Louisville housing report shows affordability, supply shortage create challenges for residents

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- The Metropolitan Housing Coalition released its annual report Tuesday, centered on the impact Louisville's workforce and economic development has on housing.

The biggest issue continues to be supply. There aren't enough units available to meet the city's demand, and there also aren't enough units that people can afford.

Housing affordability is linked to utility affordability, which also continues to go up. Here are eight key takeaways found in the report:

Louisville is facing a widening gap between household formation and housing construction.
Louisville’s population is aging and there is slower growth among younger generations, placing a constraint on the future labor supply. This creates a need for diverse types of housing to meet the needs of both an aging population and the demands of attracting a new, younger workforce to our community. The four key factors to meeting this need are affordability, accessibility, diversity, and age-friendliness.
Almost half of Louisville’s renters are cost-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income on housing and utilities.
Rising utility costs, especially in western and southern Louisville, are a key indicator of increasing housing insecurity for many of our neighbors.
Fair Market Rents (FMRs) fall below median rents for all rental unit sizes.
Comparing 2020 to 2025, the median sales price of a single family home increased 31%, the average 30-year mortgage rate increased 124%, and the average median mortgage (based on median home) increased 83%. Homeownership has become a distant dream or impossible under these circumstances.
Service-sector employees earn monthly wages that can support a mortgage equal to half the current median home price.
Jefferson County Public School (JCPS) student homelessness increased, despite a slightly declining enrollment.

"If one-third of workers cannot afford a one-bedroom apartment here, it doesn't matter what we build," Tony Curtis, executive director of the Metropolitan Housing Coalition, said in a news conference Tuesday. "It's a wage issue at that point. So we need to interconnect housing, what people can actually afford and what we're actually building at a price point for people to either buy and/or rent."

Housing is also not geographically dispersed, the report found, so people can't live close to where they work and are instead having to rely on long commutes. The key findings of the report showed that housing instability in Jefferson County contribute negatively in these five ways:

Rising Student Homelessness: Jefferson County Public Schools identified 3,951 unhoused students during the 2024–2025 school year, a 13% increase from the prior year, even as total enrollment declined slightly
Demographic Shifts: Hispanic students experienced the sharpest increase in homelessness (+57% year over year), while African American students remain the largest group affected, representing 50% of all homeless students
Persistent Evictions: The county has averaged nearly 12,000 eviction filings per year since 2022, with about 26% of cases resulting in a judgment for eviction
Geographic Concentration: Eviction and utility shutoff rates are highest in western and southern Louisville ZIP codes, overlapping with neighborhoods of lower income and higher renter cost burdens
Workforce Impact: Housing instability contributes to absenteeism, turnover, and reduced productivity, particularly among service-sector and lower-wage workers who face the greatest housing cost pressures.

"This year's report focuses on Louisville (and) Jefferson County's housing challenges are rooted in long-term structural imbalances in where people live, work and can afford to live," Curtis said.

Curtis added the 2026 federal funding "chaos" is an unknown right now, and it's worrisome.

"We don't know what's going to happen with Continuum of Care funding," he said. "We know Permanent Supportive Housing works in our community, and with the threats to cut back from 87% to 30% of use of that funding on Permanent Supportive Housing, people are going to be on the streets."

You can read the full report below:

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