Building community can help build housing

This story is part of our latest super issue, which examines solutions to Northern Kentucky’s housing shortage. Click here to learn more.

Zoning. Affordable Housing. Adaptive reuse. Alternative funding. 

These are all ways that organizations, companies and people across Northern Kentucky are working to find a way to fill the need for more than 6,600 housing units in the region in the next five years. 

There’s one thing, though, that anyone can do to begin creating an environment that allows enough housing for everyone, according to Covington residents Scott Banford and Melissa Kelley. That one thing is a cultural shift to embrace living among people who are different from them, including people with different income levels. 

“We need more buy-in from people around the community,” Banford said. “We need more YIMBY.” (That acronym, a play on NIMBY, or Not in My Back Yard, stands for Yes in My Back Yard.) 

Banford and Kelley moved to Covington in 2022 from New York City, where they lived for 25 years, to be closer to Kelley’s sister, who also lives in Covington. The couple rehabbed and moved into a home in Covington’s Eastside neighborhood. 

Then, Kelley said, “we wanted to get involved, because that’s just who we are.” 

Our region, according to a housing strategies report released in January, 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, the report says. 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. 

With the region in need of 6,650 additional housing units in the next five years in order to support the region’s growth, the Northern Kentucky Area Development District, along with Brighton Center and those 90 leaders, put together a menu of strategies to “provide a starting point for officials and other stakeholders to create residential opportunities in their communities.” The menu includes things like proactive code enforcement, a regional housing trust fund, creative zoning approaches and small developer support. 

‘Can’t be just one group’

The first goal, said Tara Johnson-Noem, executive director of the area development district, was to create a resource that can truly meet a regional need and look – because the things that would create more housing in each county, city and block look different depending on where one goes. 

“It’s not going to be a one-size-fits-all kind of thing,” Johnson-Noem said. “The idea is that communities, nonprofits and employers can pull down ideas that are place-based but yet still broad enough to meet the needs of smaller communities, larger communities, rural communities, more urban or suburban communities, and everything in between.” 

The idea wasn’t ever to come up with one large idea that would solve everything. That’s because, Johnson-Noem said, that’s not possible. Every community has different needs, so the menu exists to provide resources for the broad range of issues that particular community wants to address. 

“There are so many components that go into our residential housing stock and where it is,” Johnson-Noem said. “It’s meant to be a more tactical toolkit or guide of, ‘What’s the problem that you’re solving for today?’ ‘Who are you?’ ‘Great. Here’s some options for you.’” 

Who puts the ideas into motion? 

“It can’t be just one group,” Johnson-Noem said. “I think having an awareness amongst our employers that this is a challenge for their employers, or even just attracting CEO-level talent and entry-level talent and everything in between.” 

It’s also critical for nonprofits, local governments and residents themselves to look at ways they can contribute to the bigger picture of creating more housing in the region. 

Which is where people like Covington’s Banford and Kelley come in. They started by finding out if there was a neighborhood organization, and, when there wasn’t, she decided she wanted to be part of starting one. 

“We got together the leaders and the elders of the neighborhood and created a diverse group of people who had some sort of history and authority already,” Kelley said. 

‘A willingness to listen’

The Eastside neighborhood is ripe for this kind of community involvement and dedication to a diverse population, Kelley said, because the neighborhood is already full of YIMBYs. 

“We are fortunate in the city government we have right now because there is an openness and willingness to listen, and there is diversity,” Kelley said. “It is just full of people who are anxious to get this done. So here again we have this ripe situation where all it needed was a catalyst – someone to say this is important to us.” 

Kelley and Banford then started having conversations. They met with Mayor Ron Washington. They met with people from the city’s Neighborhood Services Department, which oversees programs to improve the appearance of communities and enhance the quality of life in Covington. 

Working to chip away at the housing crisis in NKY, Kelley said, is all about communication and collaboration. “It’s good to have these conversations and to keep communicating,” she said. “And then we communicate to the neighborhood, and they feel like things are happening. And that there’s hope.” 

Banford said many people think the only way to address housing in NKY is through access and leverage. “And it’s not,” he said. “It’s about relationships.” 

In the midst of some of those conversations, Kelley and Banford learned that there were plans to build market-rate housing on a few open lots near their home on Pleasant Street. 

“We said we’d rather have some diversity going on over there,” Kelley said. “Something affordable or at least a mix.” 

When Banford and Kelley moved into their home, Kelley said, they found out that they had displaced people who now needed a place to live. “That was kind of an eye opener for us, and we wanted to do something about it,” she said. 

So they had more conversations. 

“We discussed this in neighborhood meetings and in subsequent conversations,” Kelley said. “We made it clear that we don’t want to start with market-rate housing in this neighborhood.” 

People actually listened. Kelley and Banford are in continuous conversations with the city and various groups, all of whom are interested in building housing that aligns more with the needs in Covington. 

‘Comfortable with diversity’

“How can we work together so we can both meet the goals that we have set before us,” Banford said. “The city wants to spend money to increase housing. The neighborhood is interested in neighborhood unity and resilience.” 

How did Banford and Kelley come to have this mindset? Kelley thinks part of it might have been their New York City experience. 

“I’m trying to think about, before I lived in New York City, how I would have thought about this,” Kelley said. “But living in New York and being exposed to so many different people has really opened my eyes and made me very comfortable with diversity. You learn there’s nothing to be afraid of.” 

The more people segregate themselves, Kelley said, the more suspicious they are of other populations. 

“I remember when I first moved there, I would be terrified if I found myself alone in Harlem,” Kelley said. “But then my daughter moved there and lived there alone and thrived.”

In the end, Johnson-Noem said, it’s going to take work from people across the community to make a lasting change. 

“I think that’s the really hard thing, because everybody would love to say, this is the thing or this is the group” that will solve the housing shortage in NKY, Johnson-Noem said. 

The current housing situation in NKY has developed over the last decade or two, Johnson-Noem said, “so it’s gonna take a minute to see changes…. This is about changing mindsets long-term.” 

This LINK nky super issue explores some of the ways people in our community have put these ideas into action in four areas: zoning, adaptive reuse, affordable housing and alternative funding. Some solutions are huge endeavors built over years with the help of many; others are the work of a single resident who just wanted to do something. 

We hope these stories inform and inspire you to find a way to get involved in making room for everyone in our community.