The Kentucky Chamber of Commerce is set to release its housing report later this year.

It's an update to findings the chamber released two years ago.

And as our June Lefler reports, things have not gotten better.

Estimates say Kentucky could use another 200,000 housing units of all types and sizes.

Nationally, homebuilding has not kept up with population growth.

And so what you have happening there is the accumulation of this deficit over time where we're not building enough housing.

At the same time, our population is growing.

And so this results in a classic example of an imbalance between supply and demand.

The Kentucky Chamber has gathered the data and the input of community leaders across the state.

The report shows homebuyer sentiment is bleak.

One of the things we did during our community listening session is we asked folks if a young adult grew up in your community and wanted to move back after college, how likely is it that they could find an affordable starter home or rental?

The vast majority of respondents felt that this is going to be unlikely, and I would say a plurality here at 40.5% said this was very unlikely.

The chamber has asked lawmakers to consider two remedies curbing unnecessary building regulations that ultimately raised the price of homes, and to funnel state money towards utility, road and other residential infrastructure.

With the Residential Infrastructure Fund, which is modeled after Indiana, has been so successful, they have funded that revolving fund, I don't know, 2 or 3 times now for a significant amount of resources, and it creates an opportunity for funding some of this infrastructure costs so that it's not ending up in the bottom line of what the house costs, and then pricing out all of those families.

Okay.

We've been talking about a 250 or $300,000 home.

Why does $6,000 per home matter?

Well, if we look at a methodology, it was developed by the National Association of Homebuilders.

Each $1,000 increase over the median priced home, that equates to about 2112 Kentucky households that are no longer able to afford that home.

Some of these policies you're talking about, these are promulgated by leaders on a local level.

We don't have these zoning issues.

Where I come from, if you want to build what you want, well, you can come down and build just we're not going to make you put in a roundabout.

We're not going to make you put in a turn lane.

To what extent is it our job as a general assembly to go in and follow up behind people that vote for bad government and bad policies?

As the Chamber of Commerce that does work across the state, we're bringing you an issue because we think it's important from an economic development standpoint, and we want to create an environment in Kentucky across the state to create that economic development opportunity.

So that's why we continue to talk about this issue and work on this issue.

But you're right there when we talk about these planning and zoning issues, these are locally driven conversations.

And that's part of the conversation.

But we have seen other states and other state legislatures address these through state policy and seen some positive things.

The chamber says it's pulling ideas from nearby states that could eventually surpass Kentucky in housing and economic development.

For Kentucky Edition, I'm Jim Leffler.

Kentucky Realtors just released data on August home purchases.

The median home price was $285,000.

That's up 3.6% from last year.