By Ashley Homrich, Kentucky Lantern · June 23, 2026

Kentucky is in a housing crisis. We know this. Our state suffers a shortage of more than 200,000 homes and the vast majority of that gap is a lack of housing for low-income households or those who can only afford to pay $500 a month in rent.

We know that people’s wages aren’t keeping up with costs like groceries and gas, much less safe and stable housing. 

The state legislature knows this too. In 2024, they created an entire housing taskforce to address the issue, but had taken no meaningful action by the start of the 2026 legislative session.

This inaction led to the creation of Welcome Home Kentucky, a coalition of 17 organizations working to build power and solve housing problems statewide. We are working for a Kentucky where everyone has a home that is safe, high quality, meets their needs, and brings them a sense of wellness and belonging.

We wanted to tackle issues that affect thousands of Kentuckians. We started with evictions. 

Right now, if you have an eviction filed against you, it stays on your record forever – even if it is dismissed in court.

Evictions and their impact don’t have a particular demographic. From Eastern to Western Kentucky, students, retirees, parents, and everyone in between, an eviction stands in the way of securing stable housing.

Welcome Home KY hoped to create a pathway for people to remove dismissed evictions from their records. This would open up housing opportunities for tens of thousands of Kentuckians. We also fought to ensure a Kentucky standard where our young people – children under the age of 18 – cannot be named in an eviction. This would build a healthier future for our state.

Through conversations with impacted people, policy groups, those working in the judicial process, and legislators, our coalition collaborated to present a bill during the 2026 General Assembly that would make our hope a reality. 

House Bill 338 would have automatically removed any new evictions dismissed by a judge from people’s records. Rep. Susan Witten, R-Louisville, alongside Rep. Stephanie Dietz, R-Edgewood, Rep. Nima Kulkarni, D-Louisville, and 14 others sponsored the bill. 

The House Judiciary Committee passed it through unanimously. When it moved to the House floor, the same result. Bipartisan, unanimous support. 95-0.

But, HB 338 never became a law. 

HB 338 got caught up in Frankfort’s political games. Before it finally moved in the House, it stalled for weeks, despite consistent pressure from our coalition. To get it passed through the Senate in time, HB 338 was added to SB 9, the housing omnibus bill, which combined several housing bills into one.

At the last minute, language was added to the omnibus bill with support from Rep. David Osborne and other legislators. The new addition would have barred local governments from placing restrictions on short-term rentals like Airbnb. Several legislators and community groups spoke out strongly against this particular addition.

But members of the House and Senate were unwilling to budge in order to prioritize commonsense housing bills like ours.

With legislators unable to agree on SB 9 and HB 338 languishing without a Senate hearing, our hopes for passing automatic dismissed eviction removal this year died.  

This was deeply frustrating. We played by the rules and had unanimous bipartisan support. We handed them a potential housing win on a silver platter. But it wasn’t enough in the face of the political squabbling and special interests that took precedence over everyday Kentuckians. We learned a hard lesson about just how much power it takes to cut through those interests. We will use this lesson in our next fight.

We’re still proud of the work we did to get here: the connections we built, the skills we developed. Getting this bill as far as we did on our first try as a coalition.

For many, this work isn’t our 9 to 5. We do this because it matters–because we know the costs to ourselves, our neighbors, and our children, of not taking action.

We’re disappointed, but we aren’t discouraged. We know that people have power in this state, and we know the fight’s not over. We’ve seen what happens when folks come together to give time, resources and heart to build a Kentucky where everyone has a place to call home. It’s time our elected public servants do the same. 

Go to welcomehomekentucky.org to join the fight with a partner organization of Welcome Home Kentucky. Call 1-800-372-7181 to tell your legislators they need to take urgent action on housing during the next session. 

This commentary was also signed by Emma Anderson (Frankfort), Annette Hines (Morehead), Shawna McCown (Ashland), Nikita Perumal (Lexington), Adrian Burrus-Sames (Louisville), Greg Tichnor (Louisville), Immanual Tesfai (Louisville), and Lakeisha Gardner (Louisville).