By MICHAEL CRIMMINS
Glasgow News 1
Easing multi-family housing regulations, pausing cost-increasing code changes, streamlining local planning, increasing support for affordable housing programs, and exploring new state investments in infrastructure and tax credits were the recommendations released by the 12-member Kentucky Housing Task Force.
In a 9-page letter sent to the Legislative Research Commission on Nov. 24, Co-Chairs of the task force, Sen. Robby Mills and Rep. Susan Witten, said these recommendations came after the task force heard testimony from various stakeholders that spoke on policies that would “accelerate housing production in the state.”
The recommendations made by these groups were varied, but generally fell into two broad categories: regulatory reforms designed to bring down the cost of home construction, and state support designed to encourage additional home building, the letter stated.
Mitigating the housing shortage was the topic of Planning Director Kevin Myatt’s remarks during the Nov. 21 Coffee and Commerce, who reiterated the various ways the planning and zoning office is trying to increase housing in Barren County. Myatt said the county lacked 1,846 units in 2024. The gap in Barren County “has already exceeded” that number in 2025 at “well over” 2,000.
“The housing gap is not going to go anywhere unless we think outside the box,” Myatt said. “We, as a planning commission, are trying to take some of [the out-of-the-box solutions] into the fold and work those into ‘How can we get those initiatives going out into our community?’ so that everyone can have a home…everyone can have a place to go.”
Much of what Myatt expounded upon in his remarks Glasgow News 1 has reported on separately with the exception of townhomes and tiny homes.
He spoke about the initiative that allows multi-family dwellings to be built on top of each other rather than side-by-side like a traditional duplex, which was adopted by the Joint City-County Planning Commission on July 21. He also spoke about planned-unit development that allows for “mixed uses inside the lot itself,” Myatt said, and mixed-use developments that allows a developer “to have multiple uses inside the same structure.”
One thing he did not specifically mention was the relaxed regulations on qualified manufactured homes, which prohibits local governments from having any regulation or ordinance that “excludes [them] from any residential zone where single-family residences are permitted [or] discriminates against qualified manufactured homes.”
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