Louisville council to consider higher affordable-housing fee for 10-home developments
The Sept. 15 hearing could advance a draft that retains the 12% affordable-housing requirement and raises the proposed for-sale fee to $19.08 per square foot.
Louisville City Council is scheduled to continue considering changes to the city’s inclusionary-housing rules Sept. 15, including a proposed increase in the fee developers can pay instead of providing affordable homes on site.
The continued public hearing on Ordinance 1936 is scheduled for 6 p.m. The City Council agenda says the council may take final action, but the ordinance has not been adopted as of Sept. 11.
The draft ordinance would retain a requirement that 12% of homes in covered residential developments be affordable. It would generally apply the rules to developments with 10 or more dwelling units, bringing smaller apartment, condominium, townhouse and other residential projects into the program.
For developers that do not provide the required affordable homes on site, the draft proposes raising the fee for market-rate for-sale housing from $9.24 to $19.08 per square foot of finished housing. The proposed rental fee would rise from $4.72 to $4.73 per square foot. Those are proposed rates, not fees under an adopted ordinance.
The draft would offer incentives for projects that provide affordable homes on site, including a 20% increase in residential density and lot coverage, reduced or eliminated minimum parking requirements, development-review fee waivers and expedited planned-unit-development review. Projects providing at least 20% affordable units could qualify for a density bonus of up to 30%. A discretionary height increase of one story or 15 feet also is proposed, except in the Old Town Overlay District and downtown’s Core Area.
Affordable units would have to be comparable to market-rate units in construction and appearance, have equal access to amenities and parking, and have an average bedroom count equivalent to the market-rate units. The draft describes rental affordability at or below 80% of area median income and for-sale affordability for households earning up to 120% of area median income.
Transition provisions would protect developments with a complete site-specific development-plan application submitted before the ordinance’s effective date, provided the projects meet the code’s timeline for obtaining a building permit. Projects with an affordable-housing restrictive-covenant agreement already entered into with the city could continue under that agreement’s affordability terms.
The council continued the hearing Aug. 18 and directed staff to revise provisions involving unit comparability, density bonuses, expedited review, previously approved projects, fee-in-lieu rules, income limits and project thresholds. The Sept. 15 meeting is the next decision window; the vote, amendments and final text remain pending.