KY lawmakers didn’t produce many housing solutions in 2025 session despite much talk
Tony Curtis, head of Louisville’s Metro Housing Coalition, started the 30-day 2025 General Assembly in Frankfort with high expectations.
A task force of state lawmakers studied Kentucky’s housing shortage during the legislative interim 2024. They concluded the state was 206,207 housing units short of what it needs for its population of more than 4.5 million people, making shelter unaffordable and weakening the economy. They pledged to find smart solutions.
But once lawmakers got back to the Capitol to write new laws in January, not many housing-related bills made it through their chambers to Gov. Andy Beshear’s desk.
Most of the proposals quietly died, especially those sponsored by members of the Democratic minority, such as a limit on how many homes real estate investors can acquire in a community, tax incentives for first-time home buyers and more state money for Kentucky’s Affordable Housing Trust Fund, which helps low-income people.
Even some popular GOP-backed bills fell by the wayside. The Senate overwhelmingly passed Senate Bill 59, which would have helped religious institutions to more easily develop affordable housing on their property. But the bill stalled out in the House.
“I am really disappointed that we didn’t do more to increase either housing availability or affordability. It feels like housing was the big issue that everyone from both parties was talking about every time they went on KET as the session got started,” Curtis said.
“It’s so frustrating to me,” he said. “Because instead of taking bold action to address the real problems that many Kentuckians face, it was just punching downward to attack these manufactured crises — that there’s too many trans people or DEI is bad. I mean, there are real issues out there that we could have put our collective will toward.”
Several housing bills did pass by the time lawmakers adjourned March 28. They included:
▪ Senate Bill 25, which will let local governments encourage the addition of badly needed apartments, condos and townhouses by issuing industrial revenue bonds to help cover private developers’ construction costs.
▪ Senate Bill 129, a Louisville-specific law that will help housing nonprofits turn blighted and abandoned properties into affordable housing and strengthen the use of tax incentives for urban residential developments.
▪ House Bill 160, which will require local governments to allow less expensive manufactured housing in residential zones and treat them the same as traditional homes built on-site as long as they’re made with materials that are compatible with their neighbors. The city of Versailles in Woodford County already is trying this idea.
In interviews, members of the legislature’s Republican super-majority pointed to a couple of other new laws they say will help at least with housing.
House Bill 10 will make it easier for property owners to call the police on squatters, clearing out rental housing for new occupants.
House Bill 321 will limit who can appeal planning and zoning decisions to “owners of real property within the zone” where the property is located. Sponsors say this will curb frivolous challenges to development. But critics say neighborhood associations and others with a legitimate interest in zoning decisions will be unfairly muted.
There’s always next year
State Sen. Robby Mills, R-Henderson, was co-chairman of last year’s housing task force and sponsor of this year’s successful Senate bill allowing local governments to issue bonds assisting with large multi-family housing projects.
Mills had a slightly higher opinion of the session than Curtis.
“I was moderately satisfied,” Mills said. “I was a little disappointed.”
Among Mills’ chief disappointments, he said, was the failure of House Bill 7, which would have let local governments establish “housing development districts.” Within those districts, developers would be given tax breaks and a degree of freedom on planning and zoning rules.
House Bill 7’s sponsor, state Rep. Josh Bray, R-Mount Vernon, abruptly pulled it from a committee’s agenda in March, saying it needed more work.
Mills said he also tried to pass a measure, Senate Bill 50, to let local governments create “residential infrastructure development districts” and issue bonds to help housing developers with the cost of things like streets, sidewalks, water and gas lines, and drainage.
Tennessee is using these districts, Mills said, but Kentucky House leaders were wary of the idea, and his bill did not escape their chamber.
However, there’s always next year, which will be a 60-day budget-writing session when state appropriations are available when necessary, Mills said.
“This was a short session, and there are now plenty of conversations going on,” Mills said.
But state Rep. Lindsey Burke, D-Lexington, said she’s impatient with the excuse of “short sessions.” Plenty of time existed to pass a substantive package of housing bills in 2025 if the legislature wanted to, said Burke, who also sat on the housing task force last year.
There were about 20 housing proposals offered by Democrats in both chambers that weren’t even considered simply because Democratic legislators aren’t in power, Burke said.
“I feel like despite what they are publicly saying now, it quickly became clear when we came in that they weren’t going to address housing this year,” Burke said. “There was a lack of political will from the majority, a willingness to kick this can down the road and a belief that there won’t be any political consequences.”
The problem of NIMBYism
One widely cited problem is the obstacle posed by “NIMBYism,” or the “not in my backyard” local opposition to the construction of large multi-family housing projects comprised of apartments, townhomes or condos.
Housing experts say that building a lot more multi-family housing is the only way to close the housing gap and provide cheaper options for people who can’t afford a $500,000 home.
Yet homeowners in single-family home neighborhoods often fiercely resist the arrival of an apartment complex anywhere near them, warning of increased traffic, crime, noise and lower property values.
Curtis, the Louisville affordable housing advocate, calls this “exclusionary housing policies” targeting those who are viewed as less desirable neighbors.
“There are these stereotypes that persist and persist and it’s keeping people out of certain areas of town. We view that as a theme in all these conversations,” Curtis said. “It’s mostly rooted in racism. It’s, ‘Hey, we don’t want Section 8 folks here. We don’t want impoverished folks to live in this area. They need to live in another part of town.’”
Burke agreed it’s hard for lawmakers to craft housing legislation when so much of the solution involves multi-family housing, and yet those projects are resisted in so many neighborhoods.
In reality, Burke said, you can have a great neighborhood with a variety of housing. One of the neighborhoods considered the most desirable in Lexington, the Chevy Chase area around the Cathedral of Christ the King, is a mix of older single-family homes, rows of townhomes and small apartment buildings, Burke said.
“It’s true that NIMBYism does factor into how strong a political will the General Assembly has to use all the tools in our toolkit,” Burke said.
“That being said, even the Chamber (of Commerce) presented facts to us during their presentation to the housing task force that the fears that multi-family housing drive down the values of single-family housing are unfounded. In actuality, denser urban settings increase the property values for everyone,” she said.
