Current Work

Housing

  • In the 2025 Listening Process, 500 people from across the city shared their concerns. Dozens, if not hundreds, shared concerns around housing cost, homelessness, frustration with out-of-town real estate investors, and more. After the listening process members overwhelmingly voted for the topic of housing to move forward for research and action. 

  • One of the biggest drivers of the housing challenges in Louisville is the shortage of housing units. This shortage impacts the cost of buying or renting homes, it can lower the quality of rental stock, and deeply impacts Louisville’s homeless crisis.

  • Housing affordability is defined as your housing cost being 33% or less of your income. The average rent cost for a one-bedroom apartment in Louisville is around $1,200, which is out of the realm of affordability for many Louisvillians. For those in our community who make only 30% of the Area Media Income, their rental affordability rate is $495/month, which is incredibly difficult to find. This means that many families are forced to live outside of their means and short change necessities like food, medicine, healthcare. Even then, many still end up in some form of homelessness.

  • In 2025 JCPS had around 4,000 students who met the federal definition of homeless. They believe this number is undercounted with some families going uncounted because of concerns around immigration, stigma, etc. 

  • To solve this problem, Louisville needs to help stabilize families before they are evicted and increase its supply of affordable housing, especially for “Permanent Supportive Housing,” where individuals who are chronically homeless are placed in permanent housing with case management. At the 2026 Nehemiah Action, we won commitments from Metro Council members to champion significant investments for Permanent Supportive Housing in addition to creating a $2.5 million Housing Stabilization fund to help prevent people from becoming homeless in the first place.

Mental Health

  • In our research on this problem in 2024-25, we learned that suicide is the #2 cause of death for people ages 10-24 in Kentucky, according to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention.

  • Louisville’s mental health crisis response system falls far behind national best practices. Without a designated place to go during a mental health crisis, people often end up in hospitals or jails, where their mental health challenges are exacerbated.

  • At our 2025 Nehemiah Action, we won a commitment from Seven Counties to establish a 24/7 drop-in crisis center for adults and to prioritize expansion to youth and families. This program would allow people to receive an evaluation from a licensed mental health practitioner, who then connects them to the appropriate level of care. We also secured commitments from two Metro Council budget committee members to work with their colleagues to find funding for the program.

  • In December 2025, after months of CLOUT showing up to Metro Council meetings to share testimonies, Metro Council overwhelmingly voted to provide $1.15 in seed funding to launch the crisis center! Seven Counties is committed to covering ongoing operating funds after this initial investment.

  • At the 2026 Nehemiah Action, we secured commitments from Mayor Greenberg and LMPD Chief Humphrey to develop policies and trainings to standardize LMPD’s use of the crisis center as an alternative to jail.

  • The crisis center is on track to open in July 2026! It will launch with adult services and expand to include youth services in the fall.

  • Check out this news coverage on the crisis center and CLOUT’s efforts to get it started:

Children & Youth Concerns

All kids reading

  • Due to a lack of phonetic instruction in early grades within JCPS, in 2022 64% of students could not read proficiently. That rate jumps to 79% for our Black and low-income children. Over the past several years we have been working to ensure a quality phonics curriculum was implemented, which JCPS now has. The new curriculum is proving to be successful.

  • At our 2024 Nehemiah Action, then Superintendent Marty Pollio committed to meet with us after each round of MAP testing to review the data.

  • In our Sept. 9, 2025 meeting with JCPS Superintendent Dr. Brian Yearwood made that commitment for himself to keep that same practice of meeting with CLOUT to review the MAP data to understand and assess the effectiveness of the reading curriculum.

  • Our focus now is to ensure there is a plan and action for students in upper grades who are still struggling to read, because they did not have this curriculum in the critical elementary school years. 

Whole school restorative practices

  • Whole School Restorative Practices is a discipline model that teaches students accountability and emotional intelligence. It works to address and prevent behavioral issues and ultimately to prevent students from falling into the school to prison pipeline.

  • Prior to the pandemic, we received a commitment from Superintendent Pollio to implement whole school Restorative Practices (RP) in all JCPS Schools. RP is a discipline model that teaches students accountability and emotional intelligence. Before the pandemic, schools that were implementing this program with fidelity were not only seeing a reduction in suspensions, but also a reduction in behavioral incidents! Unfortunately, since the pandemic the implementation has slowed and weakened. 

  • At the 2026 Nehemiah Action, the new JCPS Superintendent Dr. Yearwood committed to strengthen Restorative Practices and literacy by having school administrators take part in free, already existing training for these programs.

Community Safety & Equity

In May 2025, the US DOJ withdrew its Consent Decree for policing reforms. Anticipating this result, CLOUT secured the following commitments from Mayor Greenberg at our Nehemiah Action in April 2025: 1) to implement the Consent Decree reforms, 2) to hire an independent monitor, and 3) to establish community oversight.

So far, a plan for the city's self-imposed Consent Decree has been released, an independent monitor has been hired, and a "Community Safety Commission" (including a representative from CLOUT) has been formed. The Commission will monitor both the Consent Decree reforms as well as the Safe Louisville plan to reduce violent crime. CLOUT will continue to track implementation of these reforms for years to come.

Learn more