From Shortages to Solutions: Fixing The Housing Crisis

Affordable housing is a growing crisis across Kentucky, affecting communities in all 120 counties. In this episode of The Blue Dot Podcast, hosts Natalie MacDonald and Brian Koehl are joined by housing expert Gil Guthrie to break down the root causes behind the state’s housing shortage and rising rents.

The conversation explores how supply and affordability are deeply connected, why working‑wage families are feeling the most pressure, and how rents have risen more than 40% in recent years despite Kentucky’s relatively low median rent. Gil also discusses bipartisan solutions, including zoning reform, public investment, housing tax credits, and recent state and federal efforts aimed at expanding housing supply.

A must‑listen for anyone concerned about housing affordability in the Bluegrass and beyond.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

Welcome to the Blue Dot, Northern Kentucky's premier political podcast, brought to you by the Kenton County Democratic Executive Committee. Welcome back to the Blue Dot Podcast, where we like to talk about the kitchen table topics affecting those in the Bluegrass and beyond. And one of those issues is affordable housing. And we're here for it. Thanks for joining. I'm Natalie McDonald.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

And I'm Brian Cale. In Kentucky, housing shortages exist in all 120 counties across all income levels. And in fact, Kentucky is short more than 200,000 homes statewide, with rents rising over 40% in recent years.

SPEAKER_01 0:36

Yeah, and this is a really complex issue. So as you know, with complex issues, we like to bring in the experts. And today we're joined by Kentucky-based housing leader Gil Guthrie. Gil is a Ludlow-based housing expert and program manager at the Cincinnati Development Fund, where he focuses on housing, development, policy, and data analytics across Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. He also serves on the Kenton County Joint Board of Adjustment and regularly works with local leaders and communities to address housing affordability and supply challenges in the region. Thanks so much for joining us, Gil.

SPEAKER_00 1:12

Yeah, thanks, Brian. Thanks, Natalie. Glad to be here. Glad to talk about housing. It's one of my favorite things to talk about. I would do it in my free time, but uh glad to be here today to share some of my wonky housing takes.

SPEAKER_02 1:25

Well, it's uh it's a good time for you then because housing is a hot topic and in our opinion, probably not as hot as it should be. You know, it kind of is getting buried by some of the other distractions out there, but you know, something that's top of mind for many of us. And, you know, you've, Gil, dedicated a good portion of your career to this topic. Can you tell us a little about yourself, your background, and what drove you to get involved in housing development?

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Yeah, thanks, Brian. I'll try to be I'll try not to be long-winded here. So I am not originally from northern Kentucky. I grew up in Metro Detroit, and uh, like most Metro Detroiters, when I was a kid, I thought, like, oh, I'll go and do something in the auto industry. Uh and then a couple of interesting things were happening during some formative years when I was in high school. Detroit's mayor at the time was arrested for 26 or 27 counts of bribery charges. Uh, the city filed for the largest municipal bankruptcy in American history. It was during the time of uh the 2012 presidential politics. So it was really like an interesting introduction to politics at the local and the federal level. And that's really kind of what shifted my interest into like urban policy, urban politics, housing policy. Uh Detroit uh infamously uh used to be the fourth largest city in the country at one point and has lost uh like over a million population in the last 70 years. So these issues were really kind of fascinating to me growing up. Uh and then how I got down to uh Cincinnati, the greater Cincinnati area, is uh I discovered a program at Xavier University called Philosophy Politics in the Public. And so I graduated high school in 14, joined that program uh at Xavier, and I spent uh all four years of my undergrad uh researching and writing about the history of housing and local politics. Uh, I was working on political campaigns at Cincinnati. During my time as an undergrad, I worked on uh worked on interned or volunteered for uh five different political campaigns. What a great way to like learn an area that you're new to than like knocking on tens of thousands of doors over the course of five years. So I just really like heard a lot firsthand about issues facing the community, particularly housing. After my four years at Xavier in that PPP program, uh I spent another year at Xavier getting a master's degree in a similar topic. I wrote my first master's thesis on uh the Over the Rhine Comprehensive Plan in Cincinnati, talking about housing and how Over the Rhine can produce more housing. And at the same time, I spent a year in the City of Cincinnati's planning department. After that, I spent four and a half years with a private real estate developer on the Cincinnati side doing multifamily real estate development in both Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. And while I was at that role for four and a half years, I also went back and got a second master's in finance from the University of Cincinnati with a focus area graduate certificate in real estate. So really just honing in those real estate finance and development skills. At the end of 2023, I uh had to take a break from professional life. I like to joke that I did a personalized study of the American healthcare system. Uh I was dealing with some medical issues in 2024, but uh we're all good now. And back in uh February of 2025, I started in my current role uh doing program management for a local community development financial institute here locally in in Greater Cincinnati. And on that note, I should add a disclaimer that you know what I'm about to share on this podcast are kind of the accumulation of all my takes and ideas and experiences over the last seven or so years and may not always be reflective of those of my employer. So I should add that little asterisk there at the end.

SPEAKER_01 5:20

Yeah, so when we say we bring in the experts, we're we're not kidding, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:24

Yeah, that's for sure.

SPEAKER_01 5:25

So happy to have your expertise because this is not my uh area core competency whatsoever. So I I guess we get started off by I think maybe we could break it into two separate uh crises that are going on. We have a supply issue and an affordability issue. Is is that a good way to think about it?

SPEAKER_00 5:44

Yeah, it's a it's a great, it's a great way to think about it, Natalie. And I think one one of those kind of like there's a broader affordability discussion, which I'm happy to dive into further. The supply issue is is rather acute though, right? It's almost kind of easy to describe in economic terms. Demand is greater than supply. And when demand is greater than supply, prices increase. And so a great way to kind of visualize this or see this happening in real time is the shortages that Brian mentioned in the intro in Kentucky. 2024 study showed that Kentucky is short of 200,000 housing units across the Commonwealth in every community of every housing type. And as a result, we've seen rent prices skyrocket. And it's not just a situation that's unique to Kentucky. This is happening all over the country. Uh, you could see some pretty infamous examples in California of just how housing prices have skyrocketed and how the state of California has really struggled to add new housing to the market. On the flip side, if you look at cities like Austin, Texas, that have just built a ton of housing over the last five years, those cities that have built the most housing in the last five years are seeing the fastest decline in rent growth in the country. And so the supply issue is definitely reflective of some of those economic theories, right? That supply is less than demand, demand is greater than the supply for housing. And then we have the broader affordability issue, and supply and demand definitely plays into that. When we're talking about affordability, it's really important that we keep a few things in mind. Affordability can mean something slightly different to everyone else. We all have our own unique circumstances, situations. HUD, though, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, for better or worse, has a standard definition for what affordability means. That means that you are not paying any more than 30% of your gross income on housing costs plus utilities. So your rent plus utilities cannot exceed 30% of your income. Your mortgage plus utilities cannot exceed 30% of your income. And that is a HUD standard definition, which is important to baseline because that's how a lot of federal programs and frankly state and local programs build off of that definition. And so this is kind of a crass example, but if you make$10,000 a year, that means that your housing, according to HUD, is affordable if you're spending$3,000 or less on your housing costs plus utilities. If you make a million a year, your housing costs are quote unquote affordable if you are spending no more than 300,000 of your housing costs plus utilities each year. And so that's kind of like HUD's benchmark. And like I said, there are a lot of nuances that go into affordability, but it's important to keep that benchmark at front of mind because that's how a lot of federal programs are kind of designed. And then the implication of that, though, is that there are so many renters that are what's called rent burdened or housing cost burden, which means that they are spending more than that 30% of their income. And in some cases, we see 40%, 50%, 60% of a household's gross income is being spent on housing. Those are severely cost-burdened households. And that means that they are making really tough decisions between their housing costs and childcare or medical expenses or anything else that may be in that household budget.

SPEAKER_02 9:14

And looking at that, I know Natalie has some stats on what Kentucky renters pay as a percentage, housing costs is a percentage of total income. But going back to supply for a second, you know, the I I've always thought about the supply chain issues of COVID and how we are still in some industries recovering from that. Now I don't know if housing supply and some of the interruption from that, even though it was five or six years ago, has still been cascading down from that. There's uh other supply chain uh issues, terrorists, of course, self-inflicted wound that started last year could be affecting the supply of materials. And then, you know, um obviously the immigration policies now. We're looking at the supply of labor all of a sudden over the last year became difficult, became a real challenge for a lot of builders. What else goes into that supply? I mean, like I know a lot of it obviously has to do from a funding and finance end as well, but what are some of the major factors that keep us from building? You know, what we say in northern Kentucky, the region uh in northern Kentucky alone needs 6,650 new housing units in the next five years, and especially in the you know, working wage, middle class, lower middle class wage families and demographic. What are some of the root causes of the shortage and what do you see as ways to you know maybe overcome that?

SPEAKER_00 10:34

It's a great question, Brian. And and really it goes even beyond uh COVID in 2020, 2021, although I am happy to touch on that as well. It really goes back to 2008. And I don't need to cover everything that led up to 2008, but for our purposes, it's important to know that in 2008 there was this huge economic bust, especially in the housing, particularly in the housing industry. And that caused a lot of general contractors across the country, not just an acute issue to Kentucky, across the country, a lot of general contractors just left the business altogether. They either decided to retire or close their shop due to just the bust of the housing market. And we didn't ever really recover from that, frankly. And so even since 2008, housing has been really difficult to build because there just are less people building housing. And so when we're talking broadly about the housing supply issue, when we're talking about housing supply, we're talking about every input that goes into building and delivering housing. So there's we could like break that up into a few pieces, talking about like the general contractor availability. There are less of those, there are less subcontractors. There's definitely strain in the labor force. Immigration policy definitely plays a role in that. So does like domestic education policy. We just aren't graduating welders and carpenters and skilled tradesmen the way that we used to, which should be a huge room for opportunity to get more folks into the trades because there are great high-paying jobs, secure jobs in those fields. So there's the labor part, and then there's also the material part. Brian, you referred to tariffs as a great example. And I know tariffs have come up probably most dramatically in the last, you know, six to twelve months, but even before this term uh in this federal administration, you know, a lot of housing is built with lumber. And a lot of lumber source to build housing in the United States comes from Canada. And so if your lumber package is one of the largest components of your construction package when you're building a development, and that cost goes up 10% because of a federal tariff, your lumber contractor, your lumber supplier is passing for that tariff, which is getting passed along to the lumber contractor, which is getting passed along to the developer. The developer is passing that along in the price of the home or the rent that they're charging. So every input that goes into the creation of housing either makes it more expensive or dings the supply. And then there also is this financing piece that you mentioned, Brian. And I also think it's really important to remember that in most cases, 90 plus percent of cases, the people that are actually building housing are investing in some way. And there are nuances to that, and I know that that could be a complicated thing to like grapple with, but at the end of the day, 90% of the housing that's getting built is getting built as an investment. And those investors are seeking returns. And if you just put, let's say you've got a million-dollar real estate project, if you put a million dollars into a mutual fund today, I think over 30 years the SP averages 12.5%. That's what you're competing with. If you tell a developer, hey, put a million dollars in today, wait three years. You have to get approvals from the city, the county, architects, your planning department, your local government, maybe the state government. And then if you do all of that, wait three years until your project is done and then wait another year or two until it stabilizes, and then you can start to see returns. You would just rather put that million dollars into a 12.5% high-yield account in the SP and walk away and be done. And so when we're talking about 90%, and I'm ballparking that, 90% of the housing being built today is funded by private investment. That financing is competing with the very real returns of the SP 500 over the life of the building. And so the solution to that last part is we need to make housing a uh uh a real return on investment for developers, as uncomfortable as we may be with that idea. And then there are all sorts of asterisks and nuances with that, of course.

SPEAKER_01 14:49

That's a good point that I never even thought of. Is that the people who are going to be building these, you know, the communities, they they're not gonna get the return, so they they are just walking away. Um, but you know, you had said earlier you talked about that 30% of the income needs to be lower than that for it, you know, to be considered affordable. I I saw the statistic that for Kentuckians in Kentucky, 42% spend more than 30% of their rent on income. And you know, when I thought about first of all, 30% I think is really high, but you can't dig out of that. You know, how can someone dig out of that? You can't save for a down payment for perhaps you know another house if you're if you're renting. So I think it just sounds like there's just a lot in the the line here that's kind of clogging stuff up to which has gotten us into this crisis to begin with.

SPEAKER_00 15:38

Absolutely. Uh that actually Natalie brings up a really good point. Just because the HUD cap is 30% does not mean that everyone ought to be paying 30% of their income. Because to your point, you know, there may be other things in that household budget that need to be accounted for. You know, someone making$70,000,$80,000,$90,000 a year who says that they may not want to save on their housing, buy or rent something further down the cost scale. And then that takes that place away from someone who can actually afford it, which just kind of underscores this point that we are in such a supply crunch that there are so few options, as you just said, to kind of like dig out of being cost burdened, which just again underscores the need to add more supply if we want to really tackle affordability.

SPEAKER_01 16:29

Is there any component to a land supply that figures into this? Are we are we running out of land or is that not an issue whatsoever?

SPEAKER_00 16:36

That's a really good question, Natalie. I my perspective is that we are not running out of land. There are there is room to add more housing. And I think of I know this isn't a Kentucky example, but I think of Over the Rhine at Cincinnati. Over the Rhine used to have 40,000 people living in that community. And right now it sits sits at about 6,000 people. And so there are, if you look at vacant buildings, vacant land, underutilized land, surface parking, there are vastly vacant or underutilized lots in and around our cities and in rural areas too. This is not just an urban problem, just to be clear. This is impacting rural Kentucky as well. And so it's not necessarily in my mind that it's a land issue, but there are regulations in place that are prohibiting housing from being on that land that's available. And there's also, I think, candidly like a cultural thing that we need to address, which is we need more density, we need more housing. If you want housing for your kids in your community, we need to build it. If you want housing for your parents to age in place in your community, we need to build it. And we just need to take a whole look across the board at land use, zoning, codes, anything else that is restricting the ability to deliver more housing, which is causing the supply issue and affordability crunch that we've talked about.

SPEAKER_02 17:58

Yeah, it's um you know, you're talking about the um the supply being an investment that's still like gnawing at me because one of the things in my mind that I thought of, you know, I I have uh one of my sons is starting to be in the market for housing. He lives up in Minneapolis, and there uh the state of Minnesota has uh a couple of programs to help with down payments, some first-time buyer type programs. And it's kind of interesting because I was just going through some old files actually yesterday trying to clean up some stuff. And I went through, like when we bought our house here in Fort Thomas 33 years ago. And we had actually utilized an FHA program that allowed us to get into our current house with a 5% down payment, and then there was kind of like a balloon rider that was attached to that that we had to pay off in three years, and we had to promise to have mortgage insurance, et cetera, et cetera, had a lot of requirements, but allowed us to move into a house because we had a growing family that otherwise we wouldn't have been able to afford. However, that being said, if you have those programs out there and there's government money going to that and you have buyers available, you still have to somehow incent on the other side for the supply to meet that new demand that's gonna be rising because now money's available. So it's really a symbiotic relationship between those two. And you gotta it's a holistic approach or it's not gonna work, sounds like.

SPEAKER_00 19:15

Absolutely. Uh and Brian, that brings up another great point. You know, think of think of your single-family home. You know, you you buy your single family home with the or your condo or any other property with the intent that over the life of that building, you are going to get a return on your investment, right? No one ever wants to buy a home and and have it go immediately underwater because you're taking out a loan on it, you expect to get a return, accruing principal or your accruing equity equity as you're paying down your principal helpers who are building housing at scale are making those same calculations. Like if a single family home today costs between$300,000 and$350,000 to build alone, no developer is going to build it for$300 to$350,000 and then sell it for$280,000. They would go out of business and they would go back to putting that putting that$350 in the SP, like I said. Just in the same way that single family home buyers are looking at their home as an investment, you know, everyone is looking at it that way. Again, like for better or worse. And when that pendulum swings too far in the other direction, you know, sometimes we can get to what happened in 2008, 2009. But right now, all the data shows that we are 100% in a housing crunch. And I know we've cited the Kentucky statistics, like 200,000 as of 2024. Across the country, I've seen some estimates up to seven or nine million homes short. And think about what that's doing at a macroeconomic scale. That's driving up prices for everyone. Uh, and it's reducing economic choice and economic flexibility and economic mobility. Those are the long-term impacts of not having enough housing.

SPEAKER_01 21:01

As a side, up the street from me, there's the a development going in. And there are two different builders on the land. They're kind of like sharing it. And the builder who is a custom builder who's a little bit more expensive, no one's buying him his houses. So he's selling the land to the big box, let's call them, developer. And they're they are the much they're not built as well as the other ones. Let's just put it that way. And it's just interesting. So is it the margin like the the big box builder can just buy it more, you know, and make that profit, whereas the the little custom boat builder can't. It's just interesting to think about. Like he's got to meet that profit margin at a higher margin, I guess, because he's obviously building less less houses, fewer houses. So that's exactly it. That's an observation.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

That's economies of scale, a hundred percent. If you can, and that's why uh that's why density is so important, because if we with the dramatic housing shortage that we have, the only way out of that Is or one of the ways out of that, I should say, is through density. I should also add in here too, I know we've talked a bit about private investment now. There are tools in place, and I'd be remiss if I didn't mention them to drive private investment into affordable housing. And the most common way to do that is the low-income housing tax credit. This is a federal program. It's written into the IRS code that states administer. So in Kentucky, it's the Kentucky Housing Corporation. They administered the low-income housing tax credit program on behalf of the federal government. And the way that that program works is it is like it kind of alludes to, it is a tax credit against a federal income, federal income tax liability. So a developer applies for a competitive 9% award. I'm using some affordable housing lingo here, a competitive 9% award or a non-competitive 4% award. And those just relate back to like the bases of the tax credits. And if a developer gets an award for that tax credit, those tax credits are then pooled together and sold to an institutional investor. So an individual developer may not have a huge amount of federal income tax liability, but if you think of like giant insurance companies or giant banks, they will buy these tax credits for 84, 85, 86 cents on the dollar. The sale proceeds go back to the developer as equity, as funds that they can put into their affordable housing projects. So this is the number one way across the country how affordable housing gets financed is the low-income housing tax credit program. And again, at its core, it's just a tax credit that gives equity to developers to build affordable housing. And those units that they're creating are deed restricted. It's recorded with the property at closing to make sure that they stay affordable for the term of the tax credit. And that's how these affordable housing projects get financed. And I think it's just really important to know that, you know, this isn't just developers running free. There are federal incentives that are pushing private developers to alter behavior, enter this market, produce more housing, and solve some of these issues that we're talking about.

SPEAKER_01 24:12

Yeah, and that's one solution. So I wanted to talk about, I know there's other solutions out there. We already kind of identified the problem, the affordability, the supply. You're talking about solutions right there with the tax credit. What other solutions are out there that we should advocate for?

SPEAKER_00 24:27

It's a great question. I love being solution-oriented. I love talking about possible solutions. So the low-income housing tax credit is a great example of this. Some states, like Ohio, have a state-level low-income housing tax credit. So Kentucky could look into establishing that, a state-level low-income housing tax credit that is a tax credit against your state-level income tax liability. I know in previous General Assemblies in Kentucky, a workforce housing tax credit has been proposed. And that would be a tax credit for projects that are at a slightly higher percentage of area median income. So low-income housing tax credits are for kind of deeper affordability. And then there's like a little bit of a missing middle there before you get to like a market rate project. And so there's been proposals in the past to kind of address that missile missing middle in the between the deeper affordability and the higher level that's being produced already by the market. Tax and tax incentives are a great way to do this. I also know that there uh is a proposal in the General Assembly now to uh update the calculations for some of the fees that go into the Affordable Housing Trust Fund. And this would provide more subsidy that the Kentucky Housing Corporation could control to inject more funds into these affordable housing projects. So that's kind of on the funding and finance side. There's also uh let me can I ask you one question.

SPEAKER_01 25:52

I'm sorry, just for clarification. So a tax credit is different than a tax deduction, right? A tax credit is actually better than a deduction. I don't know if you can speak to the differences there, one being kind of it takes away from your income, the other one literally just comes off your taxes, correct?

SPEAKER_00 26:06

That's a that's a great question. So yes, up until this point, I've been primarily talking about tax credits, which large in part need to be sold. You sell those tax credits and then use the proceeds from that sale to build housing. There are other types of development-related tax credits, like historic tax credits, is a great example. Similar concept, you get awarded historic tax credits and then you sell them and use the proceeds to fund, help fund your project. Uh, there are also uh uh other tax incentives that aren't tax credits. Uh, Kentucky, relative to other states like Ohio, have kind of not as many available tools in that toolbox. Uh, the state of Kentucky has IRB's industrial revenue bonds, which can be used to help finance project with bonds backed by deferred tax receipts. If you look across the river at Cincinnati and Ohio, Ohio's got a very robust commercial real estate tax abatement program, which is another, it is a deduction of your property tax liability on your operating expenses. And so mechanically, the way that works is if you get awarded a tax abatement on the improvement value that you're creating in your project, you get that deduction of your operating expenses, which means your net operating income has increased. And you can you can use that higher NOI to leverage more debt on the project or less equity on the project, and so your returns get higher. But there are a couple other programs. The state of Indiana has a really interesting one. Uh, it has to do with like infrastructure development funds. So a huge part of housing development is a huge cost to it is the infrastructure needed to supply the new development. And so the state of Indiana has a really interesting program, I believe, that helps like fund some of that upfront infrastructure cost to bring roads, sidewalks, utilities into the project to alleviate that cost burden on the project itself. Going back to what we said earlier, any input that increases the cost of building housing increases the cost of renting or buying it. And so that Indiana State program is alleviating some of that cost from the project. So those are kind of tax credits, tax abatements, and like other financing sources. There's also a huge opportunity for regulatory reform. And I know the General Assembly is also considering this now. A lot of the cost of building housing, frankly, comes from regulation, which I know this is a primarily democratic audience, but this is, I think, a huge area for bipartisan opportunity is uh excessive regulations that are preventing the construction of new housing. And so if you look any Ruby Red Montana to deep blue Minnesota, have figured out that there is a bipartisan, nonpartisan, apolitical way to take a look at outdated regulations and say, this isn't working. We need to reform these so that we can deliver more housing. And there's like a whole menu of zoning and building and fire and other code reforms that kind of go into that that again reduce those input costs into building housing.

SPEAKER_02 29:17

I mean, we just uh mentioned earlier the the holistic approach you have to take. And then, you know, you talked about the entire infrastructure piece that Indiana is, you know, attacking and going after, and then all these other pieces, you know, all the zoning and regulations and everything. It is uh there's so many touch points to getting housing done. It's not just, you know, going down to Home Depot and slapping something up. So I think our audience will have a much deeper appreciation for how complex this issue is. You know, Natalie said that at the outset. Uh we weren't kidding. There's a lot of a lot of moving parts. You know, there has been some attention to this. You know, we're talking about some of the programs, you know, in Kentucky, uh, Governor Andy Bashir, you know, has responded with the largest housing development initiative in state history, including$223 million for nearly a thousand affordable rental units, and creation of the rural housing trust fund and and budget proposals aimed at expanding the housing supply statewide. Are you familiar with any of these efforts? Can you speak to any of these and what you think the impacts might be?

SPEAKER_00 30:20

Yeah, I think uh a couple of things right off the bat. Rural housing trust fund, I think, is a fantastic idea. Even though the the scale of the problem, like the numerical amount of housing shortages are higher, of course, in our like densely populated urban counties, the relative amount of the housing shortage is actually can actually be higher in some of our rural counties. You know, you may look at kind of the numerical amounts and say, like, you know, such and such county only has a housing shortage of 200 units. Uh, we don't maybe we don't need to focus on that. But if that's relative shortage is massive compared to the amount of units that exist there, you know, that's a huge problem for that community because we need housing in rural communities for our teachers, for our firefighters, for our police officers. And so I love the rural housing trust fund idea because it really makes sure that we aren't leaving our rural counties and rural communities behind when we're doing this. I also really love this initiative out in eastern Kentucky and western Kentucky for places that were devastated by natural disasters. And I believe the way that a lot of those funds are working are bonded funds. And that's just a fancy way of saying leveraged, right? It's not just like dumping a bunch of cash into a place and saying, we're done. It's leverage, right? We're leveraging other sources, we're being smart about our funding, we're making sure that we're tackling the issue from a variety of different viewpoints and perspectives and avenues in this housing, in this all the stuff that goes into building housing, we're tackling it from multiple angles. And so we're leveraging multiple sources. And that means that we're stretching dollars further, we're having greater impacts. And I think that these are are great things that are being proposed.

SPEAKER_01 32:06

Yeah, we're seeing I think what's interesting about this is like you said, Ruby, Red, Texas, you know, deep blue, Minnesota, the housing crisis is touching everyone, right? And we talked about some local programs that are solutions, but all politics is local, but there are national implications as well. And I don't know if you can speak to any of the solutions we may be looking for at a national level, even though the states obviously have a lot of control over this.

SPEAKER_00 32:31

It's a great question. I will point out to one of the greatest things to come out of the Senate in my lifetime, and uh I'm very excited about it, is the first century Road to Housing Act. It passed the Senate with 89 votes, which I can't recall anything that came out of the Senate with 89 votes. It is a bipartisan menu of bills. I believe there are over 20 sub-bills in that. They're all bipartisan, they're all coming at this issue from so many different angles. And this is truly like governance at its best. It's Elizabeth Warren from Massachusetts and Tim Scott from South Carolina are the two primary sponsors. And as we all know, at some point in the last 10 years, they both have ran for president from different parties. But again, 89 votes in the Senate to get this bill back over to the House. And there are great initiatives in there as it pertains to, you know, updating regulations and being creative with funding sources. And really, like that bill could be one whole podcast. And I'm sure that there are podcasts out there that are covering that entire bill. But the 21st Century Road to Housing Act passed the Senate. There are some like 20 sub-bills in there, and and I think that is by far the greatest piece of legislation, most profound, impactful piece of legislation to come out of the Senate in my lifetime, at least. And so I would encourage listeners to look that up, look at some of the details, and uh call your house member because uh it's bounced back over to the house now, and we need to get that passed and to the president's desk to be signed. Do you think I'll sign it?

SPEAKER_02 34:06

That's good. I'll get on my five calls app and add that one. Yeah, is the house gonna pass it? What do you think?

SPEAKER_00 34:12

There's you know, who knows what's gonna happen. I I'm maintaining hopeful optimism that this will make it out of the house into the president's desk and it will be signed. I know without getting too much into the partisan politics of it, affordability as a general topic is incredibly relevant for both parties right now. I think both parties are trying to find ways that they can address this issue for Americans. And this series of bills is a damn good way of taking that first step. And so I think it's in both parties.

SPEAKER_02 34:45

Seems like an easy win, you know. I mean, they're gonna have a hard time finding people who are gonna push back hard against housing, just as you know, you mentioned it's a pretty nonpartisan issue.

unknown 34:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:54

Exactly. That's the goal.

SPEAKER_01 34:55

Another question that's gonna be out of the out of scope, but homelessness. We talk about affordability. Do we see that when we have of course we should a higher incidence of affordability issues, we see greater homelessness. And then we're also looking to find ways to home people who can't afford even the rent. So I don't I don't know if you have anything to say to that or if there's kind of any if it's woven in there at all, or if there's just two completely separate issues to tackle.

SPEAKER_00 35:22

No, that's a really great point, Natalie. I first of all, like there's a lot of stigma, unfortunately, about homelessness. Almost always you can reduce that down to housing costs and evictions and the the impact that that can have on families and individuals and how quickly, you know, I think the statistic is 40% of Americans can't afford a forty hundred dollar emergency expense. If you miss a rent payment or risk a more risk miss a mortgage payment, that can have a profound impact on your life, on your credit, on your quality of life. And it is just so easy and so quick to get in that situation if something goes wrong. If you have to make a choice between this goes back to what we talked about earlier with being house burden, if you have to make a choice between insulin and your rent that month, it's not really it's a false choice, right? And so, like I said, there's a lot of stigma about homelessness, and almost always it can be traced back to housing costs. And so that means a couple of things for this discussion. One is we need to build as much housing as we can, as much housing in every community of every housing type at every level of affordability. We need it all. We need single-family homes, we need rentals, we need single-family homes, we need multifamily apartments, we need low density, we need high density. We need housing at zero to thirty percent of AMI, that's the lowest level of area median income. We need housing at the top of AMI. We need all kinds of housing everywhere, all the time, in all places. And I just cannot stress enough that some of the issues that we are grappling with in society all tie back to a housing shortage and housing costs as a result of that shortage. And homelessness is a hundred percent one of them. We need more places for people to live. And when we have more places for people to live and those costs of living go down, we reduce the risks for homelessness. And from an economic standpoint, from a political standpoint, from a governance standpoint, you know, an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of cure. We would be saving ourselves, we would be saving society from all of the negative effects of homelessness if we built more housing on the front end and had more choices of places for people to live in and more affordable places for people to live in. All of these things are related, they're all interconnected. Uh, and in my opinion, it all ties back to building more housing.

SPEAKER_02 37:55

Yeah, you talked about housing of all types being needed. I cannot remember the name of the organization, but I just saw them last week uh and saved it off where they're building uh tiny home villages for homeless people and people who are, you know, uh struggling to find housing. And uh it's just a great story. I'll have to look up the organization again. They're trying to find uh new cities to get funding to you know to get the land. And they build, you know, 25, 30 in a small little village, and these tiny homes are uh what 350 square feet or something like that, you know, and they're they're super efficient and just the the dignity and the pride that that restores to the to the individual and the impact it makes on our lives. I mean, it was uh such a you know really emotional story, and it just really got me fired up again about how there are so many needs across the spectrum of housing, and we can find innovative ways to address every one of those segments.

SPEAKER_00 38:54

Brian, I'm really glad you brought that up, and I'm smiling because Tiny Homes has been one of my special initiatives. I love tiny homes, been one of my special, special projects over the last year. There are uh I'm also forgetting the name, but uh there's a great example of a tiny home village out in Kansas City that's specifically targeted towards uh returning veterans. There's also a project up in Columbus.

SPEAKER_02 39:19

This one is also, I think, tied to veterans. It might be the same one. Go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 39:23

It might be the same one. And I think there's there's a I'm not sure if it's tied to veterans or not, but there's a similar tiny homes project up in Columbus. I know a couple other counties in Ohio are looking at the same concept and seeing like how can we make this work? Uh so I'm really glad you brought that up because, like I said, that's been a special project for me. Learning about tiny homes, tiny home development, it's kind of a unique product because it's not as large as a single family home, so not as expensive, but it's lower density, it's not like a multifamily building. And so, like, where can that fit in with some like niche locations uh as a as a potential solution? But it, you know, it it ties back to, and without having said this explicitly yet in this conversation, like there is no silver bullet. There's no like we passed one law and that's all housing, or we've reduced one regulation and that's all of housing. We need an all of the above approach on this, right? Single family homes, multifamily, tiny homes, funding, tax credits, creative financing, zoning reform, building code reform. We need all of the above. And it all ties back to these inputs that go into creating supply.

SPEAKER_01 40:37

And you know, Brian, I like how you said that there's a dignity piece to that, to having that home. But when you also think about it, there's a safety and security and health point to that as well, that you are able to be in a place you can have your sanitation and things like that. So those are those are super cool initiatives for sure. Well, I think we solved it, guys. I think we solved the crisis.

SPEAKER_02 40:58

My job is done. The silver bullet is this podcast, of course.

SPEAKER_01 41:02

And before we wrap up, uh Gil, we do do a lightning round. So I'm going to put you through that. But before we start, is there anything else out there that you want our listeners to know about housing that you wouldn't want to end without having gotten out there?

SPEAKER_00 41:16

Yeah. Uh well, thank you so much again for having me. I will say uh the Kentucky Housing Corporation has an annual housing conference. Uh this year, I believe it's in Lexington. So even if you're a citizen just interested in housing and learning more about how it gets developed, how it gets financed, some of the solutions that we talked about, look into attending the Kentucky Housing Corporation's uh annual Kentucky Housing Conference. I attended last year. It was in Covington, it was a great event. And uh I'll plan on being there this year. I'd love to learn more.

SPEAKER_01 41:47

All right. Are you ready for your lightning round?

SPEAKER_00 41:49

I'm ready. Long time, long-time listener, first time guest. So I'm I'm prepared for the lightning round.

SPEAKER_01 41:54

Sounds good. I'm gonna start yeah with a really easy one. All right. What is your favorite ice cream flavor?

SPEAKER_00 41:59

Mid chocolate chip, hands down.

SPEAKER_01 42:01

And it's March. So that's the green, you know, that's everywhere right now. It is. All right. Best strategy for the settlers a Catan. Did I say that right?

SPEAKER_00 42:10

Oh, you did. Oh, that's a great question.

SPEAKER_01 42:13

Well, so best is it building roads or building settlements first?

SPEAKER_00 42:17

I I have to couch this a little bit. I've played so much with my friends that they know my strategy, that it's no longer a strategy. It's just how I play. I love going for the longest road. I love road building. Uh the wow, what a great question. So we'll go roads.

SPEAKER_02 42:34

I have to admit that I settlers the Catan, I think I played it once or twice with my kids, and they so thoroughly beat me that I never went back. So I might have to try that again at some point. There's a lot involved in that game.

SPEAKER_01 42:49

I get it. There's some games that you get kind of like sh, you know, it's shell-shocked from my brother and I used to play Risk growing up, and he would beat me so terrible. I know that now when I even see that game, I kind of get a little sweaty.

SPEAKER_00 43:01

Yes. Yes. So And Risk is another great strategy game. Yeah. Which one? Sorry. Risk is another great strategy game.

SPEAKER_01 43:09

Not for me. All right, when it comes to houses, would you rather a fixer upper or a turnkey?

SPEAKER_00 43:17

Ooh, great question. I live in a fixer upper. I will say it doesn't matter what you choose, the grass is greener. We live in a fixer upper here in Ludlow. It's over a hundred years old. And uh, you know, it's I like to joke that it's like an onion. You know, we peeled back one layer and there's one more behind it. I'm sure they're not going to be able to do that. But I do love the character of old historic homes.

SPEAKER_01 43:41

Sounds good. All right, this one might be controversial. I know you've attended universities and a couple different universities. Who has the better mascot? The Xavier Blob or the UC Bearcat?

SPEAKER_00 43:52

The Blob, a hundred percent. Better mascot. First of all, I don't see the bear cat doing somersaults down the court during a timeout. Okay. Like the blue blob can do somersaults all day long. Blue blob is fantastic.

SPEAKER_01 44:04

Alrighty. And this one we like to bring it home. Ludlow has a few really great independent businesses. Where would we expect to see you hanging out in your neighborhood?

SPEAKER_00 44:13

Great question. During the week, it's at Ludlow Coffee. Stop by, say hi to James. What a great small business. And then on the weekend, it's Second Sight Spirits, also for coffee. But Second Sights does coffee service on the weekends. So you'll find me drinking coffee at either location throughout the week. Fantastic. You did it.

SPEAKER_01 44:29

You survived that.

SPEAKER_00 44:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:31

Ludlow's got a Ludlow's got a got a bunch of great small businesses. There's a lot going on in Ludlow. It's pretty exciting. Yes, we do. Come check us out. Definitely. Well, Gil, thanks uh so much for joining us and uh sharing your knowledge and expertise to help our audience better understand the challenges we Kentuckians and Americans writ large face in meeting this uh nation's housing requirements both today and for the future. We really appreciate your time and uh really enlightened us on a lot of a lot of the uh intricacies of this topic.

SPEAKER_00 45:01

Thank you so much for having me. It was uh it was a pleasure and uh I love talking about this stuff. So happy to happy to join.

unknown 45:08

Thanks.

SPEAKER_00 45:09

Thanks again.

SPEAKER_01 45:10

Appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 45:10

Thanks, y'all.

SPEAKER_01 45:11

And that's it for this podcast. Thanks so much for joining. And don't forget you can join the conversation at our Facebook and Instagram pages or at blue dotpodcast.com. And if you like listening to the podcast, consider donating to it, which you can do by clicking on the donate button at blue dot podcast.com. Until next time, stay curious, keep the facts in focus, and never stop fighting for what matters. Peace out, everybody.