Kentucky Housing Corporation Recognizes Outstanding Leaders and Organizations at Annual Conference
FRANKFORT, Kentucky — Known by her colleagues and the Kentucky Housing Corporation (KHC) staff for her emotional intelligence, warm presence, and fierce determination in the face of a challenge, Tracey Glasscock was awarded the Dorothy J. Williams Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2024 Kentucky Affordable Housing Conference (KAHC), which ran Wednesday and Thursday, August 21 and 22, 2024, at the Kentucky International Convention Center in Louisville.
Glasscock, who is the vice present of Wabuck Development, has been instrumental in the development of over 5,000 affordable housing units in Kentucky, including four Recovery Kentucky projects, five Scholar Houses, projects to house at risk children, a project to serve emancipated foster children, projects to serve individuals with intellectual disabilities, a project to train autistic individuals to live independently and a project to transition the homeless to permanent housing.
She is currently working on a project to create an addiction recovery center in her hometown and one to save an elderly project that is on the verge of being foreclosed. For her entire career, she has by all accounts exemplified servant leadership.
Danielle Amrine and Marilyn Harris were the other individual award recipients at the annual Housing Innovation Awards, at which KHC honors outstanding individuals and partners who are advancing affordable housing and housing opportunities throughout the state.
Amrine, executive director of Welcome House, was awarded the Lynn Luallen Innovation Award for advancing affordable housing landscape in Kentucky. Under her leadership, Welcome House went from serving Northern Kentucky to providing life saving street outreach, permanent housing and holistic homeless solutions in six regions across the state (representing 50+ counties). In 2021, she was named the Outstanding Woman of Northern Kentucky by the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce and Welcome House was named the Nonprofit of the Year.
The Mae Street Kidd Public Service Award went to Marilyn Harris, who dedicated her career to public service, working for the City of Shelbyville, KHC, Louisville Metro Government, and Develop Louisville. Throughout the pandemic, she led Louisville’s eviction diversion program, disbursing millions of dollars in federal relief to tens of thousands of the city’s residents to keep them safe, stable and healthy in their homes. She was instrumental in aligning the eviction relief programs throughout the state.
Two KHC Special Recognition awards were given to two organizations for their work accelerating the construction of housing stock in their communities:
- Habitat for Humanity of Henderson
- Kentucky Department for Local Government
Habitat for Henderson continually explores new ways to house its residents. Under the leadership of Britney Smith and Matt Reynolds, Habitat for Henderson recently completed its 82nd and 83rd home dedications. To address the supply gap in their area, Habitat is exploring manufactured and modular housing options. More importantly, they have stepped up to learn how to use federal dollars in ways that allow them to accrue working capital for future development by achieving designation as a HUD Community Housing Development Organization, or CHDO, the first Kentucky Habitat to do so.
The Department for Local Government (DLG) worked with KHC to achieve the largest single affordable housing development funding announcement in Kentucky history.
KHC and DLG each issued Notices of Funds Available for new development of multifamily rental units for WKY counties impacted by tornadoes in 2021. Each agency received far more applications than expected seeking more funding than available. Recognizing an opportunity to create nearly 1,000 new rental units in Western Kentucky, KHC and DLG partnered to bring additional funds to the table. In the end, together, they awarded more than $223 million to create 953 new affordable rental homes across 4 counties—many of which needed more housing before units were destroyed by tornadoes.
This unprecedented collaboration included seven different funding sources:
- $134,601,971 in Tax-Exempt Bonds
- $12,349,958 in projected Tax Credit Equity
- $6,000,000 in HOME Investment Partnership Program (HOME)
- $1,000,000 in Kentucky Affordable Housing Trust Fund (AHTF)
- $5,000,000 in National Housing Trust Fund (NHTF)
- $4,500,000 in Kentucky Rural Housing Trust Fund (RHTF)
- $59,728,064 in Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR)
The awards presentation concluded the two-day conference at which over 650 affordable housing professionals gathered to discuss ways to close the housing gap in Kentucky. This comes after KHC and Bowen National Research unveiled the results of their housing gap report, which looked at the current and future affordable housing needs in the Commonwealth.
In a surprise presentation, fahe awarded KHC a Housing Champion award for supporting fahe and its partners throughout the disasters and recovery efforts.
The event was sponsored by Ohio Capital Corporation for Housing and PNC Bank as well as Clayton Real Estate, LDG Development and Wabuck Development and a host of other businesses and partners.
