LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A home on Lampton Street is packed full of Jessica Bellamy’s memories.
She said she would like to create more there.
“I would love for my mom to be able to come over and sit in my yard with me and us have coffee,” Bellamy said.
While her grandmother gifted her the home, Bellamy can’t afford the nearly $300,000 in renovations she’s been told she’d have to pay to make it livable, nor can she afford to buy some place else in the Smoketown neighborhood, she said.
“The houses cost too much,” said Bellamy, an organizer with the Louisville Tenants Union. “The average house in the neighborhood is closer to like $200K and up at this point. You have a house even on this block that sold in 2021 for $280,000. And these are just like shotguns that are being priced that high without like maybe the type of amenities or improvements you would think would be associated with those price points.”
Three years ago, Bellamy started organizing with residents from historically Black neighborhoods and worked with Councilman Jecorey Arthur to draft legislation to protect communities from displacement, she said.
“Our housing needs assessment shows us that almost a third of households in this city cannot afford the housing,” Arthur said at a council meeting Thursday. “Some of them are paying more than half of their income on rent and mortgages. Then we wonder why our eviction rate is over twice the national average. Then we wonder why hundreds of Louisvillians are sleeping in our streets every single night.”
Under a measure passed by Metro Council unanimously Thursday, residents can access the results of investigations into discriminatory practices against households or businesses and the city will set up a way to assess how housing developments may impact communities and create an anti-displacement commission.
The ordinance states that according to a 2019 assessment, residents of historically Black neighborhoods are most at risk of displacement.
“If your housing isn’t stable, nothing else in your life can be stable, not your relationship with yourself, not your relationship with others, not with your job, not with anything,” said Bellamy. “Everything falls apart and people deserve the opportunity to … not only to survive, but to thrive as well.”