Rally calls for housing-assistance fund
At least a dozen groups represented
Nearly 100 people bearing yellow placards reading "Open the Door" rallied on the steps of City Hall yesterday, urging a housing-assistance fund be created to help low-income people.
"There's no place like home for the holidays, but a lot of people don't have a home," Louisville Metro Council member Mary Woolridge, D-3rd District, said at the rally.
The demonstration before last night's council meeting included representatives from at least a dozen groups.
"I was homeless for nearly two years, going from shelter to shelter," said Virginia Durrance, who attended the rally. But she began receiving a federal housing subsidy in 2003 that pays all the rent on her apartment near Shively.
Durrance, a member of a self-help group called Women in Transition, said she is taking GED classes now. Without the housing help, "there's no telling where I'd be," she said.
Advocates say a fund that could provide up to $10 million a year for programs is essential to reverse Louisville's worsening housing problem.
They noted that there are 13,000 people on a city waiting list for assistance and that federal housing money has dropped over the past decade, with many U.S. grants now requiring local matching money.
Earlier this year, Mayor Jerry Abramson set up a task force to recommend how a local affordable-housing trust fund might be structured and financed. It gave Abramson its recommendations this month.
The mayor is reviewing them and looking for ways to fuel the fund that don't require higher fees or taxes, spokesman Matt Kamer said.
The task force suggested sources that include a car-rental, cable-television or restaurant fee, or higher Jefferson County clerk fees.
Metro Council member Tina Ward-Pugh, D-9th District, a member of the task force, said the council hopes to provide at least a one-time, $2 million infusion next year so the trust fund has some "seed money."
An effort probably will be made to match that sum with private money, she said.
Among groups represented at the rally were Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, Kentucky Jobs With Justice, Women in Transition, CLOUT (Citizens of Louisville Organized and United Together), the Kentucky Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, the Coalition for the Homeless, the Metropolitan Housing Coalition, Habitat for Humanity and some churches.
"You see so many people in shelters, even some with jobs, who can't afford housing," said Larry Biven of CLOUT.
The state established an affordable-housing trust fund in 1992. Administered by the Kentucky Housing Corp., it initially was fed primarily by lottery revenues. But those have been shifted to education.
The General Assembly agreed this year to put more than $4 million a year into the fund from a share of higher fees collected by county clerks for some licenses they issue.
Reporter Sheldon S. Shafer can be reached at (502) 582-7089.
