When will lawmakers step up to help people with housing after Eastern KY floods? | Opinion
Despite the progress made rebuilding homes damaged by the 2022 flood, southeast Kentucky still lacks hundreds of millions of dollars needed to rebuild the thousands of homes that flooded or washed away. Yet, legislators in Frankfort have again declined to make a serious investment in the housing recovery.
This month new data from the Census Bureau gave us our first glimpse into how the region has changed since the flood. While Kentucky grew its population statewide in 2023, the areas hardest hit by the flood declined — at five times that rate.
The Kentucky legislature responded to this dismal news by passing a budget that will do little to rebuild housing that could help families stay in the area. The state has provided only 3% of the total federal, state, and philanthropic funds secured to rebuild housing since the flood.
Immediately after the flood, the area faced the challenge not just of rebuilding, but determining where to rebuild. Would it be responsible to invest millions of public dollars to build new homes in the same locations where they would be washed away when the next flood hits? Or would we find a way to build new homes at higher elevations?
The deck was stacked against southeast Kentucky: the economy was already in shambles, and most families who need new homes don’t have the money to rebuild. The area has not had new large-scale housing development for decades, and the private market for new developments was virtually non-existent. Finding a way to build many houses anywhere was going to be unthinkably difficult.
Yet there has been leadership and bipartisan resolve around building new homes in safer locations. Non-profit housing developers immediately got to work and Governor Beshear led the development of at least seven new “high ground” neighborhoods.
With about $800 million in the form of grants, loans, buyouts, and other sources, we’ve started this long recovery process. Many people worked hard to secure this money, and it will repair and build new homes for a lot of families. But it’s not enough.
Our research at Ohio River Valley Institute estimates it will cost around $1.4 billion to rebuild or repair all of the damaged homes—including building new homes in safer locations for all the families whose homes were destroyed or suffered major damage. The Kentucky Department for Local Government and the Kentucky Housing Corporation also recognize that current funding is insufficient.
The “high ground” housing developments will build 665 new homes. The “Housing Can’t Wait” non-profit housing developers have 224 new homes completed or in the pipeline. Samaritan’s Purse has another 14. In total, that’s 903 new homes built or in the pipeline—significant, but only a fraction of the more than 4,500 we need to build in new locations.
More than 4,500 homes had at least one foot of water on the first floor (or at least one inch of water on the first floor of manufactured homes, which suffer more damage from less water), showing that they are clearly in locations where flood waters can reach them. Unless we find more money, thousands of families will likely repair or rebuild in the same place or will move away.
Despite calls last year for a $150 million investment in housing, the legislature instead seeded the Rural Housing Trust Fund with $20 million in its first year. The hope was that housing developers would demonstrate their capacity to take this money and churn out new homes for disaster victims, and the legislature would come back this session and make a significant investment.
Non-profit housing developers in east Kentucky delivered. The legislature responded not by increasing funding but by decreasing the investment in the Rural Housing Trust Fund to $5 million annually over the next couple years.
Every new house built means another family won’t have to go to bed fearing they wake up to their home being carried away by the raging waters of the next storm.
When will Kentucky lawmakers step up?
Eric Dixon is a Senior Researcher at the Ohio River Valley Institute, where he has tracked the housing recovery from the 2022 flood in southeast Kentucky, and a resident of Louisville.
