FRANKFORT, Ky. (FOX 56) — State leaders on Kentucky’s Housing Task Force got an update on the Commonwealth’s current and anticipated shortfall and what other states are doing to solve their own housing needs.
“What you see is it's not just our urbanizing counties, and it's not just rural or urban. It is really spread across the Commonwealth,” the Kentucky Housing Corporation’s deputy executive director of housing programs, Wendy Smith, told lawmakers on Monday, emphasizing that the shortage is not simply an issue isolated to the state’s most populous cities.
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It’s not news that there's a housing shortage across Kentucky; KHC has reported that the number of units short is estimated to be 206,207 as of April 2024. On Monday, KHC informed lawmakers that the number is likely to climb by more than 80,000 in 5 years. As the General Assembly prepares next year's new bills, the task force hopes it can put something forward to stop the bleeding.
“I want to underline that these programs are all very new and therefore unproven. I cannot say to you this works and this works in this works. I can say lots of states are slightly ahead of us and really focused on this issue,” Smith said.
Smith suggested lawmakers look at a "menu" of options that generally fall into 3 categories from land use and zoning incentives/mandates, tax credits, or some other state financing. Smith gave detailed examples of many possibilities.
“Relaxing parking requirements is another route states are taking, relaxing minimum lot size so that you can have smaller lots, so you can fit more homes in a neighborhood, streamlining the permitting process so it doesn't take quite so long to get your permit,” she said.
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And Kentucky wouldn't necessarily have to reinvent the wheel; the state's affordable housing trust fund is one example of an already existing program in this space. Smith emphasized the state has much more flexibility in how it spends money when utilizing these funds. Smith said there are multiple factors that have all fed into the big shortage Kentucky sees now.
“Even if our population isn't bigger, we have more single-person households who want their own unit or just two people without children. We have a lot of elderly households, so we have more household formation. We have not been constructing nearly what we used to before 2008, and we have a lot of job growth,” Smith said, adding that Kentucky's homebuilding rate fell so sharply from the 2008 recession that even in 2024 the rate of new homes has yet to reach a pre-recession average.