Housing continued to occupy the minds of public institutions last week as the Kenton County Planning Commission gave its blessing for the county’s planning professionals to contract with CommunityScale.
CommunityScale is the same firm that produced the 2023 Northern Kentucky Area Development District’s study on the region’s housing landscape.
The company will provide infrastructure recommendations aimed at implementing income-aligned housing strategies in the county, especially as it relates to the county’s 2030 comprehensive plan.
“They definitely have very deep, relevant experience not only in the field of attainable housing but actually in this area,” said Andy Videkovich, planning manager with Kenton County Planning and Development Services. “And based on our review, we feel like they’re going to be able to help us deploy some cutting-edge technology or cutting-edge tools to extend our capabilities and have an impact in this arena.”
$50,000 has already been set aside to pay for the contract with CommunityScale.
The area development district’s 2023 study served as the impetus for many of the conversations about housing in Northern Kentucky, as it was the first large-scale, empirical analysis of the phenomenon, at least in recent years.
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 eight counties in the area development district need “to build 6,650 housing units to support economic development in the next 5 years, which equates to 1,330 units per year.”
CommunityScale will conduct an infrastructural analysis with the goal of helping the planning commission develop a well-informed action plan for income-aligned housing. Following that, the commission will need to perform a marketing and public engagement campaign to get the word out and analyze residents’ opinions.
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“We still need to kind of inform our residents what income-aligned housing is,” said commissioner Kareem Simpson, who represents Covington on the commission. “What are the benefits, what are the detriments to it? And just give them a little bit of an idea of what it is.”
Income-aligned housing is one of several monikers, along with labels like affordable housing and workforce housing, that professionals use to describe reasonably priced housing that people can afford. It is somewhat of a broad term, but the terminology has become the dominant way of framing the issue among the region’s business and civic leaders.
When asked directly what it meant, Simpson said, “Income-aligned housing, in a nutshell, is the overall strategy for making sure that everyone has housing that they can afford.”
County planning professionals, who operate under the aegis of Kenton County Planning and Development Services, will still need to approve the agreement with CommunityScale on their end.
Although some of the commissioners found the ask from the planning professionals a little odd (since they would have to issue their own agreement, as well), most thought the idea of using CommunityScale to advise on the county’s housing was good.
Commission Chair Brian Dunham referenced consultants the commission and planning professionals employed during the commission’s most recent updating of the county’s zoning ordinances, which the county refers to as the Z21 Project.
“I just can’t imagine where we would have ended up with Z21 had we not had that technical skill to help us working with the staff and working with our commission members on the committee,” Dunham said. “So, I’m excited to see what they come back with.”