Covington will likely approve zoning that would allow detached single family homes at the Central Riverfront Development site, located at the former IRS complex along the Ohio River.
The zoning would also allow lot homes, which are single-family homes on their own lots that butt up against the lots’ side property lines.
Covington City Commission discussed the move at their meeting on Tuesday. The proposal came in the form a municipal order, which the commission placed on the consent agenda for next week, meaning it will likely pass.
“What prompted this?” asked Commissioner Steve Hayden.
Economic Development Director Tom West, who was siting in for City Manager Ken Smith, said that when the city bought the property, they rezoned the area to include single-family homes. When the city revised its neighborhood development code in 2020, West said, they moved the use category over but not the building type.
“It was just a scrivener’s error or an omission,” West said.
The current neighborhood development code does, in fact, include single family homes in the Central Riverfront’s zoning category, but only attached homes (i.e. apartments, town homes, condos, duplexes, triplexes, quadplexes) are included in the building type category.
West confirmed with LINK nky that developers looking to build detached homes at the IRS site had already reached out to the city. However, the development agreements that have been approved so far are only for attached homes, meaning they share buildings with other shelters on the lot. If affirmed, Tuesday’s order would allow for the construction of detached dwellings, homes on their very own lots.
Drees Homes emerged as the first residential developer at the site this spring. A mixed use development was then approved in June. This year also saw a multi-million dollar injection of state money into the site for the establishment of the Northern Kentucky Center of Biomedical Excellence, which will see the relocation of NKU’s Chase College of Law and the Highland Heights branch of the University of Kentucky’s College of Medicine to the riverfront. The administration of those funds falls under the Northern Kentucky Port Authority.
Although the move is contextualized by anxieties about housing in the region, including calls for affordable housing at both the development itself and in the region broadly, West said there was “nothing nefarious or anything like that” about the recommendation.
Detached homes tend to be more expensive to construct per unit than attached homes, and they also tend to sell for higher prices. Median single family home sale prices have increased by 3.9% nationwide year over year as of July 2024, according to Redfin, a private real estate broker known for tracking real estate trends throughout the country. Redfin puts the median sale price for a single family home in Kenton County as of July 2024 at $275,000 and the median price in Covington at $230,000.
This is a good deal below Redfin’s national median of $438,706, and housing shortages that have plagued much of the nation have been comparatively mild in the Northern Kentucky and the Greater Cincinnati region. Still, many of the national trends related to housing have played out locally.
In September of last year, 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 the largest need is for what they called “workforce housing,” which refers to households whose hourly 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.
A dearth of small affordable starter homes has characterized much of the shortage. Redfin did an analysis on starter homes in August, which put the income required to afford the median-priced American starter home at $80,000. Northern Kentucky is not mentioned in the write up, but the analysis put the income necessary to purchase a starter home in the Cincinnati metro area at $60,900, which is up 14.7% since July of last year. The median household income in Covington was $53,770 in 2022, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Metro-level summary: Income needed to afford a starter home, July 2024 50 most populous U.S. metros U.S. metro area Median sale price of starter home Median monthly mortgage payment for starter home Estimated median household income (2024) Income needed to afford a starter home Income needed to afford a starter home, YoY change Anaheim, CA $740,000 $6,283 $122,192 $251,302 9.7% Atlanta, GA $267,500 $2,166 $94,048 $86,647 3.5% Austin, TX $327,000 $2,945 $103,945 $117,781 -2.5% Baltimore, MD $220,000 $1,855 $108,865 $74,214 6.8% Boston, MA $496,000 $4,211 $121,265 $168,440 9.1% Charlotte, NC $259,500 $2,035 $86,294 $81,380 7.5% Chicago, IL $210,000 $1,978 $95,513 $79,119 22.5% Cincinnati, OH $185,000 $1,523 $85,910 $60,900 14.7% Cleveland, OH $130,000 $1,130 $75,255 $45,192 15.6% Columbus, OH $200,000 $1,672 $87,872 $66,897 11.5% Dallas, TX $275,000 $2,459 $98,122 $98,370 1.0% Denver, CO $419,000 $3,306 $109,919 $132,234 3.5% Detroit, MI $70,000 $615 $63,937 $24,590 19.5% Fort Lauderdale, FL $225,000 $1,928 $78,583 $77,137 2.0% Fort Worth, TX $245,250 $2,162 $89,312 $86,474 3.0% Houston, TX $220,000 $1,955 $88,758 $78,180 3.2% Indianapolis, IN $175,000 $1,433 $86,071 $57,310 9.7% Jacksonville, FL $240,000 $1,943 $83,672 $77,704 3.8% Kansas City, MO $185,000 $1,527 $90,106 $61,073 7.0% Las Vegas, NV $300,000 $2,320 $78,113 $92,793 3.7% Los Angeles, CA $615,000 $4,612 $93,197 $184,477 7.9% Miami, FL $320,000 $2,641 $71,749 $105,657 7.6% Milwaukee, WI $195,000 $1,711 $83,882 $68,445 8.9% Minneapolis, MN $268,200 $2,234 $106,426 $89,361 4.4% Montgomery County, PA $326,000 $2,598 $123,457 $103,903 9.8% Nashville, TN $310,000 $2,425 $91,136 $97,018 3.1% Nassau County, NY $530,000 $4,701 $144,973 $188,038 10.7% New Brunswick, NJ $350,000 $3,080 $118,993 $123,187 9.1% New York, NY $455,000 $4,142 $96,338 $165,668 5.8% Newark, NJ $380,000 $3,402 $109,263 $136,075 14.4% Oakland, CA $629,000 $4,850 $135,725 $194,004 4.4% Orlando, FL $267,000 $2,173 $80,102 $86,903 4.9% Philadelphia, PA $140,000 $1,151 $72,840 $46,059 11.5% Phoenix, AZ $325,000 $2,502 $89,407 $100,070 0.9% Pittsburgh, PA $122,000 $1,037 $79,863 $41,493 14.6% Portland, OR $415,740 $3,395 $101,424 $135,797 1.9% Providence, RI $360,000 $3,056 $90,520 $122,255 9.2% Riverside, CA $408,000 $3,072 $90,677 $122,884 5.6% Sacramento, CA $430,000 $3,651 $100,152 $146,027 3.2% San Antonio, TX $205,000 $1,836 $80,029 $73,435 1.0% San Diego, CA $652,750 $4,949 $108,352 $197,978 6.8% San Francisco, CA $950,000 $7,136 $159,665 $285,426 5.5% San Jose, CA $970,000 $7,485 $170,034 $299,414 5.5% Seattle, WA $560,000 $4,552 $126,310 $182,060 4.0% St. Louis, MO $127,500 $1,055 $85,750 $42,218 8.4% Tampa, FL $250,000 $2,037 $75,221 $81,499 3.5% Virginia Beach, VA $244,900 $1,992 $88,791 $79,679 7.1% Warren, MI $187,600 $1,588 $94,254 $63,524 8.5% Washington, DC $365,000 $2,984 $137,234 $119,361 5.0% West Palm Beach, FL $248,250 $2,061 $84,990 $82,431 0.6% Monthly median mortgage payments are calculated assuming the buyer made a 3.5% down payment, and they take that month’s median sale price and average mortgage rates into account. They include principal, interest, taxes and insurance.
The Covington City Commission will cast a vote on the measure at their legislative meeting on Tuesday, Sept. 10. The meeting will begin at 6 p.m. at Covington City Hall on Pike Street.