Covington officials are working to gather public input they say will be considered in its 2026 plan to allocate and budget federal funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).
As the lead city of the Northern Kentucky Home Investment Partnerships (HOME) Consortium, Covington administers funds on behalf of Covington, Erlanger, Ludlow, Independence, Florence, Newport, Bellevue and Dayton. The city uses this and another federal grant program to help low-income residents access affordable housing and address urgent development needs for the city at large.
HUD requires Covington to submit an annual plan each year that follows a larger five-year consolidated plan.
“It is based on a needs assessment, a market analysis, community engagement, and local data,” said John Hammons, who coordinates the program for Covington. “It identifies priority needs, geographic priorities, funding strategies, and goals for the next five years.”
At a public forum last Thursday, residents shared concerns over officials’ community outreach efforts and communication about these programs.
Ally Hermes works with immigrants and refugees in the community, but feels language barriers keep the very people who are supposed to benefit from the funding in the dark.
“There are a lot of things that are publicly available in English and Spanish, but we work with a lot of people who are low income and who speak many other languages,” Hermes said. “They want to live in Covington, they want to stay in Covington, but government and public services are not typically accessible to them because of the language barrier.”
Hermes said the city should allocate funds for language interpreters or translate the information on its website.
“If a code enforcement thing is on their door, they can’t figure out what's going on because their landlord probably doesn't speak their language or might not be fixing whatever is broken in a timely manner,” Hermes said.
Another resident was concerned about the lack of an emergency fund for vulnerable residents.
Chad Ragan, a member of the Covington Mayor’s Academy, did a case study on a couple in Covington that had to live in their car for ten days during a snowstorm after the utility shut off their electricity due to illegal activity from their landlord. Ragan feels the city should step in situations like these to provide relief for tenants left vulnerable.
“Things like that come up and it's life and death,” he said. “It's not just like my electricity went out, it's [that] my landlord was committing a crime.”
He said that while this specific case brought him to the public meeting, he wants to see the city consider creating a larger emergency fund.
As a whole, those who attended the forum agreed the city website can be hard to navigate, especially for low-income people. They wish to see more efforts from the city towards community outreach — especially to reach those who would benefit from the federal housing grants.
“I feel really at this point, it's just getting more public interest to express these really important needs and how important they are to current residents,” Hermes said.
Covington will host another public hearing April 28 to hear feedback on a draft 2026 Action Plan before submitting it to HUD by May 14.
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