The Solution/Demand: Pass the Historically Black Neighborhood Ordinance sponsored by Councilmen Jecorey Arthur (Demand issued to Louisville Metro Council Members and Mayor Greenberg)

Summary: Louisville Metro Government has been saying for years that we need an anti-displacement policy to protect poor and working-class communities being ripped apart by gentrification. We’re done waiting! We need clear and decisive action now. For the last two years, residents from across Historically Black Neighborhoods in Louisville, KY, have been working together to develop a policy that not only protects us and our neighbors but also will work to restore our communities. We call this policy the Historically Black Neighborhood Ordinance.

The Problem: As a result of decades of Louisville Metro Government giving away public dollars, land, and Metro Officer support to corporate developers, gentrification has devastated Black communities in Louisville, KY. In neighborhoods like Smoketown and Russell, gentrification has pushed out, destabilized, and disinherited countless deeply rooted working-class and poor Black families. That ain’t right!

In 2016, the city launched the Vision Russell development project, and then in 2018, the Russell Place of Promise development initiative began. The impact of these two initiatives using public assets and resources to build market-rate development in Russell neighborhood(1) has been dire. We lost so many of our neighbors as a result. According to the US Census, between 2010 and 2020 Russell Neighborhood lost about 2,450 Black residents while its white population rapidly increased(2). We don’t know where these families have gone, but we know that a 2016 study found that a $100 increase in median rent is associated with a 15% increase in homelessness in urban areas(3).

These nonprofit and for-profit corporate developers feeding off our public assets have not built housing that we can afford. Instead, they have taken our resources and built properties that are driving up the cost of living in our communities. That ain’t right! Single mothers and our elders have been hit the hardest and rents are still skyrocketing. What do we want? We want Louisville Metro Government to actually do what it has been saying it will do. We need our policymakers to pass the Historically Black Neighborhood Ordinance!  

References:

1.     Louisville Metro Government. (2019, October 17). Open Records Request #12478. Louisville. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ltYQZ6UN1iF9R3lrW6iI5L7P_43YraO2/view

2. US Census data. Note: Russell Median Income is based on Census Tract 24.01, 2021 ACS 5- Year Est

3.     Munley, E., Fargo, J., Montgomery, A., & Culhane, D. (2012). NEW PERSPECTIVES ON COMMUNITY-LEVEL DETERMINANTS OF HOMELESSNESS. Journal of Urban Affairs.