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.
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Affordable housing is mayor's aim
With federal money declining and the cost of owning a home rising, Mayor Jerry Abramson said yesterday that he intends to put $1 million into a local fund to promote affordable housing.
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Louisville gains on competitor cities
In 2000, Louisville had the lowest percentage of households – 22 percent – living in homes considered unaffordable because housing costs used up more than 30 percent of their income. By 2005, that figure had risen to 33 percent.
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Ministries respond to growing needs
Lynn Humphrey, program director with Highlands Community Ministries, said her agency’s most pressing need is rent assistance.
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Louisville home prices outpace pay
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.
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Program Update
Between 150 and 200 people participated on Tuesday Dec. 19th in the "Home for the Holidays" rally for the Louisville Affordable Housing Trust Fund! We exceeded our goal for turnout - had a great article in the Courier-Journal - and Rep. Jim Wayne pledged publicly, "I will make the Louisville Affordable Housing Trust Fund my number one priority in Frankfort in 2007!"
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Rally calls for housing-assistance fund
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.
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A movable need: Affordable Housing task force set to present findings to the Mayor
For an enlightened community with concern for the middle, most and least of its citizenry, somebody somewhere needs to come up with more housing money. As much as anything, this story is about where that might come from.
Welcome the Affordable Housing Trust Fund The city of Louisville, as an entity, is quite close to joining hundreds of other American cities by establishing its own Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
Funded by a renewable stream of mostly public money, the trust fund would assist those earning up to 80 percent of the area median income (AMI) — that figure is $47,100 for a family of four, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Precisely, half of the public money would go there and the other half to those below 50 percent AMI ($29,450 for a family of four).
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Activists push affordable-housing bill
After her marriage broke up and she lost her home, Terry Tudor tried to fix up a dilapidated farmhouse a relative provided in Madison County.
She painted over mold stains and duct-taped holes in rotted floorboards. She covered a damaged ceiling with tin and tried to fix leaky windows.
But she was still ashamed.
"I didn't want anybody in that home," said Tudor, a school secretary.
A newly built Habitat for Humanity house last year dramatically improved life for Tudor, 51, and her daughter, 15.
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AHTF Update
On April 10, 2006, advocates from the “Open the Door” campaign for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund (AHTF) passed House Bill 537 by a vote of 26-6 in the Senate and 66-26 in the House of Representatives, establishing an estimated $4.4 million in funding and a dedicated public revenue source for the Kentucky Affordable Housing Trust Fund.
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Housing Fund For Poor to Get $4.3 Million
April 12, 2006
FRANKFORT—A program that builds housing for the working poor and disabled will get at least $4.3 million a year under a bill approved yesterday by both the House and Senate.
The measure would provide a stable revenue stream for the Affordable Housing Trust Fund by raising the recording fees on deeds and mortgages and certain other documents from $8 to $12, with $6 of that amount going to the housing program.
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Study points out Louisville's pockets of substantial poverty
Wednesday, October 12, 2005
By Chris Poynter The Courier-Journal
Thousands of Louisville's poor are living in 11 urban neighborhoods -- one of the highest concentrations of poverty in the United States, according to a study being released today.
The pockets of poverty lead to high crime, poor schools, depressed housing prices and few jobs, according to the report by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.
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