A new study examining housing data in Kenton County suggests bringing more income-aligned housing to the county will be increasingly difficult.
“Altogether, the market is delivering virtually no new housing for households earning less than $40K/year,” reads a portion of the study. “There is also a production gap for households earning $50K-60K.”
The report was presented at last week’s meeting of the Kenton County Planning Commission and comes from efforts of the commission’s implementation subcommittee. The committee contracted with consulting firm CommunityScale to produce the report. The firm worked on the often-cited 2023 housing study for the Northern Kentucky Area Development District that has framed many of the discussions about housing in the region.
This new study is more narrowly focused on Kenton County and pulls data from 2025. The picture the report paints affirms many of the economic conditions and obstacles that developers, planners and experts have expressed about the broader economic conditions that have led to troubles in the current housing market.
The study issued preliminary recommendations on expanding the diversity of income-aligned housing in Kenton County — without encroaching on undeveloped rural land in the south county.
The study came away with several observations and recommendations. First, much of the demand for new housing units was for smaller, one-to-two bedroom units, even though the county had missed the study’s benchmark for new production of such units.
The issue of affordability is broached in the middle of the study. About 37% of all home sale listings (the largest group) were only accessible to households making over $120,000 a year, according to the study. The study goes on to argue that it would be difficult to build a new home that would sell for less than $208,000 or new apartments that could rent for lower than $1,000 without some kind of subsidy.
Our region, according to a housing strategies report released in 2025, lacks sufficient housing for young adults forming their first household; for essential workers like nurses, teachers and first responders; and for older adults. A teacher with a median annual income of $43,740, for example, can afford only 26% of the rental and 16% of the for-sale housing in the region, according to the report. For a restaurant server, only 1% of the region’s rental housing is affordable.
An older person relying on Social Security can also afford only 1% of rental housing in the region, according to the report.
The report, called Home for All: Northern Kentucky Housing Strategies, came to be thanks to more than 90 leaders and experts from across NKY who spent hours studying the region and its urgent housing challenge. Their goal was to close the housing gap across income levels and provide a place for everyone.
Click here to learn more about the shortage and how NKY leaders and community members are stepping in to find solutions.
Understanding NKY’s housing shortage
Additionally, the study argued that expanding the stock of income -aligned housing on site-ready land (i.e., land that already has sewer and water infrastructure) would likely entail producing housing at greater densities. For instance, a development of small lot single-family homes would need about 25 units per developable acre, with each acre being valued at about $200,000, in order to produce the density needed for income-aligned housing.
The planning commissioners, many of whom have professional backgrounds in development and engineering, reacted with mixed responses. Although some of them found the information helpful as a point of discussion, others seemed exasperated by some of the study’s recommendations.
For instance, several of the planning commissioners were quick to point out that the recommended density increases essentially didn’t exist in the county, and the region’s current economic conditions were unlikely to enable it.
“I don’t think we have anything in our residential zones that comes close to 25 units per dwelling acre,” said Planning Commissioner Tom France. “There’s nothing (that) even comes close.”
“That is indicative of why the new construction, the new single-family homes that are coming online are not income-aligned,” said Nels Nelson, a co-founder of CommunityScale. “They’re more expensive because they have to be because they’re at lower density.”
“So, is this just telling us that we’re not going to be able to achieve it…?” asked Planning Commission Vice Chair Paul Darpel. “We all know that it’s expensive to buy housing now. We all know that nobody’s going to spend a million dollars to make a $500 rent.”
“There’s mindsets that need to be probably adjusted, ways of profit sharing that might need to change a little bit, some different ways that we think of housing; that’s where we’re going to go with this,” said Kareem Simpson, who represents Covington on the Kenton County Planning Commission.
“The comprehensive plan does task us with addressing housing stock needs by ensuring the availability of income-aligned housing, right?” said Planning Commissioner Sarah Flem. “So, that is a task specifically for us, and if we don’t have some sort of resource to define income-aligned housing, I don’t know how we complete that task.”
You can read and download the full study below.
