A group of nonprofits and housing advocates will hold a march to Cincinnati City Hall tomorrow to urge city elected officials to set aside more funds for affordable housing.
Those groups include nonprofit service organizations like Caracole, Tender Mercies, Lighthouse Youth and Family Services, Bethany House Services, Shelterhouse, Over-the-Rhine Community Housing, Interfaith Hospitality Network of Greater Cincinnati, advocacy groups like the Greater Cincinnati Homeless Coalition and Affordable Housing Advocates, religious organizations like the Metropolitan Area Religious Coalition of Cincinnati, New Prospect Baptist Church, First United Church of Christ, Christ Church Cathedral and a number of other organizations.
Last December, Cincinnati City Council created an affordable housing trust fund to help address a roughly 28,000-unit gap in housing that is affordable to the city's lowest-income residents. Without that affordable housing, some Cincinnatians face becoming cost-burdened — that is, paying high proportions of their income in rent — or worse, becoming homeless. The Homeless Coalition says that roughly 100 people died last year locally as a result of being without a home.
"In Hamilton County, approximately 150,000 people are trying to fit into less than 16,000 affordable homes," a news release about the event says. "Unless we fund the Affordable Housing Trust Fund with significant annual revenues restricted only for affordable housing, tens of thousands of Cincinnatians will never have access to a sustainable home."
The event's organizers want the city to fund 1,000 new units of affordable housing each year. Others, however, including Mayor John Cranley and some members of council, say more subsidized housing isn't the only answer and that creation of market-rate housing can increase housing supply and drive housing costs down.
So far, the city has contributed some one-time money to the housing trust fund but hasn't identified an ongoing budgetary source for the fund.
The event will start with a cookout at 3 p.m. in Laurel Park in the West End followed by a march to Cincinnati City Hall. That march was to conclude with remarks before Cincinnati City Council's public comment session at 5:30 p.m., but council's meeting was rescheduled last week to 2 p.m.
