The Metropolitan Housing Coalition released the annual the State of Metropolitan Housing Report for 2016, in which Cathy Hinko, executive director of the Metropolitan Housing Coalition, has found that Housing costs has raised 20% from 2005-2015 and another 9% in the last year alone.
People thought we had nowhere to go but up. But then 2017 happened.
In Louisville it has been an especially bad handful of years, with the brunt falling on our city's working population. On December 8th, 2017, The city bulldozed a homeless camp in freezing temperatures, many losing everything they have with nowhere to go.
The work of the Mayor and property speculators like Gill Holland have helped market our city to outside interests that have seen Real estate prices skyrocket. Louisville has seen a 34% increase in residents who pay more than 50% of their earnings to housing costs in the last 10 years, meanwhile wages in Louisville 'lag behind' making inflated living costs even more unattainable. According to the Housing report, an astounding 43% of the population of Louisville cannot afford adequate housing without "taking on excessive cost-burden." The report also states that an average Louisvillian would need to make about $20/hr full time to meet basic quality of life needs, and yet our Mayor promised to veto a minimum wage increase over $9/hr. That's not even half of what is needed to barely scrape by in Louisville. Full time work at minimum wage doesn't even crack $14,000 a year. If the mayor had ever tried to survive under the poverty line he would know the impossibility of escape, and the economic slavery it creates.
The mayor routinely gives sweetheart deals to outside interests, like $30 million for the soccer arena witch will stand where the homeless camp used to be, and skyrocketing rents and run-a-way AirBnBs that drop the amount of available rental units in the city center, pushing the lower income residents further out with longer commutes and less career options.
I'm not saying Greg Fisher needs to try and take care of his family on $14K a year, I'm just saying he needs to stop forcing the rest of us to do so.
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| Louisville Metro Government: You Won't Be Alright |
Fisher has created an inescapable economic prison in which the population grows daily, so that Property speculators and land developers can make hand over fist pimping out our city for high rise luxury condos and city funded arenas, while the poor are herded en mass further and further away from the city center. And if they refuse, they are literally removed by the police, as we saw in December of last year. “That is not accidental,” said Kathy Hinko in a recent WFPL interview; “We’ve done everything in our power to herd low income people into small geographic areas.”
And yet our mayor cannot see beyond the money signs in his eyes to stop this crisis while our city crumbles. In 2016 Fischer attended SXSW, the annual the music, media, and film festival is set in the heart of America's latest 'it' city, Austin Texas, with the expressed interest of learning more about how to create a population boom like Austin, and Williamsburg New York before that, and Portland Oregon before that. "It" cities rise to international spotlights, riding on waves of local music, culture, and above all, affordable housing for those who want to experience it. We saw this happen almost overnight in New Orleans after the destruction of Hurricane Katrina left a multitude of empty homes at rock bottom prices. Just 10 years later in the Big Easy a one bedroom apartment goes for more than $1,200 a month. Thats up by 50% in the last 5 years. Austin's is worse, rising 80% in the last 5 years.
What's all this have to do with our Mayor? Besides his love for trendy photo-ops at music festivals and Bourbon Tastings, He has big plans for Louisville, mostly he wants to make Louisville the next Austin. This is great news for property owners and investors who may see 50 to 80% growth in rental income but bad for everyone else, especially the 60,000 Louisvillians who spend more than 30% of their income in rent, not to mention the 24,000 who spend more than 50% in rent (me included). If rent jumps up 50% or more, many of these people will have no recourse but exile in the far reaches or homelessness. But the mayor is pushing big time for a population boom anyway.
In an interview on WFPL, Jacob Ryan asked the mayor if he wanted a population boom like the one in Austin, and the mayor's reply was “We want to grow faster, we want to be more global, but we always want to be mindful of keeping the soul of our city as well.”
Good news, mayor, your boom is here. The average one bedroom in Louisville is now $760 a month, with the average apartment in Schnitzelburg costing the same as apartments in Cherokee Triangle. If you are not a person scraping by on minimum wage, imagine making $1,000 a month with $240 left after paying rent. Personally I make about $900 a month with $700 going to rent and utilities, another $90 a month for car insurance, and $50 for cell service. That leaves $160 a month ($40 a week) for everything else: gasoline, food, clothes, everything. That's under $6 a day.
But when nearly half of our residents cannot meet basic living standards, it has become an epidemic. We cannot stand idly by any longer watching our city turn into a playground for the rich and a prison for the poor. When I first began writing about the gentrification crisis in Louisville (5 years ago) I received hate mail from people calling me a stupid idiot standing in the way of progress; I don't get many of those anymore. Now I get email from working mothers desperate to find affordable housing in Louisville. But if you are a single mother making $1,000 month and the average 2 bedroom apartment in Germantown is $900 a month you have no choice but to fall into debt just trying to keep your children fed. When the basic cost of living is higher than the minimum wage we see working neighborhoods fall into desperate situations. The federal government's 'County Health Rankings' found that 22% of children in our city live in poverty, that's 1 in 5 children that does not get enough food to eat on a daily basis. One starving child in our city is too many but this is a crisis.
But you don't have to be living under the poverty line to decide that this government enforced economic slavery is unjust and needs to end. You can still be a democrat while also telling Fischer this all needs to stop. When will the rich and powerful have enough? The truth is, they won't ever push the plate away and say they have had their fill. Greed pushes away sanity and empathy. They won't stop, and we have nothing left to give.
-John King
Administer of The Electric Church Of The Tambourine
Join Me on December 7th at noon in front of the mayor's Office.
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