says, including restrictive zoning, rising building and insurance costs, and many others. But she highlighted one big one: builders and banks that used to develop and finance housing never came back after the Great Recession.
"When you take all those gears out, it's really hard to get it cranking again," she said.
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The core of the event was a draft list of potential solutions to the gaps in housing availability in the eight-county region. That list is extensive and includes suggested changes in areas like:
- Addressing neighborhood blight, including giving right of first refusal to housing nonprofits on properties under foreclosure or tax lien sale
- Building permits and inspections, including finding ways to streamline permitting processes
- Enhancing communication, awareness and community engagement, including efforts to create a landlord contact list and vacant property inventory
- Homeownership assistance programs, including a proposal to establish a housing trust fund to incentivize purchase and renovation of housing
- Increasing effectiveness of public housing programs with measures such as incentives for landlords who participate in the Housing Choice Voucher program
- Planning and zoning, including suggestions for loosening zoning regulations and considering more mixed-use zoning
- A long list of potential incentives and legal mechanisms to increase housing development, including expanded use of federal community development block grants, tax credits, and the establishment of a community land trust that could offer low and moderate income housing
- Transportation, including improving communication with the Kentucky Department of Transportation
- Utilities, including reducing barriers to public water and sewer utility access
- Workforce Development, including incentives to encourage the development of housing affordable to moderate-income workers.
Speakers stressed the list is just a draft and that the suggests are still open to public comment. Find out more about the NKADD study here.