24 to watch in 2024: Head of housing agency has key spot in Eastern KY flood recovery
The Lexington Herald-Leader is profiling 24 individuals this month that you should be keeping an eye on in 2024. The selected group represents a cross-section of industries, political parties, missions and the state itself. We believe each is notable for their contributions to Kentucky, as well as their plans for the next 12 months.
Who: R. Scott McReynolds, executive director of Housing Development Alliance. The non-profit, based in Hazard, develops affordable housing, working primarily in Perry, Knott, Breathitt and Leslie counties. McReynolds was hired in 1994 as the first employee and has worked there since.
Background: McReynolds grew up near Atlanta and has a master’s degree in divinity. He moved to Perry County in the early 1990s to work with the Appalachia Service Project, which hosts home-repair mission trips, before going to work with Housing Development Alliance. Since 1994, the Housing Development Alliance has built 370 homes and repaired about 1,000.
Why 2024 will be notable: Local officials say the shortage of affordable, good-quality housing in Eastern Kentucky was already a crisis before devastating flooding in July 2022 destroyed or damaged thousands of homes. Housing Development Alliance has doubled its construction work since the flood in order to meet the need. With millions in federal disaster relief expected to be available sometime this year for new housing in the region, 2024 will likely be the busiest ever for the organization.
Why do you think he will be successful in 2024? Wendy K. Smith, deputy executive director of the Kentucky Housing Corporation said McReynolds is building on decades of hard-earned success.
“Scott is mission-minded, smart as heck, and entrepreneurial in his drive to offer quality housing for families and communities in Eastern Kentucky. He has grown HDA into a leading housing developer and go-to partner for local governments, state agencies, financial institutions and philanthropic organizations. Scott and HDA are already rehabbing and rebuilding homes for flood survivors — they are essential to long-term disaster recovery in the region,” Smith said.
Why is 2024 such an important year for you and your organization? The 2022 disaster was a terrible blow to many families and to the region, but also focused attention on housing needs and galvanized efforts to obtain land for large residential developments outside the floodplain, creating an opportunity for significant improvements.
“The need is huge, but also with this opportunity that’s coming with the attention and the money and the land, I feel like we have an opportunity to be at a scale that even just a year or two ago was unimaginable,” McReynolds said. “The thing about housing is you get all these other impacts. When you create good housing you’re creating more jobs and you’re creating tax base. We talked a long time about trying to move the needle on poverty, move the needle on the housing crisis. We may be at a scale that we can begin to actually see some significant movement.”
