According to the Kentucky Housing Corporation, the state is more than 200,000 housing units short of the current need by renters and homeowners.

Senate bill nine aims to ease the housing shortage by creating areas with fewer upfront costs for housing developers.

Republican Senator and Senate Majority Caucus Chair Rob Mills announced the plan today.

The first part of the bill would create districts where infrastructure costs, like water lines and pump stations, can be financed over time, potentially lowering housing prices and speeding up construction.

These pieces of interstate infrastructure can be hundreds of thousands, if not millions of dollars.

So if we're able to bond those upfront and give the developer money, to put those infrastructure pieces in place, that's going to bring, a lot of new residential lots, possibly a lot of new residential lots into, the ability for people to develop on, say, there's 100 lots in the, in the development.

Each of those lots will have a special assessment assigned to it.

And the local government will collect that special assessment annually to help pay down those bonds.

Another section of Senate Bill nine would allow local governments to negotiate incentive payments for developers to attract them to build in certain areas.

This development district will enable county governments to negotiate county and city governments to negotiate with developers about returning a portion of their property taxes back to the developer as an incentive payment.

And what we're talking about is possibly waiving local, county, even library taxes if they can hold off on receiving their tax payments for five years, return those, as, as, incentive payments to developers.

We think that's going to encourage developers to come off the sidelines and start developing new homes.

In our cities and towns in Kentucky.

Senator Mitchell says both provisions in Senate Bill nine are voluntary for local governments, and don't cost the state any money.

As a priority bill.

Senator Mills expects it to be heard in committee very soon.