The Kenton County Planning Commission has approved a zoning change for a large 261-unit Drees Homes development in the unincorporated county, in spite of trepidation from residents and at least one of the planning commissioners. The change will now move to the Kenton County Fiscal Court for final approval.
The Planning Commission voted to approve the zoning Thursday night with only one commissioner casting a no-vote, Covington Representative Kareem Simpson.
Most of the commissioners didn’t have a problem with the development.
“I think they’re trying to be good stewards of the land,” said Fort Mitchell Representative Jeff Bethell.
But Simpson feared that the sorts of housing the development called for didn’t meet the region’s current housing needs, especially in the face of an ongoing shortage.
“There is a housing shortage, and it’s great that we are building houses, but we also need to make sure that we’re facilitating the building of houses that individuals need in our region,” Simpson said.
Understanding Northern Kentucky’s housing shortage
Listings for two-bedroom condos in Newport’s luxury riverfront housing complex Ovation went up on Zillow this week, with purchase prices starting at $975,000. Nearby on 5th Street, an apartment complex called The Cadence of Newport has two-bedroom apartments listed for $1,495 per month. Yet, many in the community still remember the apartments by their former name, Victoria Square, which used to charge only $710 per month for an apartment.
In short, recent discussions have taken a pessimistic tone: On the ground, it seems to many that there’s an overabundance of newer, higher-end luxury developments while smaller and more accessible forms of housing appear to be drying up.
Although there are some exceptions, broadly speaking, these worries have a basis in reality. In fact, for many, finding secure, affordable housing has become more and more of a challenge.
Let’s unpack the specifics and examine how it got that way.
Housing in NKY
In September, the Northern Kentucky Area Development district released a study of housing in Boone, Kenton, Campbell, Gallatin, Carroll, Owen, Grant and Pendleton counties that revealed some troubling trends for housing in the region.
Conducted in partnership with the county fiscal courts, the engineering firm Stantec, as well as local businesses and civic organizations, the study suggested that the above counties need “to build 6,650 housing units to support economic development in the next 5 years, which equates to 1,330 units per year.”
Broken down by income level, the study showed that largest need is for what they called “workforce housing,” which refers to households whose wages ranged from $15 to $25 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.
“About half of the new housing demand… is low-income residents earning up to 60% of the area median household income of $103,600.
“Current housing in Boone, Kenton and Campbell is positioned for middle to upper-middle professional incomes, but affordability for warehouse, service, and low wage healthcare workers is currently lacking and will be exacerbated by incoming residents,” the study states.
The study illustrates the discrepancy with a bar graph showing median wages for common professions in the region compared to the available housing stock. A teacher making the median salary of $43,740, for example, could only afford 26% of the region’s available rentals and 16% of available-for-sale housing.
The development itself is proposed on a 120.5-acre tract of land near Independence. The project’s northern border is the south end of Harris Pike, KY-536, between Stafford Heights Road and Oliver Road. KY-536 is currently undergoing a state-administered expansion.
The area can support 2.41 housing units per buildable acre. 45.2 acres of the 120.5 total acres are open space. Matt Mains, a representative from Drees, said the developers hoped the zoning change would maintain the area’s natural landscape. Mains touted the development’s naturalistic character as well as the land’s proximity to businesses and schools as selling points.
Mains pointed to Drees’ Stonewater development in Independence as a reference for what they were going for; the houses in the new development would resemble the style of the homes in Stonewater.
Sixty-nine of the lots in the development would be 65 feet wide, and the remaining 192 would be 52 feet wide. Most of the houses therein would be conventional single family homes, but a handful would also be patio homes: smaller, often single story homes with maintenance provided by an HOA. Patio homes are often marketed to empty nesters and retirees who would rather not deal with maintenance issues.
Lot sizes were determined by market demand, Mains said. He said the homes would run anywhere between $350,000 and $550,000, depending on their size, a price point that perturbed Simpson.
“Right now it’s nearly impossible to build affordable housing for what affordable housing costs,” Mains said.
This point has come up in discussions of housing in the past–market conditions often disincentivize the construction of smaller starter homes because the cost of the production makes it difficult to a turn a profit. Mains argued that Drees was doing what it could to control construction costs, which he hoped would have the downwind effect of freeing up affordable housing elsewhere in the region.
“We’re keeping them the lowest cost as we can to attract people to this area that we think fit into this,” Mains said, “and hopefully this helps people move up out of lower income housing and free up some of that more affordable housing.”
Several residents from nearby areas came out to oppose the development, expressing concerns about its potential effects on traffic (especially given the development’s proximity to KY-536), access and density. Several residents pointed out that there were still unpurchased lots in Stonewater, and wondered if more development was necessary.
One resident’s concerns stood out. Erma Jean Gilbert, a widow who lives in a house near the land, was concerned that the new development could exacerbate flooding, a common concern among residents, given the region’s peculiar topography.
“We [Gilbert and her late husband] moved there 32 years ago,” Gilber said. “And during that time, of course, there was the ’97 flood. It completely surrounded our home. We could not get in or out, and it started to come in under our garage. So when it rains hard, our property used to really flood bad.”
Given that she now lived alone, Gilbert was at a loss for what she could do if the flooding increased.
“If this goes through, financially it will be hard for me,” Gilbert said, before concluding with “If they’re going to do this, I’d rather they take my property.”
Mains tried to assuage the residents’ concerns, saying that Drees had to conform to flood mitigation requirements that would ideally prevent the flooding problem from getting worse. As it related to traffic, Mains said, Drees would be installing roundabouts at various points around the development and had been working with the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet ensure the development plan could be adapted to the continuing work on KY-536.
Gilbert told LINK nky after the meeting that she would likely contact Drees to see if they would be willing to buy her property. Gilbert and Mains chatted privately in the hallway outside of the commission chambers after the votes were cast.
Construction is estimated to begin in 2026, pending final approval from the Fiscal Court.
Read and download the concept plan of the development, including preliminary maps and topographical analyses below.