Since the COVID-19 pandemic, median housing prices have rapidly increased. Workforce creation has outpaced workforce housing which has resulted in employees being forced to spend more on housing or face longer commutes from neighboring counties. This also creates difficulty in recruiting for employers.
 
In the Northern Kentucky region, the average household size has dropped as a result of fewer large households and more households without children but is steadying across all counties. The average household size in Kenton County has been steadily decreasing from the 1970s, although it has started to slowly level off. As of 2023, the average household size is 2.46 persons per household. The type of housing that is being most built includes three and four-bedroom homes which do not account for a diversity of incomes and smaller household sizes throughout the region. In the Northern Kentucky region, there is also an existing gap for rentals that are available to people at the lowest levels of income.¹

^{Figure 1}Source:  Northern Kentucky Housing Data Analysis, 2023

Kenton county is adding wealthier households to the community, creating an expectation for the upper income population to grow; however, in the Northern Kentucky area, there are currently 2.68 workforce jobs for each housing unit they could afford. Workforce jobs are defined as having an annual average salary below $60,000 as of 2023. This has resulted in an increased need for workforce housing. Workforce housing is defined by the Urban Land Institute (ULI) as housing that is affordable to households earning between 60 and 120 percent of the area median income (AMI).² The AMI for Kenton County as of 2023 is $103,600.1 A snapshot of Kenton County’s 5-year production needs relative to AMI can be found in Figure 2 below.

Figure 2Source: Northern Kentucky Housing Data Analysis, 2023

In 2022 to 2023, 870 new multi-family residential units were built primarily in Covington. It is projected that after 2024, 927 additional multi-family units will come on the market including locations in Ludlow, Crestview Hills, Fort Wright, and Covington. One hundred seventy-two townhomes and condominiums have been built in Covington, Crescent Springs, and Taylor Mill around 2023. There are currently 413 townhomes and condominiums under construction as of 2023 in Fort Mitchell, Ludlow, and Independence.³

New developments in the suburbs tend to be three to four-bedroom tract housing subdivisions targeted for middle to upper-middle class incomes. This form of development is relatively overdeveloped in Kenton County. Kenton County is missing one and two-bedroom homes across most income levels. These types of homes cater to an aging population, a demand for entry level homes, as well as families with smaller household sizes. Kenton County is also missing three-bedroom rentals for lower income households. Mixed-use developments including duplexes, triplexes, townhomes, apartments, and condominiums either for rental or ownership could help to fulfill these unmet needs.¹ 

Kenton County is an employment hub made up of corporate offices, hospitals, warehousing and higher income jobs with the largest amount of healthcare and education jobs of the Northern Kentucky counties. Approximately 64.9 percent of Kenton County residents work in white collar jobs, 23.2 percent in blue collar jobs, and 12.9 percent in service jobs. Kenton County has the largest share of jobs in healthcare and education of any county in the Northern Kentucky region. Figure 3 shows the employment by sector gathered by Woods and Poole with their projections comparable to other regional forecasting.¹

Figure 3Source: Northern Kentucky Housing Data Analysis, 2023

The large number of lower wage service sector workforce earning significantly less than professionals causes poverty and rent burdened households within Kenton County.¹ A better depiction of this is evident in the Kenton County housing costs and affordability data in Figure 4 derived by Kentucky League of Cities’ Virtual Summit regarding Kenton County’s housing affordability and occupation annual wages5 as well as Brighton Center’s Blue Sheet of household income and affordability in Figure 5.⁶

Figure 4