With years of deadly flooding exacerbating Eastern Kentucky’s housing crisis, a patchwork of nonprofits has accelerated new construction in the region — but officials caution it’s not enough to meet demand.
A report conducted by Kentucky Housing Corp. in 2024 found the state is short more than 200,000 housing units. In the four-county, Southeastern Kentucky area the Housing Development Alliance serves, that gap is about 3,000 units, plus additional rental options.
Scott McReynolds is the executive director for HDA, which builds and repairs homes in Breathitt, Knott, Leslie and Perry counties. He said demand is only growing.
“We are what's known as a persistent poverty area, meaning that our poverty rates have been in excess of 20% for at least 30 years,” he said. “In our case, that actually goes back to the 60s, when they started measuring poverty rates.”
He said when people don’t have enough money, they have a harder time paying for housing, hampering the market and compounding the economic challenges.
“As a region, we just don't have enough housing to go around, and that makes it hard to find houses, makes houses more expensive,” McReynolds said.
Southeast Kentucky is still recovering from devastating flooding in 2022 that destroyed thousands of homes. Additionally, the area faced flooding in 2021 and 2025. McReynolds said about 8,000 units were destroyed or damaged by the flooding — “a significant number” in an already broken market.
HDA built about 20 houses each year before the floods. But this year, with additional funding and land from recovery efforts, McReynolds said the organization should construct about 60.
“We're finally producing at a scale that feels like it's big enough that we could actually move the needle on some of the housing challenges,” McReynolds said.
HDA is building new, high-ground communities for resiliency. One site is Chestnut Ridge in Knott County. In June, Dreambuilders sent 35 volunteers to construct three homes.
John McBeth, the interfaith organization’s trip leader, said the volunteers are doing a “triple blitz build” this summer, where they start with a concrete foundation and end with walls and a roof.
“This is the third year in a row we’ve done three, and then one of the people, one of the adults on the trip said to me at lunch, ‘Why don’t we do four next year?’” McBeth said. “So maybe, we’ll see.”
Other stakeholders in the Appalachian region include Kentucky Mountain Housing Development Corp.
KMHDC works mostly in Clay and Jackson counties. Like HDA, it repairs homes and builds safe, affordable housing. Executive Director Rob Dowden said the biggest challenge to affordability is the cost of materials, land and labor.
In the past year, KMHDA has completed seven home repairs and constructed almost three houses. The group also refurbished three homes in foreclosure, as well.
He said the organization has seen an increase in home repair requests in recent years.
“Just the cost of maintaining their homes is gone up quite a bit in the last few years, so people are coming to us,” Dowden said.
Both HDA and KMHDC are members of the Federation of Appalachian Housing Enterprises. CEO Jim King said that organization has a goal for the whole Appalachian region.
“We’re looking to double the production of housing as a run rate over the next couple of years, so by the year 2030 to reach 60,000 units a year,” he said.
FAHE can give organizations grants and awards, and also offers investment capital, which has to be paid back. King said the group is looking for more ways to provide financial support to those in need of housing, like different types of mortgages.
“We're trying to help strengthen the housing market and help our members and the community leaders that they're partnered with create communities that people want to be part of,” King said.
