Nearly three times as many affordable housing units have been built this year, thanks to a city-partnered nonprofit, officials said Tuesday.
Luke Blocher, chief strategy officer and general counsel for the Cincinnati Development Fund (CDF), told the city council’s Equitable Housing and Growth Committee that the city averaged about 250 affordable units per year from 2017 to 2021. Since partnering with CDF, that figure has climbed to roughly 700 units annually. CDF is a nonprofit community development financial institution that partners with the City of Cincinnati to revitalize neighborhoods and develop affordable housing.
In fiscal year 2026, the fund financed 640 affordable homes within Cincinnati city limits and 308 additional units in surrounding areas. Blocher said 84% were funded through the Affordable Housing Loan Fund at or below 60% of Area Median Income, the threshold the council originally set when the partnership began. Nearly 90% of those units were rentals.
Blocher said that with rising housing costs and interest rates, the work is getting harder. He said each single-family unit costs about $315,000.
“I did the math on it. If you want to subsidize 40,000 units at $315,000. That’s about $12 million, which isn’t feasible,” said councilman Mark Jeffreys. “The CDF model is needed, and it is the right model.”
Jeffreys said the CDF model was essential because traditional government subsidies could not meet the city’s needs at scale. He added that the city started the Affordable Housing Leverage Fund about three years ago, but had been working with the fund for several years.
Since 1988, CDF has invested $561 million in the region, leveraging $1.4 billion in additional investment, Blocher told the council. It has financed more than 9,000 housing units, created 27,000 jobs and worked in 42 neighborhoods and municipalities in Hamilton County over the past decade.
The fund is among the leading affordable housing organizations in the country and compared Cincinnati’s approach with efforts in Columbus and Atlanta, Blocher said. Columbus voters approved $500 million in housing bonds last November, he noted, while Atlanta’s mayor created a city-government task force backed by a community foundation similar to CDF.
Despite the gains, Blocher said more work remains.
“We’re not where we want to be,” he said. “We want to do more. But this is a meaningful difference from where it was before this program.”
Councilmember Meeka Owens called the presentation encouraging and urged CDF to recruit additional private investors, especially as higher costs continue not to vanish.
“You’ve created an ecosystem in which investors can now invest because there’s certainty behind that system,” Owens said.
CDF’s partners this year included the KeyBank Foundation, the Kidd Family Foundation, the MassMutual Foundation, the Summit Foundation and the Federal Home Loan Bank of Cincinnati. Blocher said the organization is actively seeking additional investment partners.
Blocher said his organization must intensify its focus on coordination, that each additional step in the process drives up both time and costs, and that those steps should be streamlined wherever possible. He said the work is best when the city, CDF and private partners work together.
“We have to get to the end point where this is a seamless system, not a series of one-offs, and that doesn’t cost $100 million,” he said.