It's a nationwide problem.

Steep home prices and market rents for apartments that make housing affordability out of reach for many.

The Kentucky Affordable Housing Conference in Covington last week discussed ways to accelerate the state's housing supply.

As our Emily Sisk reports, state lawmakers and housing leaders say it may be time for Kentucky to spend government dollars to rectify the issue.

We feel like the most essential issue in housing is supply.

The Kentucky Housing Corporation is warning the state that it's crunch time to build more affordable housing units.

Data shows that Kentucky needs more than 200,000 new homes to meet growing populations.

Wendy Smith is the Kentucky Housing Corporation's deputy executive director of housing programs.

She explained how the state's lack of housing is trickling down the effects on residents.

What you have is folks are renting who would like to buy, and they're renting a unit that someone else would like to rent, but they're having to rent, maybe a slightly less desirable unit and so on.

And the folks that get pressured out of housing or into housing they can't afford are the folks with the lowest incomes or other barriers to keeping their housing.

State legislators on the Housing Task Force spoke to conference attendees explaining their progress.

Co-Chair and Senator Rob Mills said there is an ongoing debate within the state government about their involvement.

Our biggest hurdle is just, a dollars and cents hurdle and getting past the philosophical debate of how much, how much should government be in on incentivizing housing.

Representative Susan Whitton is the other task force co-chair.

She said they're looking at housing legislation in three different sectors.

There's zoning bills.

There's kind of building regulation bills and then there spending bills.

Representative Witten explained one of the housing bills she's actively working on.

Most of the solutions we identified need to be on the supply side.

We have a supply issue, but, but there are other issues that I think that we can, kind of take advantage of this crisis and fix.

I'm working on a bill that deals with, with evictions, that is going to seal, eviction, eviction records.

I think that that ties in, to to the housing issue so much.

Senator Gerald Neal is one of two Democrats on the housing task force.

He voiced concerns about making sure homeless populations and people with disabilities are included in solutions.

It is very important for us to help them and said that everybody needs to be included in the solutions, and it's not just a sector.

When asked if it's time for state government to step in and spend money on housing, Smith had this to say.

We're needing to view housing as an economic development tool.

And just like we develop industrial parks, we use, you know, state and local dollars to do that.

We may need to develop buildable lots for housing to run alongside that economic development.

Senator Mills expressed a similar position.

He said the state has been conservative with its budget reserve fund and now may be the time to loosen the purse strings.

I really think that incentivizing housing supply is is one of those top issues that we need to spend some money on.

The task force will continue looking at solutions as they approach a budget year and the 2026 legislative session for Kentucky Edition.

I'm Emily Sisk.

Thank you much.

Emily, Representative Witten said she will present her proposed bill on ceiling eviction records to a legislative committee soon.