Affordable Housing Heinz Community Breakfast and Walking Tour

Join us for a free community breakfast and walking tour to highlight the need for safe, affordable housing in Lexington. The Central Kentucky Chapter of Kentuckians For The Commonwealth has invited Mayor Jim Gray and the members of the Lexington Fayette Urban County Council to breakfast at Christian and Tanya Torp’s home, Justice House, on the morning of August 16th from 9 a.m. – 11 a.m. After breakfast, we will take a walking tour of the neighborhood and introduce the Mayor and Council Members to members of the community who are directly impacted by the lack of affordable, safe housing in our community. Breakfast will be an opportunity to meet with the Mayor and Council to build relationships with them and to lobby them for a dedicated funding source for an affordable housing trust fund. 

We know that one in four Lexington families cannot afford to live in the city. And here are some other statistics: 
• According to the Mayor’s Housing and Homelessness report, 33,800 renting households in our city cannot afford to keep a roof over their family’s heads. 
• More than 12,000 renting households in Lexington are forced to pay half of their income in rent each month. 
• In Lexington, rent for a two bedroom apartment averaged $700 per month in 2012. This means a person making minimum wage would need to work 74 hours each week for this rent to be affordable. 
• The housing crisis in Lexington is a $36 million per year problem that currently has 6,000 households in dire need of assistance
• Due to the relative prosperity of Lexington, rental housing costs will continue to rise, meaning 400 additional units will become unaffordable each year for the foreseeable future unless something is done. 

What is an affordable housing trust fund?: We are working on a campaign for an affordable housing trust fund. The Affordable Housing Trust Fund is a pool of money from a dedicated funding source that creates quality, affordable housing in Lexington, for people who spend more than 30% of their income on rent and utilities. The common definition for “affordable” housing is that it should cost no more than 30% of one’s monthly net income for housing. Housing that costs 50% or more of one’s income are considered “extremely unaffordable.”