A Lifetime of Service Continues

Joy Jensen successfully championed affordable housing legislation for Kentucky that unanimously passed both chambers of the Kentucky legislature and was signed into law on April 7. The bill, modeled after Sen. Sherrod Brown’s national “Yes in God’s Backyard” legislation, will enable Kentucky’s religious organizations to develop affordable housing on their properties. Joy worked with state lawmakers Jimmy Higdon and Sarge Pollock to craft the bill.

This achievement drew directly on Joy’s eight years (1988-1995) working as a public housing advocate in St. Louis on behalf of the parish community at St. Alphonsus Liguori (Rock) Church. But the inspiration and passion for her work for affordable housing began in her childhood with her father, a Marine with a love of building and architecture. Joy treasures her childhood experiences in southeast Georgia during the late 1950s, when she went about with her father learning the building details of the fine old homes in the area. She also recalls vividly the unpainted shotgun houses set on stones with no windows — rental housing for the poorest, mostly Black, residents of the town of Albany, Ga., where her family later lived.

As a young sister of the Adorers of the Blood of Christ, Joy trained as a community organizer at St. Louis University. Her American studies graduate program included studies in vernacular housing and architecture, still her dearest love. She had already mastered the skills of blueprints and construction principles. When the Rock Church parish invited her to join their staff and help organize their work with residents at Blumeyer Housing, she accepted with pleasure but also trepidation. A white woman as a staff member in a Black parish in the 1980s threatened to be awkward. But then the community experienced Joy’s tenacious research skills: analyzing 570 Housing and Urban Development (HUD) documents, she built a case to prove that the mayor and
the housing authority had been diverting maintenance funding from Blumeyer. She worked with the tenant board on comprehensive review processes and funding flow charts so they could continue to monitor and advocate for themselves. And she
established relationships with Sen. Christopher Bond’s office in Washington, D.C., which led to an invitation to testify before the Senate Subcommittee on Urban Affairs, Housing and Budget in 1992 — testimony for which the HUD staffers praised her.

From her room overlooking the courtyard at Loretto Living Center, Joy turned the same focused attention to the possibilities she saw in Sherrod Brown’s housing proposal. She prepared documentation on Kentucky’s affordable housing shortage and tweaked Brown’s bill to fit Kentucky. She then asked Mary Swain to organize a meeting with Loretto’s state senator, Jimmy Higdon, who brought Rep. Sarge Pollock with him to the meeting. Without hesitation, Jimmy looked up from reading the data and the document and said, “This is a good bill. I’ll submit it to the Senate.”

It was late in the 2025 legislative season, with only time to pass the bill in the Senate. The House took it up in 2026; it passed and was signed by Gov. Andy Beshear April 7. A ceremonial signing by the governor is being planned at Loretto Motherhouse this summer.