KENTUCKY — During this In Focus Kentucky segment, Louisville mayoral candidates Bill Dieruf (R) and Craig Greenberg (D) discuss their plans to address issues and topics affecting the state's largest city.
When it comes to ensuring equitable development for historically marginalized groups, both candidates explained how they will make sure developers don’t price residents out of affordable housing options.
"On the day I announced I was running for mayor, I shined a light on the 30,000 units of affordable housing that we're short in our committed community and announced that I would help lead the development of 15,000 new affordable housing units during my first term. That is absolutely critical to ensure that people have a safe, affordable and high quality home regardless of where they live. The way to do that is having partnerships using some of the federal money that has been invested in our community. We have a once in a lifetime opportunity right now in Louisville to invest federal funds from the American Rescue Plan to end our challenge with affordable housing," said candidate Greenberg.
"What we should talk about is attainable housing. Especially with the inflation that we have right now. Attainable is even more challenging, but the key thing is to budget generational wealth for the future. And right now I've always said we'd like to take $100 million of the ARP money and put it in attainable housing so that people gain ownership and gain generational wealth in the future. But we not only have to do that, when we talk about a person moving into a house that they're marginally being able to afford, we have to be able to have an insurance policy or some kind of policy. So if something happens over the future, than that it's covered. The water heater goes down and it costs $2,000, we have to have a policy in place that pays for that exact water heater to keep the people in the house so they don't lose the house in the future," candidate Dieruf said.
Both candidates also explain during this segment how they will work to address homelessness in Louisville and measures they would propose to meet the needs of people living in encampments.
You can watch the full In Focus segment in the player above.