The city of Cincinnati believes it is beginning to tackle its housing issues using a grant and creativity. The city’s BuildReady initiative to create new pre-approved housing plans for two- to four-unit buildings launched after receiving a $2 million Pathways to Remove Housing Obstacles Grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
The city collaborated between the department of community and economic development, city planning, buildings and inspections and the city innovation team to create new homes in an efficient way, said Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval at a press conference on March 3.
Now, it is bringing that work to the public with an open call for the design and the construction of two multifamily homes based on the final plans.
Pureval said the goal with BuildReady was to allow quicker, easier and more accessible housing for smaller-scale builders to create the housing that is needed in Cincinnati. The city government hopes that creating free, accessible housing designs through a public competition can help overcome a major hurdle.
“It is a well understood challenge here and everywhere else that housing is extremely expensive and extremely complicated to get out of the ground,” the mayor said. “That is particularly true for builders who don’t have the same resources as larger developers, and it’s particularly true for the kinds of multifamily missing middle housing that we know residents want.”
City Manager Sheryl Long said this public competition is a solution borrowed from other cities that have seen success with similar design competitions.
“So we’re hoping for a big response, and the public is invited to join a working group that will review and score each submission,” Long added that other cities have received hundreds of submissions.
“This type of housing is denser and more affordable than building new single family homes. But there are hurdles in the development process,” Cincinnati’s city manager continued. “By creating a set of pre-approved design plans, which anyone can access for free. We’ve removed one of those hurdles, as well as several months out of the development process.”
Long added that winning the pro-housing grant has been a catalyst for designing pre-approved plans for city neighborhoods.
“Adding the design competition component as an innovative and robust way of seeking community input,” Long said. “Professional firms who submit for the request for proposals will need to follow guidelines established by the HUD PRO-housing grant by the beginning of 2027. We anticipate having the final plans in hand, and will work with the city agencies to formalize the approval of them.”
BuildReady will fully deploy in several phases, according to the press release:
March and April: The city is having initial conversations with community councils and other stakeholders to introduce BuildReady and start understanding what Cincinnatians are looking for with small, multifamily housing.
Summer 2026: The open call design competition will run for several weeks. Professionals, students and residents are invited to submit their ideas for small multifamily housing designs.
Fall 2026: Design competition submissions will be reviewed, with an invitation for the public to vote on their favorite design(s) and provide feedback.
Late 2026: Using feedback from the design competition, the city will create a request for proposals to solicit designs for pre-approved plans.
Early 2027: Once pre-approved plans are finalized, the city will subsidize the construction of at least two demonstration projects built using the plans. The plans will then be freely available for any developer or builder who wishes to use them.