Providing more shelter
Local housing activists long have argued that Metro Louisville should create its own affordable housing trust fund, in order to foster more home ownership and provide rental opportunities for individuals and families of modest means.
This week, Mayor Jerry Abramson moved in that direction, saying he wants to earmark $1 million of a projected $10 million surplus for such a purpose
The Mayor pledged that future city budgets would include money for affordable housing. He also will ask the private sector to kick in. And next year, city officials will ask the state legislature to give Metro Council the authority to designate a guaranteed source of revenue for the housing trust.
Meanwhile, the Mayor will ask the council to pass an ordinance allowing creation of an affordable housing trust commission, whose members will be mayoral appointees but whose funding will be administered through the Metro Louisville Housing and Community Development Division.
A clearly elated Cathy Hinko, from the Metropolitan Housing Coalition, chirped, “Now, we’ve got eggs.”
Indeed we do, although we await further details. Implementation of such an effort will be challenging.
This good news comes at a particularly important time, just after the not-so-great news that Kentucky’s rate of residential mortgage foreclosures is among the worst in the nation.
One in every 57 of Kentucky’s residential mortgages was in foreclosure last summer. Among those most responsible are predatory lenders, who prey on the least sophisticated borrowers, with the result that many homebuyers don’t realize until it’s too late that they’ve signed on the dotted line for mortgage loans that are inappropriate to their family circumstances.
There was a time when such problems occurred mostly in inner-city neighborhoods. But during the first two months of 2007, Ms. Hinko explained, there’s been an uptick in foreclosures in Pleasure Ridge Park, Okolona, Shively and Jeffersontown. That suggests even more local families, up and down the economic ladder, are seeing their hold on the American dream slip.
