Cincinnati Mayor John Cranley says he has a long-term plan to shore up the city’s affordable housing. But a super-majority of Cincinnati City Council is calling for more action in the meantime.
Seven members of council have signed a motion by Councilman David Mann asking the city to move more quickly on supplementary efforts, saying Cranley’s program to address the city’s urgent affordable housing needs will take a while to pay off.
During the 2017 mayoral election, Cranley floated a plan that would put voluntary contributions from developers receiving tax abatements into an affordable housing fund via the same mechanism that is contributing funds to the city’s streetcar in downtown and Over-the-Rhine.
Those arrangements are called voluntary tax incentive contribution agreements, though you’ll often seem them abbreviated as VTICA.
Generally, developers pay a quarter of their potential tax bill on improvements they’ve made to property in the city and get the rest written off for a decade or more.
Under the city’s current VTICA, a developer agrees to another 15 percent contribution to a fund that pays for streetcar operations. Similar arrangements in other neighborhoods could be used for affordable housing, Cranley says.
The proposal is one solution to Hamilton County’s 40,000-unit gap in affordable housing for the region’s poorest renters. When moderate-income renters are considered, that gap is even larger.
CityBeat published a long look into disappearing affordable housing in one neighborhood, Over-the-Rhine, this summer and next week will publish another story on housing affordability in Walnut Hills.
In OTR, the most affordable housing — units costing about $400 for a one bedroom — decreased by 73 percent from 2000 to 2015, going from 3,235 units to just 869. OTR has also seen a decrease in residents living in the neighborhood who receive rental help from HUD attached to Section 8 vouchers. With vouchers, HUD picks up the cost of rent above 30 percent of a recipient’s income for any private residence that accepts them. At its peak, in 2004, 545 voucher holders lived in OTR. By 2015, that number had dropped to 326, according to HUD data.
Mann praised Cranley’s new program, but says more needs to be done.
“The VTICA affordable housing initiative is a great start,” a Jan. 18 letter from Mann to city administration reads. “Since new revenues from newly approved commercial developments do not produce VTICA payments in lieu of taxes until the development is constructed and added to the tax rolls, we face delay before many dollars become available for affordable housing.”
Mann also points out that buildings in downtown and Over-the-Rhine aren’t part of the new program, and that the VTICA program can’t meet the city’s needs by itself.
The letter asks city administration to suggest other methods for increasing the number of affordable housing units in the city, including leveraging tax abatements the city offers developers, changing zoning rules or flat-out requiring affordable housing for development projects involving any source of public subsidy.
Council members Tamaya Dennard, Chris Seelbach, Jeff Pastor, Wendell Young, Greg Landsman and P.G. Sittenfeld have signed on to Mann’s motion.
This article appears in Jan 17-24, 2018.
