Louisville City Wire

Mayor Craig Greenberg today unveiled My Louisville Home, a comprehensive housing strategy that aims to create and preserve 15,000 affordable housing units. This strategy, the first of its kind in Louisville, outlines significant investment and policy actions by Louisville Metro Government to spur housing development across the city.

“Safe, affordable, quality housing is a basic human need, and we need more housing all over the city ­– in every ZIP code and in every Metro Council district,” Mayor Greenberg said, citing the need for at least 31,000 units of housing for the lowest income households in Louisville.

My Louisville Home will achieve this ambitious target by implementing a series of strategies and initiatives. Key components of this housing strategy are as follows:

• Revision of the Land Development Code: My Louisville Home will focus on revising the Land Development Code to allow more density and remove regulatory barriers and other hurdles that hinder housing development. By streamlining the approval process, this initiative aims to expedite the construction of new housing units.
• Increased Funding and Expansion of the Louisville Affordable Housing Trust Fund (LAHTF): To maximize existing resources available for affordable housing initiatives, My Louisville Home proposes funding and expansion of LAHTF through the establishment of a permanent dedicated funding source and commitment to $20 million in annual funding. This fund provides financial support for affordable housing projects across the city.
• Implement Innovative Financing and Construction Methods: My Louisville Home will generate new capital sources for affordable housing development by utilizing Faircloth-to-RAD and Essential Services Bonds and leveraging innovative funding tools such as the Energy Project Assessment District (EPAD) and Solar Over Louisville to achieve environmentally sustainable building technologies in housing projects.
• Create Long-Term Affordable Housing Homeownership Opportunities: My Louisville Home will provide new opportunities for residents to access homeownership through continued support for the creation of Community Land Trusts, the Section 8 to Homeownership program, Louisville Metro’s Down Payment Assistance Program, and LAHTF’s REVERT program. Additionally, the plan calls for support for a Shared Equity Model to create permanently affordable housing in areas with higher-valued homes.
• Incentivize the renovation of vacant and abandoned properties for affordable housing: My Louisville Home promotes the creation of a Lien Forgiveness in Exchange for Affordability Program, which will waive code liens on properties that are redeveloped and sold to an income-eligible household. When paired with existing efforts to revitalize Metro-controlled vacant properties by selling them at below-market rate, the city can incentivize developers to construct new affordable housing on vacant and abandoned properties.

“By implementing My Louisville Home, the city of Louisville is taking bold steps towards addressing its housing challenges head-on,” the Mayor said. “With a focus on affordability, sustainability, and collaboration between public and private sectors, this comprehensive strategy is more ambitious than anything our city or any other city our size has ever attempted – and we hope to create a standard by which other cities measure themselves.

“While our goal is to create and preserve 15,000 units of affordable housing, the actions laid out in this plan will spur housing development of all types across the city, from affordable to workforce to market rate,” he continued. “And as we look to bolster our economy by attracting and retaining top talent, it is critical that we grow our housing stock to ensure that we can provide high-quality housing for a growing workforce and population.”

The full housing strategy is now available online, and the city is soliciting public feedback through Friday, Nov. 3. A final version of the plan will be released on Dec. 1.

Read the full My Louisville Home plan and provide feedback at www.louisvilleky.gov/mylouisvillehome.

Original source can be found here.