By Marcus Green The Courier-Journal

Homeownership is climbing further out of reach for the average Louisville-area worker, whose earnings are failing to keep pace with home prices, a new study and federal wage data show.

Louisville still has cheaper housing than most major cities. But police officers, firefighters and social workers earning the median salary for their jobs are among the people that can't afford a fixed-rate, 30-year mortgage on a house costing $142,500 -- the region's median home price in 2006.

"It's showing a gap, and then that gap can be made up by another income earner," said Barbara Lipman, research director at the Washington, D.C.-based Center for Housing Policy. "If it's a single earner, they can work more hours or another job."

The study's release last week by the center comes amid renewed calls for a trust fund that would provide low-income Louisville families with homeownership assistance, mortgage counseling and other help to rent or buy affordable housing.

The report contains mixed findings about Louisville, housing advocates and researchers say.

Louisville's 13-county metropolitan area is among the nation's most affordable, ranking 142nd of 202 markets analyzed, according to the nonprofit housing policy center. But the cost of the median-priced house rose faster than workers' income over the past three years. Making concessions

Buying a house was out of reach for social worker Jessica Causey, especially in two of her favorite neighborhoods: the lower Highlands and Crescent Hill.

With a salary just above $30,000, Causey said she looked at condos costing less than $90,000 and settled on a two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit near the Watterson Expressway and Bardstown Road. She paid $85,000 -- her family helped with the down payment -- and plans to close on it next week.

"I love working with kids and social work, and that's what I feel called to do," said Causey, 24, who works for the state Cabinet for Health and Family Services. "So I'm OK with making concessions in some areas just to be able to make a difference."

Making concessions is a foregone conclusion for workers in the nation's most expensive housing markets.

Thirteen of the 14 priciest places to live are in California, led by San Francisco, where the median house price is $759,000. In those areas, blue-collar and public-safety workers often fall hundreds of thousands of dollars short of the income needed to buy median-priced homes.

The gap is much less -- usually a few thousand dollars -- in Louisville. That encourages people such as Cathy Hinko, executive director of the Metropolitan Housing Coalition and a supporter of the trust fund.

Louisville "isn't San Jose," Hinko said, referring to the Silicon Valley city where the median house price is $655,000.

"We don't have an enormous gap to cover to make this happen."

Mayor Jerry Abramson has recommended creating a trust fund, and supporters and Metro Council members are weighing how to establish it. Housing advocates are pushing for a mix of local and state revenue that would generate more than $10 million a year. Area more affordable

In Jefferson, Oldham and Bullitt counties, the median home price for 2006 was $138,500, below the metro-area median, said Lisa Stephenson, executive vice president of the Greater Louisville Association of Realtors.

Nationwide, median housing prices are nearly five times the median household income, compared with about three times as high in the Louisville market, said Brad DeVries, president and CEO of Semonin Realtors. "The good news is affordability is still strong in Louisville," DeVries said.

While health-care workers are priced out of affordable housing nationwide, people earning the median income in occupations such as registered nurse and physical therapist in Louisville make more than the $48,816 needed to afford a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage on a median-priced house.

That's a function of "our low housing cost, relative to many areas, at some point having a benefit to people who are professionals," Hinko said.

But area incomes are losing ground.

To afford a median-priced house in the Louisville area in 2003, a buyer needed to make at least $41,141, according to the housing policy center. That amount had increased by 6 percent to $43,764 in 2005 and by 19percent to $48,816 last year

The median salary for a worker in the metro area was $27,269 in 2003, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It rose by 3.5 percent to $28,226 by 2005, the most recent year for which data are available.

Reporter Marcus Green can be reached at (502) 582-4675.