Articles — legislation

As I mentioned in my last update, millions of dollars in rental assistance are still available. In Lexington, the Housing Stabilization Program has now opened the application process for tenants to receive a second round of funding. That means tenants who received HSP funding already are again eligible to receive additional assistance. The caveat is that the tenant may only receive a total of 15 months of funding.  So, if your tenant received 10 months of funding already, that tenant is now eligible to receive up to five months of additional funding. The same eligibility requirements are in place, and...

Greetings from a very icy Lexington, Kentucky. We’ve had some new developments that I wanted to update you about: (ANOTHER) NEW FAIR HOUSING EXECUTIVE ORDER  President Biden also signed an Executive Order asking federal government agencies to review laws that prohibit discrimination based on sex and to enforce those laws against discrimination based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.  In response, earlier today HUD issued a memo that they would be interpreting the Fair Housing Act as prohibiting housing discrimination based on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity throughout the country. HUD and its state and local agencies will now be...

In 2018, Kentucky joined a growing list of states that have passed laws addressing fraudulent conduct by tenants and others attempting to get an Assistance Animal. KRS 383.085 makes it a criminal offense for any person to knowingly provide false information or documents in an attempt to get an Assistance Animal in housing. Check out this post to find out the details on Kentucky's version of the law.

On October 13, 2017, the Lexington Herald-Leader ran a front-page article that was nothing more than a hit piece against Lexington's private rental industry. The article's purpose, other than perpetuating a false narrative against landlords, was to promote a report released by the Lexington Fair Housing Council titled Locked Out: Foreclosure, Eviction and Housing Instability in Lexington, 2005-2016. You can read the report in its entirety here. You'll likely be appalled at the report's tone that landlords are the problem and at its suggestion that landlords profit from evictions and exploit the eviction process for personal gain. In short, the...

In my very first post on this site, found here, I wrote about Kentucky’s then-current law on liability for landlords for dog-bites on their rental property. The law at that time centered around a 2012 case, Benningfield v. Zinsmeister, in which the Kentucky Supreme Court interpreted the state’s dog-bite statutes in such a way as to hold landlords liable for injuries caused by certain dogs on their rental property if the dog causes damage on the property or within immediate physical reach of the property. I’m glad to finally get to provide an update on that law: it’s changed. Landlords are...