Starting in Reconstruction and continuing through the Jim Crow era, formerly enslaved black people moved to Louisville, Kentucky’s urban center neighborhoods like Russell and Smoketown. In many cases, their descendants lived there for generations — until recent years, when thousands of black residents started being displaced by foreclosures, evictions, and spiking housing costs. Developers have swooped in, selling the areas’ homes to mostly white, higher-income buyers.

This story of Louisville’s gentrification is similar to that of many US cities. But Louisville’s black community and allies aim to write a different ending. The Smoketown Neighborhood Association and other community organizations formed the Historically Black Neighborhood Assembly, which teamed with City Councilor Jecorey Arthur to draft a proposed Historically Black Neighborhood Ordinance (HBNO).

The HBNO targets an Achilles’s heel of the gentrification process: it is often deeply reliant on government funding. Developers have received millions of dollars from both the Louisville Metro Government and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development to develop market-rate or nearly market-rate housing on the same sites where affordable housing once stood. The HBNO aims to cut off that supply. It would block the Louisville government from providing any resources — including money, land, or staff support — to development projects unless those projects can prove that they will be creating truly affordable housing.