Affordable housing in Northern Kentucky is everyone’s problem: ‘It could happen to anyone’

BY MEGHAN GOTH | LINK nky MANAGING EDITOR

Desiree Bradley was living in Erlanger with her two children and their father when her mother gave her an ultimatum.

“She said, ‘If you don’t do something, I will take your kids,” Bradley said on a rainy Tuesday afternoon at Newport’s Carabello Coffee.

Bradley, 26, now lives at the Ion Center in Newport. The center offers free, confidential support services to women and men who have experienced power-based violence such as sexual violence, intimate partner violence, child abuse and stalking.

“As soon as a room was available, they were like, ‘Get your butt down here,’” Bradley said.

The road to get where she is now was anything but easy.

Inside that Erlanger home, Bradley suffered abuse. Though there was physical abuse, the worst, she said, was the emotional abuse.

She learned quickly that she wasn’t worth anything.

“Every single day of your life, you’re being told you’re not good enough,” she said. “It screwed my head all the way up.”

So, here she was. No job. No car. Nowhere to go. Just the knowledge that she had to get her kids – and herself – away.

That’s when she found the Brighton Center. She was actually there to get food when she saw a flier for free, at-your-own-pace employment training.

Two hours after she expressed interest, not only had the ball started rolling to enroll her, but someone from the program asked about her living situation, leading her to the Ion Center.

Bradley is working on getting her medical coding certificate. She goes to school Monday through Friday, from 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. Her kids are enrolled in Newport schools, and after school they are bussed to the Boys & Girls Club until Bradley can get them and bring them home.

This patchwork of services – which saved Bradley’s life and gave her hope – exists in part because of the Safety Net Alliance of Northern Kentucky. The collaborative of 150 nonprofits works together to more efficiently provide service to those in need and mend holes in the local safety net, according to its website.

The collaborative includes nonprofits like Brighton Center, which offers family support services, education, and employment; and the Ion Center, which helps anyone in an abusive situation, at any time of day, no matter what.

Bradley shared her story in November to a leadership group learning about the critical need for affordable housing in Northern Kentucky and the people who are doing everything they can to help.

Sitting at a table with a panel of people who represented the various nonprofits, Bradley blended right in. Her blonde, shoulder-length hair hung in loose curls as she shared her story, and what she hopes will come out of opening up her life to a room full of strangers.

“It could happen to anyone,” she said.

Bradley finds the “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” mentality particularly frustrating, because if it were just about getting a job and everything else then fell into place, this network of nonprofits wouldn’t be necessary.

“What I would say to people who are stable in their housing is don’t get too comfortable,” she said. “It doesn’t discriminate. Just like addiction doesn’t discriminate. Poverty doesn’t discriminate. Nothing discriminates. It could happen to anyone.”

And while Bradley is very grateful for the room in the Ion Center, the reality is that she is living in a shelter – a shelter where hundreds of people dedicate their lives to helping people who are in some of the worst situations of their lives, but still a shelter.

Bradley shares a room, the size of a typical bedroom, with her two kids. A bunk bed for the kids is on one wall to the right when you stand in the doorway. Bradley’s bed is to the left. There are bins and hooks and everything is as neatly organized as possible, in such a small space. A bike sits propped against the bunk bed.

The shades are drawn on all of the windows throughout the shelter. Some rooms house multiple people from different families. There is a dining area, with several restaurant-style booths and a kitchen, where all meals are cooked and served.

Outside, there is a playground that was do-

Continued from page 3 nated by the Leadership NKY class of 2000 within a six-foot privacy fence. There are cameras everywhere.

Just in case.

Bradley is grateful, but this is just one of many steps.

And she admittedly wouldn’t be able to keep climbing without the myriad of people and nonprofits willing to step in and help her get there.

People like Kim Webb, the executive director of the Emergency Shelter of Northern Kentucky, which opened in 2008 as the region’s only cold weather shelter for adults. In February 2022, Webb oversaw the opening of a new facility that has 68 beds and operates as a year-round emergency shelter.

People like Catrena Bowman, the executive director of the Northern Kentucky Community Action Commission, which works to empower families and individuals through education, advocacy and services to elevate the quality of life for those who need it. Bowman and the CAC work tirelessly to bring affordable housing – which she emphasizes means housing that costs 30 percent of a person’s income or less – to neighborhoods around the region.

The stigma associated with affordable housing – and those who need it – is one of the reasons Bradley wanted to share her story.

Bradley could be anyone.

How did we get here?

It’s complicated, and it has happened slowly as the culture and perception around af- fordable housing has changed.

According to the Pew Research Center, in 2020, 46% of American renters spent more than 30% of their income on housing. More than one in seven households across the United States paid over half their income on housing in 2020, according to Habitat for Humanity.

Housing projects – which were seen as a solution to the poverty problem in the mid1900s – are increasingly closing to make way for a Section 8 Voucher program that allows people to stay in apartment buildings that are also occupied by people without government assistance.

Bowman, whose organization works to bring high-quality affordable housing to neighborhoods across Northern Kentucky, said she is often met with residents who say they don’t want “those people” to live in their neighborhood. It’s a classic example of Not In My Backyard.

Bowman said she has heard people say they don’t want neighbors with cars on blocks and couches on front porches – assumptions that are keeping those with low income from having anywhere to go.

There used to be places like Newport’s Victoria Square apartments, which served low-income residents for decades. In July, an out-of-town developer bought Victoria Square and began notifying residents they had to leave. Some of those residents had lived there their entire lives. Their communities – babysitters, friends, jobs, public transportation – exist at and around Victoria Square.

The city of Newport has 309 affordable housing units. As of the 2020 Census, 3,689 people in Newport lived in poverty.

“It has exposed something to me in my understanding,” said Newport City Commissioner Ken Rechtin at an NAACP meeting held for Victoria Square residents earlier this year. “I thought Neighborhood Foundations (which administers the city’s housing programs), Brighton Center, and those agencies that did provide and do provide some supportive housing services were adequate. What it has exposed to me is that there are problems inherent in our system that does not treat all people fairly in housing.”

And there used to be places like City Heights, in Covington, where residents were told in 2020 they would need to gradually move out because the property was being demolished. Steve Arlinghaus, director at the Housing Authority of Covington, which operates City Heights, told LINK earlier this year that there isn’t enough affordable housing stock in Northern Kentucky to house everyone who will need to leave City Heights.

Covington has 80% of the taxpayer subsidized housing, while being home to only 24% of Kenton County’s population, according to Covington city officials.

As of August, online rental search platform Zumper estimated the median rent for a one-bedroom unit in Covington to be $1,755. Eight years ago, that number was $600.

Talia Frye was the vice president of Brighton Center until her unexpected death in October. She spoke to LINK nky for a story about affordable housing earlier this year, expressing the dire need for housing in Northern Kentucky.

“I cannot overstate that there isn’t enough housing for people,” Frye said over the summer. “So, there is not a quick fix. We see many families who have Section 8 vouchers, but there aren’t enough landlords willing to accept Section 8. That is a real dynamic in our community, and so the options are limited.”

While some see poverty as an urban issue, the problem of a lack of affordable housing extends to Boone County and beyond.

There are more than 8,700 people living in poverty in Boone County, LINK reported in August. According to the Boone County Housing Authority, which helps families receive Section 8 vouchers, a majority of its vouchers expire before families are able to find a place to live.

“Vouchers usually go unused because families can’t find a property owner that will accept the voucher,” said Boone County Housing Authority Director Boubacar Diallo. “Usually when they do find an owner that will accept the voucher, there is generally a waiting list for the unit.”

Another misconception about affordable housing and government assistance echoed by just about everyone working in nonprofits in Northern Kentucky is that those who receive it are taking advantage or don’t want to be self-sufficient.

The benefits cliff is one barrier that keeps many families from being self-sufficient. A benefit cliff occurs when a small increase in wages – say, $1 an hour – makes it so that a family is no longer able to receive help to feed their families, afford child care or medical care, or receive the same amount of money in housing vouchers.

Bradley, for example, works at Walgreens. She makes $15 an hour. She said when they asked how many hours she wanted to work per week, she said she can’t go over 20 hours.

“I didn’t tell them, but if I go over 20 hours a week, I lose my food stamps,” Bradley said.

So while of course Bradley would like to work more hours, if she does, she will lose her benefits, and she won’t make enough money to make up for the loss of those benefits.

Where do we go from here?

Jennifer Walke, vice president of development at The Model Group, said it is critical for all Northern Kentucky municipalities to work together.

“The biggest hurdle I’ve run into trying to get new affordable housing in Northern Kentucky is that everyone understands there’s an issue,” Walke said. “Everyone knows that we need more housing for survivors of domestic violence. Everyone knows that we need more affordable housing. No one wants to step up and say, right here, I’ll take it, I can do this.”

Until Northern Kentucky has a comprehensive plan to address the housing crisis, Walke said “I think it’s really important for as many organizations and stakeholders to band together and be as vocal as possible when there is a proposal on the table.”

“Show up at zoning meetings,” Walke continued. “Write letters of support for these nonprofits that are trying to get this housing through, because we need to match that intensity.”

Tony Milburn, founder and CEO of the Milburn Group, said trying to get cities across Northern Kentucky to work together on this can be difficult.

But he is encouraged by a group of nonprofits that are putting together a market study about housing affordability in North- ern Kentucky and where housing is needed. The study also gets into where jobs are located and how to get them,” he said.

“It’s wonderful to keep building affordable housing in the river cities, but when all the jobs are in Florence, how do they get there?” he said. “So we need a more regional market study as a place to start. And I’m hoping that once that gets publicised, there’s going to be more of a regional conversation about what we need to do, where we need to put it and how to get people to the jobs that are desired.”

Affordable housing, when done right, can actually stabilize and improve a community, Walke said. She pointed to examples like the Northern Kentucky Scholar House and Lincoln Grant Scholar House, where single parents can live with their children while they are enrolled in school.

“We actually copied that for Ohio and Cincinnati because you’re bringing two generations out of poverty simultaneously,” she said. “That’s a game changer. That’s incredible. So I just want to thank Kentucky for coming up with that.”

From a policy perspective, Newport’s Rechtin said another way forward is for the county judges/executive to come together to create a comprehensive plan for Northern Kentucky.

For those who are experiencing housing instability or can’t feed their families or find jobs, Kim Phillips, the section 8 coordinator for the City of Covington, said the biggest hurdle can often be simply asking for help.

“Even if you aren’t able to Google and see what’s out there, go to an agency and say, ‘Here’s what I need, how can you help?’” Phillips said.

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For a list of partners with the Safety Net Alliance of Northern Kentucky, visit nkysafetynet.org/partners. Refer below for a list of the agencies mentioned in this story:

Brighton Center

741 Central Ave., second floor, Newport 859-491-8303

Brightoncenter.com

Emergency Shelter of Northern Kentucky

436 West 13th St., Covington 859-291-4555

Emergencyshelternky.org.

Northern Kentucky Community Action Commission

717 Madison Ave., Covington 859-655-2938

Nkycac.org

Welcome House 205 West Pike St., Covington 859-431-8717

Welcomehouseky.org

Ion Center for Violence Prevention 835 Madison Ave., Covington 859-491-3335

Ioncenter.org

Lincoln Grant Scholar House 824 Greenup St., Covington 859-360-0335 https://www.nkcac.org/services/ lincoln-grant-scholar-house/