The Greater Cincinnati area is seeing a boom in workforce growth, first from 2014 to 2019 and now increasing again since the COVID-19 pandemic. But in Northern Kentucky, housing hasn’t been able to keep up, posing a significant barrier to continued economic growth. In response, groups from across the region are developing and implementing solutions they hope to see grow in the coming years.
“From Carroll County looking into residential, to Covington launching their housing task force,” said Northern Kentucky Area Development District (NKADD) Executive Director Tara Johnson-Noem. “Groups like Welcome House, the Brighton Center and Center for Great Neighborhoods, all thinking about what it looks like for them to support residential initiatives.”
Johnson-Noem said all these initiatives have the advantage of being able to be used and leveraged by towns and cities around the region. One of these newer efforts is the NKY Housing Fund.
A group of area organizations launched the NKY Housing Fund last month as a five-year $25 million fundraising campaign to meet the initial demand in capital to grow housing production. They have raised $1.5 million since and hope to raise $5 million each year.
Joe Klare from The Catalytic Fund, which operates and distributes the NKY Housing Fund, said there is no silver bullet solution to creating more affordable housing in the region, but Northern Kentucky and the Greater Cincinnati area need to start focusing on housing the workforce.
“Northern Kentucky can't stand on its own without Cincinnati, and frankly, Cincinnati can't stand without Northern Kentucky,” Klare said. “It's a really interconnected region, and though we have a river that divides us, our economy knows no borders.”
In addition to the large dollar donations collected by the NKY Housing Fund, the Horizon Community Foundation has launched a companion fund meant for individual donors. The NKY Home for all Fund is a way for everyone in the community to participate in fundraising whatever dollar amount they can, said Nancy Grayson from Horizon Community Foundation.
What the data says
This isn’t a new problem. In 2023, NKADD published data that showed housing production was lagging economic growth — and could be a barrier to new workforce development.
“We started looking at housing because we were hearing from employers that it was a potential barrier to attracting and retaining the talent that we need in our region,” Johnson-Noem said.
The study found that the NKADD region needs to build 6,650 housing units to support economic development in the next five years — a significant gap.
The gap exists among all income levels and housing types, but is especially critical for low-income, smaller households.
In Boone, Campbell and Kenton counties, the study identified a “missing middle” — low-income workers struggling to find smaller one- to two-bedroom options for housing and rental. These include some health care workers, warehouse and service workers.
The study found this gap was partially due to a focus on middle- to upper-middle income earners who look for single-family homes, but the demographic has changed.
“We need to be able to attract [big families],” Johnson-Noem said. “We also need to attract folks that are downsizing as empty nesters. We need to attract and keep our young adults in our region and have places that are attainable for them as well.”
Currently, there’s a lack of both new housing and older rentals, especially in suburban and rural areas. The demand for this type of housing drives prices out of range for low-income workers.
Data from the Kentucky Housing Corporation supports this growing gap and high demand for rentals. In 2024, the three Northern Kentucky counties needed to increase available housing by 11-22% to close the gap in demand — a gap that’s only expected to widen.
Wendy Smith, deputy executive director of housing programs at the Kentucky Housing Corporation, also said the first step to addressing the housing gap is simple: build more housing.
“We're not even producing what we used to on average 20 years ago,” Smith said. "I mean, that is the biggest thing we need — more housing production.”
Smith said Kentucky — as well as the nation — have not recovered from the 2008 housing crisis, which closed many of the smaller construction companies areas like Northern Kentucky rely on. But new data from the University of Kentucky shows the state as a whole is also falling behind in the number of new residential housing units compared to competing states and nationwide.
While there is no immediate solution, state, local and private efforts will continue to tackle the housing gap in the coming years. Klare said growth is fragile, and it could go one of two ways.
“It can continue to build and become better and stronger and better support our region better support our local economy and increase our quality of life,” Klare said. “Or if we get to a situation where the workforce can't find places to live, they're simply not going to be here.”
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