Protect Yorktown Tenants Facing Displacement

Homes over parking lots, people over profit! Help us protect the Yorktown tenants from displacement and Collegiate's greed

In the midst of a major housing shortage, Louisville should protect affordable apartments. On March 8 it tried to: an effort that was aborted by private school Collegiate’s greed.

In 2022, Collegiate submitted a proposal to demolish the Yorktown Apartment complex in order to build a new parking lot for their campus. Collegiate had bought the property eight years ago, with the goal of using it for future expansion. It is therefore no mystery why they failed to upkeep the property, or why it has since become “unusable for habitation,” in their words.

With support from the Louisville Tenants Union and other Cherokee Triangle residents, the Yorktown tenants organized and fought back, asserting their interests in public hearings with the Cherokee Triangle Architectural Review Board. After a particularly powerful showing of tenant and community power at the March 8 board meeting, the board voted to REJECT the demolition proposal as, to quote one board member, “trading three buildings where people live in a residential neighborhood for 56 parking spots isn't a very fair trade."

Despite their proposal being denied, and despite community outrage, Collegiate is moving forward with the evictions (see the copy of the eviction warning below), which can only be interpreted as retaliation against the tenants and a bad faith dismissal of the board’s verdict.

Collegiate has not done enough to alleviate the financial burden they placed on their tenants: poor and working-class families who cannot afford to simply up and move whenever it's convenient for Collegiate, especially in a neighborhood like the Highlands, where most of the remaining affordable housing has already been bought by Collegiate!

We are therefore reaching out to the community, and to Collegiate’s student and parent base in particular, to absorb the damages. Those damages include, but aren't limited to: moving expenses, commuting expenses, missed wages, increases in rent and utilities, the costs of arranging or rearranging childcare, and the costs of transferring schools.

We believe our goal of $25,000, the equivalent of one year of tuition at Collegiate, is more than achievable.

Thank you in advance to the parents who have voiced their outrage about Collegiate’s actions, and for showing up for the Yorktown tenants to ensure that their humanity is considered and that their basic needs are met.