Beshear: Eastern Kentucky flood victims deserve economic help with housing

The process of moving people into new permanent housing in the wake of devastating flooding in Eastern Kentucky shouldn’t put them in more debt than before, Gov. Andy Beshear said.

In an interview with the Lexington Herald-Leader Wednesday, Beshear said that as government and non-profit agencies work to get people back into permanent housing, they have to figure out ways to make the economics work for the residents.

“Because if we’re asking for someone to move from a piece of property that their family’s owned for years, might be one of the only things that they own, we need to be able to transition them into permanent housing, and they shouldn’t have more debt,” Beshear said. “They shouldn’t be in a worse situation than they were before.”

Flooding that peaked early on July 28 destroyed or damaged thousands of houses in Eastern Kentucky, primarily in Knott, Breathitt, Perry, Letcher and Floyd counties. The flooding resulted in more than 40 deaths.

As of Dec. 1, there were still 154 people who were flooded out staying in state parks in the region and 675 people staying in travel trailers.

State, local and federal officials and non-profit agencies are working on creating more housing in the area.

There are opportunities to be innovative in that process, Beshear said, such as including a health clinic in a housing development to improve access, or building a new senior living complex.

“We’re gonna have a lot of opportunities . . . to make people’s lives better” as part of the recovery, Beshear said.

The recovery will involve building or repairing individual houses outside the floodplain but also creating entire developments on higher ground.

“We’re going to have to build new neighborhoods,” Beshear said.

Beshear said the two biggest challenges in the wake of the flooding are creating new housing and repairing infrastructure, perhaps most notably water and wastewater systems.

Beshear said he didn’t have an estimate yet on how much additional money might be needed for the recovery during the upcoming legislative session, in part because not all the $213 million relief package the legislature approved a few months ago has been spent.

There also is a pending measure in Congress that could mean more money for the state to use for flood recovery, he said.

Some advocates in Eastern Kentucky were upset that the legislature didn’t include money specifically for housing in the earlier relief package and are hoping for a significant appropriation in the upcoming legislative session.

On the political front, Beshear said he feels good about his chances as he heads into a reelection campaign despite facing an electorate with more Republicans than Democrats.

Kentucky has trended markedly Republican for some time. Beshear is the only Democratic statewide officeholder, and Republicans took the edge in voter registration in the state earlier this year in a shift that was historic.

State records show that as of last June, there were 1,612,060 registered Republicans in Kentucky and 1,609,569 registered Democrats, according to the state Board of Elections.

U.S. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican from Louisville, noted at the time those numbers were released that Democrats had outnumbered Republicans more than 2 to 1 when he was elected in 1984.

But Beshear said his approval rating that has held steady at around 60 percent for an extended time shows he has support among Republicans.

“I feel good going into reelection because I think the people will see that we’ve worked really hard,” he said. “My message to Kentuckians is by now they know me, and they know that I care.”

“People are tired of somebody running on ‘I’m on this team or that team.’ They want to know you’re actually going to do something to help them out,” Beshear said.

Beshear touted economic growth on his watch he said set records even as the state experienced the coronavirus pandemic and natural disasters that included the Eastern Kentucky flooding and tornadoes in Western Kentucky in December 2021 that killed more than 80 people.

Beshear said the state had its highest year ever for economic investment in 2021, driven by a $5.8 billion project to build an electric-vehicle battery manufacturing complex in Hardin County, and that the growth has continued this year with projects such as a $2 billion battery facilty in Warren County.

This year will be the second- or third-highest year for economic-development announcements, Beshear said.

Beshear said he would continue pushing to make up for a shortage of teachers in Kentucky that he put at 11,000.

“If we truly believe in making up for learning loss, as opposed to just wanting to use it as a political issue, to catch our kids up on math, they gotta have a math teacher,” he said.

On the divisive issue of abortion, Beshear said he supports greater access than currently allowed under Kentucky law.

The law now bars abortions except when needed to save a pregnant woman’s life, with no exceptions to allow abortions in cases of rape or incest.

“The vast majority of Kentuckians believe those that have been harmed in the most awful of ways deserve options,” he said. “Our victims deserve options.”