Sustainability
Love City Pillars
Love City’s Pillars are the characteristics that we have identified as being present in all healthy, thriving communities. These fundamental traits are Economic Sustainability, Affordable Healthcare, Quality Education, and Affordable Housing. Having those strong foundations ensures the community will continue to grow today and for many years to come.
+ Economic Stimulation
Creating businesses, bringing jobs to the neighborhood, and hiring local will launch our area into a thriving community.
Fish Fry: Provides a new prepared food option for the neighborhood and sustainability for the non-profit.
3 Micro-Businesses Launched: Provides skills training, jobs and income for our neighbors.
+ Healthcare
Becoming healthy is the first step toward wholeness. Hyper-local healthcare is the start of building a healthy, whole community.
Preventative Screenings: Screenings offered on Love City campus sites, either at events or through Mighty Oak Academy.
Friends of Health: Relationships built with local healthcare providers.
+ Education
Access to quality education choices lifts up the entire community from young children to adults.
Mighty Oak Academy: Community Choice school for grades K - 8, offering an opportunity for quality education in the neighborhood for kids in the neighborhood.
Mighty Oak Academy PreSchool: Planned pre-school serving ages 2 - 5, preparing kids for school with kindergarten ready curriculum and social and emotional skills to succeed in school.
+ Affordable Housing
Providing safe, clean, affordable homes to families in the neighborhood.
Community Participation: Families living in Love City housing are a part of the community and participate in various ways whether it’s volunteering, working for Love City or just being good neighbors that look out for those around them.
Neighborhood Restoration: Love City homes are previously abandoned or vacant properties that have been brought back to life.
Economic Stimulation
Economic Stimulation is an important part of Love City’s DNA. A healthy community has an economy that can help keep dollars flowing through our community for longer before they end up getting spent outside of our community. To keep dollars flowing locally, you have to create more businesses. These local businesses will create more opportunities for our neighbors to spend their money in their neighborhood, and they will create more accessible jobs for neighbors who do not have a reliable transportation solution. The longer money can stay in the neighborhood economy, the more likely it is to go towards restoring this community. Love City helps create Economic Stimulation by creating micro-businesses like St. C’s Tees and Porkland BBQ while also equipping our neighbors to create their own local businesses through Hustleville.
Louisville Healthcare
Louisville is a healthcare city with many recognized healthcare colleges and startups. However, this does not mean that every neighborhood has access to that healthcare. With many in our neighborhood not having a primary care provider, the first visit is usually to the Emergency Room, and without reliable transportation, the first call is normally for an ambulance. This normalcy leads to fixing immediate problems without always providing the preventative care that comes with a Primary Care Physician. While insurance helps protect many of our families from the financial expenses of ER visits and Ambulances, it still puts a huge strain on our healthcare systems, extending outside of this community. To help provide quality, affordable healthcare, Love City partners with various organizations to provide Mighty Oak Academy families with speech, hearing, dental, mental health, and exercise services.
Louisville Education
Education is one of the most powerful tools in helping to create meaningful change. It is a huge part of children's lives as they spend one-third of their waking hours there. Schools have a significant impact not only on academics, but also on social-emotional learning of children. Love City recognized the huge role of education and always had long term plans to have a place where kids could come and learn, Covid-19 was just a catalyst to do it now. At the beginning of the pandemic, we opened our building for kids to be able to come in, use the wifi, and have support from adult volunteers to encourage them and help answer questions.
As we performed informal assessments, we realized our kids were many grade-levels below where they ought to be, and all of the kids were within a mile of the building, yet they went to 17 different schools all across the city, a result of forced bussing. That bussing was originally intended to integrate the system, but we watch as it divides our community and splits up families into schools all across the city. We knew our neighborhood needed a community school, a school rooted in love that brought families together and surrounded them with the resources they needed to succeed outside of just academics. So in January of 2021 we opened our doors to our first 40 K-8 students.
Affordable Housing Louisville KY
Affordable housing should not mean cheap, low quality housing, but it is often thought of in that way. We offer housing based on income to members of our community who need a place to stay. These houses are meant for individuals/families who are involved in helping create change in our neighborhood. People have to be able to afford to stay here in order to continue building community, and this also feeds into economic sustainability by helping keep money in the local economy.
