Gentrification is a term used when developers take over a neighborhood and rehabbing rundown homes and communities that often force out by pricing out the people who already live there.
Last week, Louisville's Metro council passed what's called an anti Displacement ordinance to fight it.
Kentucky additions June Lefler has more.
For nearly three years, the Louisville Tenants Union fought for a measure to curb gentrification.
Last week, all Metro Council members present signed off on such a law.
What we realized a few years ago when we started writing this legislation is that we were tired of waiting for our politicians to take action.
So we took it ourselves and we found an ally on Metro Council through Councilman Zachary Arthur.
Louisville specifically West Louisville.
And parts of neighborhoods that are around the downtown core are struggling with development that comes and raises the cost of living raises and raises property taxes, which then in turn makes you have to pay more for your mortgage.
And it's pushing people out.
Soon, Metro Council will have a better idea of how new lofts or townhouses could impact their constituents living nearby.
This legislation is specific to developers who want metro government resources.
Sometimes that means funding.
Sometimes that means land or property the Metro government owns or controls.
Sometimes that means letters of support.
Sometimes it means certain government official actions that they can take to help a development.
If you want those metro resources that are conditions to that.
And so it creates this thing called a displacement index.
So like you put in data, like just numbers.
This is what I'm going to charge and rent.
This is the income of the neighborhood.
These types of metrics to come up with a score at the end that lets us know will this project inflate the cost of living in the community or will it just help it stay stabilized?
Which if it does, if it does turn out that it might inflate, then that developer has every opportunity to change the project so that it can better suit that community to receive those resources?
The Building Industry Association of Greater Louisville represents the construction industry and some developers.
It said, quote, While the BCA supports efforts to address displacement issues, the development community does have concerns that this recently passed ordinance will negatively impact our ability to provide much needed housing of all types and price ranges throughout our entire community.
Bldg development builds mixed income apartment complexes across Jefferson County and the nation.
That means a portion of their apartments go for market rates, while the rest are cheaper and publicly subsidized for low income renters.
The developer said, quote, While we understand the intent and firmly agree that long term residents of the neighborhood should not be forced to relocate due to new residential development, we have serious concerns about the potential negative impacts to developing affordable housing in Louisville.
In order to create a vibrant, livable and affordable city, we need to remove barriers to getting developments approved and under construction, not create more.
Kentuckians spend a lot of their money on housing alone.
39% of renters pay roughly a third of their income for rent.
Same goes for 17% of homeowners in the state.
Severely cost burdened Kentuckians pay more than half of their income for housing.
19% of Kentucky renters and 7% of homeowners are in that category.
If you can't afford a place to live, it puts you in a position where you probably can't afford other basic necessities, where you have to make that tough choice between your housing and food or your housing and child care, or your housing and medicine and housing and anything else that you need to survive.
Arthur says this could be a movement building moment in Kentucky.
Lexington will decide if it wants to ban landlords from refusing to rent to people with housing vouchers.
Renters and social service providers spoke in favor of the ban, while some landlords opposed it.
At a recent public hearing this week.
Louisville has such a ban in place.
There are homes across the state where people are concerned about being able to pay their mortgages, paying their rent, and they relate to this.
So the people who are part of making this and I think that you're going to see a lot more of that across Kentucky as tenants have these winds, these legislative wins where they're stepping up and fighting back to their local government, standing up and fighting back with their landlords, with their property management and saying, we've had enough and we want better.
It may seem hard.
We may not know where to go sometime, but if you've got that fire and you know the things are possible, come find us because we can help build legislation, because a win for us is a win for you.
And we want to keep on winning because we want poor and working class people in this country to have more power so that our material reality can be what we need to not only survive, but to thrive.
Louisville's new ordinance should take effect in six months.
For Kentucky Edition, I'm June Leffler.
Thank you, June, for that in-depth report.
Lexington will revisit the proposed source of income ban early next year.
It will be heard again in the Social Services and Public Safety Committee.