Kentucky faces an ongoing housing shortage, and it's expected to get worse.

Housing advocates testified this week to state lawmakers that the state's affordable housing trust fund needs more money to meet that shortage.

Our Joon Lefler has more as we began tonight's legislative update.

Kentucky's Affordable Housing Trust Fund helps low income Kentuckians achieve homeownership, not just have a roof over their heads.

We just moved an elderly gentleman who's worked all his life and never owned a home.

He's got $1,500 a month, retirement.

He's a homeowner.

We have another homeowner we just moved in with, a single father with three kids, moved out of public housing, wanted to have a yard for his kids to play in Kentucky.

Created the trust fund in the 1990s.

Since then, the fund has helped build or repair more than 12,000 affordable homes.

It is supporting the statewide production of housing for Kentuckians who are living Below 60% of the area median income.

Just for reference, that is, for one person, it's about $35,000 a year that they are earning, family of four.

It's around 50,000.

Then some change.

But nonprofit homebuilders say they can't meet the demand.

What that gap looks like in real people terms is we have 180 families who are seeking home repair.

That's about three years work at our current rate of production.

So if you call me today and say your roof is leaking, you're looking at least 36 months until we can get there to help you.

On the homeownership side, we're working with 380 families that would like to purchase a home that's about six and a half year if you call today.

Housing advocates and a lawmaker from Elizabethtown told Kentucky's housing task force that to ramp up the work of these nonprofit developers, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund needs more money.

This is a visual analysis of kind of where the trust fund has been, since it has been operational, and you can see that it's purchasing power has declined over time.

The General Assembly doesn't allocate money to the housing trust fund.

It's sustained on mortgage and deed recording fees.

Advocates are calling on lawmakers to increase those fees to bolster the fund.

We believe that this will yield an additional 6000, single family and rental homes being built over the next ten years.

Lawmakers questioned the feed changes a lot of times, as we don't change fees around here because everybody hears fee tax, all that stuff, and they just have a panic attack.

And so we may not do it often enough.

And when we do, we do do it.

It kind of is a big jump.

Fees are concerning to everybody that votes on them.

And also the folks, the Kentucky Realtors Association.

I would suggest that if you haven't talked with them or negotiated with them, to see how you can get them to neutral and not opposed to this would help the legislation, obviously.

To pass the feed changes were proposed in House Bill 588 this year.

The legislation did not make it to a committee hearing.

For Kentucky edition, I'm June Leffler.

Many thanks.

June.

This is the second year Kentucky's housing task force has convened this week, State Senator Rob Mills said ultimately, lawmakers will have to decide whether to put money towards housing solutions such as tax credits, loans or grant money for developers.