During a recent discussion on affordable housing, Covington Mayor Joe Meyer argued that the city already plays an outsized role in providing affordable housing in the region and that housing advocates should expand their efforts into other cities and counties.
The Covington Board of Commissioners held a public hearing on Tuesday on how the city should spend federal grant money, one that led to a broader discussion about affordable housing in Kenton County and culminated in a presentation from Meyer.
The hearing was part of a legally required annual planning process for two federal grant programs: the Community Development Block Grant, often shortened to CDBG, and HOME Investment Partnerships.
The programs operate on both five-year consolidated plans as well as more granular annual plans. The current consolidated plan will end in 2025. As a result, the city is legally required to solicit public feedback before it sets about instituting the new plan. The city had already held open forums on the program earlier this year.
The CDBG program is the more flexible of the two and has been used in the past to fund economic development initiatives, infrastructure repairs, crime prevention programs, literacy initiatives and other service projects.
The HOME program is more narrowly focused on housing and has been used to fund rental assistance programs, home repair programs, housing nonprofits and most notably, the local HOME Consortium, which provides forgivable loans to qualifying home buyers.
Covington, Independence, Erlanger, Florence, Ludlow, Newport, Bellevue and Dayton are member cities in the consortium, but Covington is in charge of managing the program. The city issued 426 loans to Covington families between 2014 and 2023. Loan issuances in other consortium cities varied during the same time period. Independence, Florence and Erlanger are the most recent cities to join the consortium, so their counts were lower compared to those of the other cities.
Covington's Federal Grants Manager, Jeremy Wallace, gave a presentation providing an overview of the two programs and the sorts of things they could fund. He also laid out the programs' revenue structure, which comes from a combination of annual federal allotments and program income, as well as the carryover of unused funds from previous years. The total amount the city expected to be available for the CDBG and HOME programs for next year was about $2.7 million and $3 million, respectively.
Wallace encouraged members of the public to read the annual plan and submit comments on how the city should allocate the money before the public comment deadline on June 21. Anyone who missed Tuesday's meeting can do so by contacting him directly at (859)292-2147 or through email at jwallace@covingtonky.gov.
"The plan is all the projects, all the activities, how much the dollar figures are going to each one, so I certainly recommend anybody to read that," Wallace said.
One resident, Thurman Wenzl, who frequently speaks about housing at public meetings, said that he wanted to see more focus on helping renters. In his view, the programs focused on home ownership to the detriment of renters who couldn't afford to buy property.
"I'd like to see a better balance," Wenzl said.
A study of housing in Northern Kentucky has revealed troubling trends for housing in the region, with the largest need being for "workforce housing" for households earning between $15 and $25 per hour, with monthly housing costs between $500 and $1,500. The region needs about 3,000 more housing units to provide for people within that income range, according to the study. The demand for one- to two-bedroom rentals and owned properties consistently exceeds their supply, while supply for three and four-bedroom properties consistently exceeds demand. The study suggests that the region needs to build 6,650 housing units to support economic development in the next five years, which equates to 1,330 units per year. Read more here.
Understanding NKY’s housing shortage
Commissioner Ron Washington also suggested changes to the programs. He wanted to see more effort put into home maintenance for local seniors; the current plan focuses much of its home repair program on emergency repairs rather than repairs aimed at longevity.
"It's important for me, when it comes to our senior community, that they're able to stay in their homes as long as possible," Washington said, adding that home repair costs for many seniors had become "prohibitive."
When the public forum had concluded, Meyer gave a presentation directed at the comments of housing advocates who frequented public meetings. Pulling data from the U.S. Census Bureau, local data sources and academic studies, Meyer argued that many of Covington's neighborhoods--excluding many of the historic districts like Licking Riverside and Mainstrasse--were, in fact, affordable.
Moreover, much of the region's subsidized housing is located in Covington, so it bears the brunt of dealing with the problem in a way that other cities and counties don't.
Some key arguments Meyer made in his presentation included the following:
- The median home price throughout the city was about $154,000
- The home buyer assistance program provided help to over 400 local families
- The city administers about $8 million in housing choice vouchers
- The city currently contains 2,393 subsidized housing units, or 13.1% of all occupied housing in the city
As such, Meyer argued that Covington had already contributed an outsized effort to deal with the problem of affordable housing, and he pleaded with housing advocates to begin making appeals elsewhere throughout the region.
"Here's my plea: Affordable housing advocates, please please talk to the counties, talk to the other cities, talk to the regional advocates and just ask them to do their share of income-aligned housing," Meyer said. "We're doing our share. We can't do it all for Northern Kentucky. They've got to do their share, too."
Discussion on the matter did not continue after Meyer's presentation, but Shad Veard, a resident who had asked questions during the public forum but had not made any statements, chatted with LINK nky after the meeting about the mayor's statements.
He took issue with the tenor of the mayor's comments and expressed skepticism about the figures the mayor presented, characterizing them as misleading. Even if the base figures were correct, for instance, it may still be difficult for people to afford housing among the available stock in the city.
"You can look up a market-rate housing based on his numbers, $175,000, and people can't afford that," Beard said.
The next meeting of the Covington Board of Commissioners will take place on Tuesday, June 18, beginning at 6 p.m. at Covington City Hall on Pike Street.