Renters Concerns

BUILD members voted to take on renters concerns in 2024. From our own members and across Lexington, we heard stories of the constant struggle to pay ever-increasing rents, to find a place that is safe and clean, to get critical maintenance, and to find and receive help when it's needed.

After 20 research meetings, BUILD learned that the problem is huge and the opposition is powerful and well-funded. One critical problem: too many Lexington renters are stuck living in unsafe housing because landlords face few real consequences for code violations; meanwhile, our code enforcement system lacks the strong tools it needs to hold bad actors accountable. Renters and their families pay the price for that gap.

We began in 2025 with the inaccessible narrative data the city collects, winning cooperation between Lexington's code enforcement office and University of Kentucky researchers to create meaningful data that could make the issue more clear.

We now know that much more work is needed to bring the code enforcement data into a usable form. Without a searchable data base, no one knows how many rental properties are impacted by mold or pests, where the heating and cooling systems don't work, which landlords are simply evicting renters instead of fixing their properties. At the 2026 Nehemiah Action, BUILD will be pushing for incremental steps to begin improving our code enforcement system, including transparent and accessible information renters can use to keep their families safe.