Bringing It Home with KHC

Kentucky Housing Corporation (KHC) awards the special designation of Community Housing Development Organization (CHDO) to select nonprofit housing agencies that have an existing partnership with KHC and a proven record of producing HOME-funded affordable housing projects in their service areas. Essentially, a CHDO is a nonprofit, community-based service organization that has significant capacity to develop affordable housing for the community it serves. Among the CHDOs in Kentucky is Habitat for Humanity of Henderson, which is the first and currently the only Habitat in the Commonwealth to receive this special designation.

To learn more about CHDOs and the associated benefits, we sat down with two administrators from Habitat for Humanity of Henderson —Executive Director Britney Smith and Chief Operating Officer Matt Reynolds — and two administrators from KHC — Curtis Stauffer, managing director of Housing Contract Administration (HCA), and Keli Reynolds, assistant director of HCA Single-Family Programs. In about a decade, Habitat of Henderson has gone from being an organization with the capacity to build one home per year to an organization with the capacity to build five. With the help of the CHDO designation, Britney and Matt are making a significant contribution to affordable housing opportunities in their community.

To learn more about becoming a CHDO, visit https://www.kyhousing.org/Partners/Developers/Single-Family/Pages/Community-Housing-Development-Organizations.

The staff at Prost Mortgage Group has amassed nearly four decades of experience helping families buy homes with FHA, VA, rural housing, and other loans. Ken Prost, the firm's principal mortgage advocate, has been a regular at the KHC Top Producer Awards, taking home the Top Lender and Top MCC Lender in 2023.

For this episode, we visited the Prost Mortgage Group office to speak with Ken Prost, Brach Manager Danielle Prost, and Loan Officer Becky Astaiza about the state of affordable housing in Northern Kentucky, opportunities for homebuyers, and their outreach to the Hispanic community.

Kentucky Housing Corporation (KHC) administers two programs for the Commonwealth designed to keep Kentuckians housed. The Eviction Diversion Program (EDP) helps eligible renters with an active eviction case avoid homelessness by providing back rent or access to alternative housing. The Homeowner Assistance Fund (HOAF) helps eligible homeowners avoid homelessness by providing assistance for up to six months of missed mortgage payments or payments for utilities. So far, KHC has allocated over $34 million from HOAF. EDP began earlier this year.

In this episode of Bringing It Home, we speak with the two people at KHC responsible for administering the programs: EDP Program Manager Christine Amburgey and HOAF Program Manager Miranda Cornish.

We also speak with Libby Ludwig of Apprisen, a nonprofit financial services organization that helps homeowners navigate HOAF and work their way back to financial freedom.

Kentucky Housing Corporation (KHC) serves Kentucky homebuyers with a variety of loan products, down payment assistance, closing cost grants, excellent customer service, and more. In this episode, we speak with two veteran real estate professionals who have worked with these and other KHC products: Cheryl Johnson from eXp Realty and Marcia Duncan from Homepage Realty. We discuss the challenges and opportunities facing homeowners in 2024.

For the past two years, KHC and the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness (WVCEH) have hosted an annual summit on preventing and ending rural homelessness. The Summit is a unique and collaborative training week for providers in the KY and WV Balance of State Continuums of Care, providing members with the opportunity to network among peers, ask questions of the experts, explore and refine leadership skills in the space of ending homelessness, and engage in meaningful, solution-driven conversations.

In this episode, we speak with Kenzie Strubank from KHC and Amanda Sisson from the West Virginia Coalition to End Homelessness about the Summit and their partnership and the impact of the summit. We also speak with two attendees about their experience at the event.

Recovery Kentucky was created to help Kentuckians recover from substance abuse, which often leads to chronic homelessness. There are 13 Recovery Kentucky centers across the Commonwealth. They are in Bowling Green, Campbellsville, Erlanger, Florence, Grayson, Harlan, Henderson, Hopkinsville, Owensboro, Paducah, Richmond, Somerset, and Knott County. These centers provide housing and recovery services for up to 2,000 Kentuckians across the state.

In this episode, we speak with Mike Townsend, who oversees the Recovery Kentucky program for Kentucky Housing Corporation (KHC), and Stephanie McCarty, director of recovery services at the Women's Addiction Recovery Manor (WARM) in Henderson, about the program's history, philosophy, and impact.

Each year, KHC and partners across the state conduct the K-Count, a census of persons experiencing homelessness on a single night in January. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) requires this count to demonstrate the need for resources for housing and services for homeless persons in each community.

In this episode, we spoke with Shaye Rabold, Continuum of Care (CoC) planning and technical administrator at KHC, and Beverly Isom, supportive services director at KCEOC, to better understand the K-Count and how and why it is carried out across the Commonwealth.

We began 2023 by discussing the state of affordable housing in Kentucky and the challenges for multifamily developers and loan officers. We later explored the need for fair housing and spoke with KHC staff and partners about how Kentuckians can achieve their dream of homeownership. In July, we offered a multipart look at how the Eastern Kentucky floods impacted the region and how residents and KHC partners are rebuilding. And we ended the year with a look at weatherization and homeless resources and the state of affordable housing in Kentucky's two largest cities. Before we embark on the 2024 season, we wanted to revisit some highlights from 2023. Here are excerpts from a few of those conversations.

In this episode, we have the privilege of speaking with Danielle Amrine, CEO of the Welcome House, and Melissa Hall Sommer, Senior Vice President of the Brighton Center, both of whom are deeply involved in addressing the issue of homelessness in Northern Kentucky. Our conversation aims to shed light on the prevalent issue of homelessness and explore the resources currently available to support those in need.

We are publishing this episode in November to recognize the significance of National Homelessness Awareness Month and National Homeless Youth Awareness Month. This time of year provides an opportunity for us to come together as a community and raise awareness about the challenges faced by individuals experiencing homelessness, especially the vulnerable youth population.

​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​The U.S. Department of Energy's Weatherization Assistance Program (WAP) is the nation's largest residential energy efficiency program, helping low-income families to lower their energy bills. KHC receives funding for WAP through the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) and the Kentucky Cabinet for Health and Family Services' Low Income Heating Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). That funding allows trained inspectors and crews from Community Action Agencies across the Commonwealth to retrofit housing for eligible individuals at no cost to the homeowner. Before doing the work, though, crew members are trained by experts at the KHC's Residential Energy Efficiency (REE) Center in Frankfort, Kentucky, where they learn on state-of-the-art equipment and training tools.

In this episode, we talk with those experts—REE Manager Mark Adams and REE Training Specialists Dewayne Cade and Troy Gosser—to learn more about weatherization, the REE Center, and the future of the program.