Yesterday, the Housing Task Force in Frankfort heard an update on the affordable housing project being built in Lexington.

Today, our Mackenzie Spink tells us more about how this unique project came about and if it could be replicated statewide.

In Fayette County alone, over 22,000 housing units need to be built in order to close the current housing gap.

What we found is that the lack of available land, the high purchase to buy land in Lexington and then for our affordable housing developers, having the capital to access that land was a key challenge.

And then, of course, just the affordability challenge for Fayette County overall.

And something that we've talked about is just the fact that our, median home prices, have increased over 100% over the last ten years, whereas the wages that people are making in the community have only increased 30%.

The affordable housing being built on Transylvania University's former baseball field is the result of a unique partnership between five local banks and local affordable housing developers.

The banks bought the land from the university and held onto it for the developers with a no interest loan, allowing time for the 242 unit project to be developed.

The president of central Bank says he's hopeful this kind of partnership can be replicated around the state.

It's going to be unbelievable and it's go to work, and I hope and pray that we can take this throughout the state.

Truthfully, I'm meeting with other people in our region, to see how to explain how we've done it here and how do we take this to other parts of the region and and the state being where I'm from?

I'm breathtaking.

It's hard to find a house in the rural areas.

One of the policy recommendations from the affordable housing developers was a housing funds that could kick start similar projects.

So we're fully in support of a statewide housing fund of $20 million, kind of proposed by the Kentucky Bankers Association and championed by this group to provide similar type of financing across the state to do transformational projects like this, involving a revolving loan fund, potentially state housing tax credits, which all of our neighbors have that we do not have.

More policy recommendations came from the Kentucky chapter of Americans for prosperity, a national grassroots advocacy organization.

One of their recommendations is for the state to establish permitting shot clocks, which would require local governments to speed up the permitting process for housing developments.

Right now, developers and builders often face long, unpredictable delays that drive up costs and discourage investment.

Some studies have shown that for each month of delay for permitting, the price of a home can increase as much as $4,400.

By requiring local governments to act within a specific time frame, say, 60 or 90 days.

We can bring greater certainty and efficiency to the process.

This doesn't mean cutting corners.

It means setting clear expectations and holding agencies accountable.

This was the last meeting for the 2025 Housing Task Force to receive input and hear from other agencies.

The next meeting in November will be a discussion of its findings.

For Kentucky edition, I'm Mackenzie Spink.