10/16/2026
In the last few weeks we've been asked to comment on urban development pressures in the Ayelsford Place neighborhood for both the Lexington Herald Leader Lexington Herald-Leader and Kentucky Kernel Kentucky Kernel
The area between downtown Lexington and the University of Kentucky's North campus is currently experiencing an o**y of destruction as several blocks of historic affordable housing are bulldozed in the name of financial speculation. Blue Grass Trust for Historic Preservation and neighbors in the area have been making their opposition known while feckless cowards in city hall regurgitate corporate talking points about how we need to build new housing.
That Lexington and the rest of the United States are in a housing crisis is plainly obvious. What is less obvious is how we break out of the manufactured false dichotomy of "not in my backyard" vs. "let developers do whatever they want." The question is not whether we build housing, but rather who is going to build it, and in whose interest?
We don't have a housing shortage because the people who live in Ayelsford and other neighborhoods are crotchety and hate change. We have a housing shortage because the development industry has been financialized to the point where real estate is no longer habitat but simply an abstracted, depreciating asset from which to derive leverage.
Under such conditions, the most important task is to ensure wherever we can in public forums and in print that the discussion is always about this question of whose interests are being served when decisions are made to raze a neighborhood that has stood for over a century and replace it with value engineered bu****it designed to last only as long as it takes for the original investors to secure a return on capital?
Once we understand what is happening, we can act precisely and with conviction to change it.
