On most mornings at the Emergency Shelter of Northern Kentucky in Covington, the day begins the same way: people leaving for work.
Some head to warehouse shifts near the airport. Others to restaurants, hospitals, retail stores, or construction sites across Northern Kentucky. They grab coffee, say goodbye, and head out for the day like anyone else.
What makes their situation different is that when their shifts end, they return to a shelter.
At the Emergency Shelter of Northern Kentucky, we serve adults experiencing housing crises across Boone, Campbell, and Kenton counties. Increasingly, we are seeing people who are employed but still unable to afford stable housing.
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition’s Out of Reach report, a Kentuckian must earn $21.47 per hour to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment without spending more than 30 percent of income on housing. Meanwhile, the average renter wage in Kentucky is $17.89 per hour, and the state’s minimum wage remains $7.25 per hour.
For someone earning minimum wage, the math becomes impossible. A worker would need to work 118 hours per week to afford that apartment.
These numbers reflect what housing providers and community organizations are seeing every day: more people experiencing housing instability are employed.
They are warehouse employees, restaurant staff, retail workers, healthcare aides, and hospitality employees; people contributing to the local economy but are unable to keep pace with rising housing costs. They are also our neighbors.
In Northern Kentucky, this challenge is increasingly recognized as a regional economic issue.
A housing analysis by the Northern Kentucky Area Development District found the region will need 6,650 additional housing units over the next five years, or about 1,330 units per year, simply to keep up with economic growth.
Much of that demand is concentrated in housing affordable to workforce households earning between $15 and $25 per hour, the same wage range where many logistics, retail, service, restaurants and healthcare support jobs fall.
The report highlights a structural imbalance in the local economy: there are currently 2.68 workforce jobs for every housing unit those workers can afford.
In other words, Northern Kentucky is creating jobs faster than it is creating housing those workers can reasonably afford.
The region’s economy has grown around industries like logistics, hospitality, retail, healthcare support, and service work — sectors that employ thousands and are central to the region’s economic vitality.
Yet 60 percent of occupations in the region earn less than $60,000 per year, placing many workers squarely in the workforce housing category.
At the same time, the housing supply has not kept pace with these income realities.
The NKADD analysis found the region’s housing stock is heavily weighted toward larger three- and four-bedroom single-family homes, while demand is increasing for smaller one- and two-bedroom units that better match the needs of workforce households and single adults.
This mismatch between wages and housing supply has consequences beyond individuals and families.
Employers struggle to recruit and retain workers who cannot find stable housing nearby. Workers face longer commutes in search of affordable options. And emergency shelters increasingly become the last safety net for people who are employed but cannot secure housing.
For decades, conversations about homelessness have often focused on individuals experiencing chronic homelessness or severe disability. While those needs remain critically important, they represent only part of the broader housing landscape.
Across communities like Northern Kentucky, we are seeing a growing number of individuals who fall into another category: the working homeless.
They are people with jobs who simply cannot keep up with rising rents.
Emergency shelters are often viewed as the solution to homelessness. In reality, they are the community’s response after the housing market has already failed someone.
They were never designed to solve housing affordability, but they remain essential when the housing system leaves working people without options.
Until the gap between wages and housing costs begins to close, communities will continue to rely on emergency shelters as a necessary part of the housing system. Stable, consistent support for these services helps ensure that when people experience a housing crisis, there is a place for them to regroup and reconnect to housing and employment.
And until more income-aligned housing is built that working people can actually afford, organizations like the Emergency Shelter of Northern Kentucky will continue answering the most immediate question many people face at the end of the day: “Where am I going to sleep tonight?”
Housing affordability is not just a social service issue.
It is increasingly an economic development issue — and a community stability issue.
Kim M. Webb is CEO of Emergency Shelter of Northern Kentucky