O
n a sunny day in late August, a group from the Northside Community Council gave four representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency, in from Washington, D.C. and the federal agency’s Region 5 office in Chicago, a winding tour of the neighborhood.
The walking discussion wasn’t primarily about pollution in the once heavily industrial community, setting up renewable energy sources or other topics you’d traditionally associate with environmental issues, however.
Community council members like Mati Senerchia and James Heller-Jackson led the group around the neighborhood’s bustling main business district and residential areas, highlighting the increase in development and activity there. Northside, they say, is gaining a lot of attention as urban living becomes more popular. As that happens, they want to make sure it remains a place that is affordable and accessible to everyone.
The EPA was there to help. Northside was recently chosen from a pool of more than 150 applicants to participate in the agency’s Building Blocks for Sustainable Communities program, which helps communities address issues around equitable development.
Community council members say the EPA’s assistance with planning for change comes at a pivotal, perhaps precarious, moment for a community long known for its affordability, diversity and openness.
“This portion of the neighborhood is a lot lower-income,” Senerchia told the tour group as they stood near the corner of Apple and Blue Rock streets. Recent development in the area has sparked excitement. The new additions include a recently opened brewery and music venue called Urban Artifact and an upcoming move by beloved local gelato vendors DOJO to a nearby spot once occupied by a long-standing but now defunct ice cream stand called Dairy Whip.
Community council members say those developments are positive. But there’s also trepidation.
“One of the concerns we have about the cluster that is developing is that, you know, the Dairy Whip had 10-cent popsicles so that everyone could participate,” Senerchia says. “DOJO gelato is absolutely delicious, but it’s a lot more expensive. A whole lot of people who live here are having businesses displaced that served them and made them feel welcome and comfortable.”
Whether or not ice cream is affordable for everyone seems like a small thing, but the concern is the tip of a much larger iceberg as community advocates look to balance development with preserving businesses and housing that reflect the needs and wants of the neighborhood’s lower-income residents.
A few blocks down Blue Rock along the neighborhood’s Hamilton Avenue business district, a large apartment building is taking shape, its exposed insulation and skeletal framework transitioning into smooth, modern siding. The $13-million Gantry Apartment development will add 129 new market-rate units to the neighborhood, a sign of the high demand for housing there. Those units will start at about $700 a month for a small studio and go up to $1,600 for the largest units. That’s comparable to the neighboring American Can Lofts, which have occupied a former factory next door since 2012.
Elsewhere in the neighborhood, similar apartment and condo projects are also slated to come on line in the next year. These include the redevelopment of the 105-year-old Kirby Road School building by Bloomfield/Schon + Partners, which also did the American Can Lofts. That $4-million project will convert the former Cincinnati Public School, which closed in 2005, into 40 units of luxury apartments. Prices for units there have yet to be announced, but are expected to be comparable.
The pricing of those new developments are in line with other hot urban neighborhoods around the city, perhaps, but are out of reach for many low-income renters and represent a price hike compared to usual rents in Northside.
Overall, the neighborhood sits right at the city’s median household income of $34,000 a year. But about a third of the area’s 3,000 households make much less than that — under $24,000 a year. At that income level, a $700- a -month apartment is unaffordable under the federal government’s guidelines, which stipulate that housing should cost one-third of a household’s monthly income.
What’s more, a significant number in the neighborhood live in much starker conditions. About 500 households in Northside, often tucked away in the neighborhood’s more forgotten corners, make under $10,000 a year.
Many of these families who want to stay in Northside are at the whim of the housing market. Fewer than 7 percent of the neighborhood’s 1,750 rental units are subsidized, according to the community council.
The question Northside faces, advocates for those residents say, is how to progress in a way that preserves the neighborhood’s status as one of Cincinnati’s few truly diverse and integrated communities.
“Neighborhoods like this — and there aren’t many neighborhoods like this — can be rare and valuable assets in addressing some of the structural obstacles for people experiencing poverty,” Senerchia says. “They’re supportive ecosystems. And like other sophisticated natural systems, they’re very hard to recover when they change. “
That change might already be underway. Meredith Smith, a longtime Northside resident, says some of her neighbors have already had to move away.
“It’s getting absolutely more unaffordable,” she says of the neighborhood. “I bought my house for $8,500 seven years ago. You couldn’t do that now.”
The EPA can help identifying these issues and ways to mitigate them, representatives for the agency say.
The agency’s work in Northside comes in the form of $30,000 worth of know-how, expertise and advice from agency experts. The EPA has helped the community council convene a planning team and conduct community surveys and input sessions. It is also drawing up a report about the neighborhood’s issues around equitable development and action steps the community can take to address them. That report should be out later this month.
“People often ask why the EPA cares about these issues,” says Sarah Dale of the agency’s Office of Sustainable Communities, one of the agency’s team members helping Northside. “The premise is that how we grow and develop has an impact on quality of life and general public health.”
Dale says the EPA is working with Northside due to a clear need there.
“The neighborhood is changing fast,” Dale told a crowd at a community input session in late August. “People like the fact there is a mix
of income and mix of races in the neighborhood,
but there’s a risk that that isn’t going to stay.”
Longtime resident Smith says those questions are what keep her engaged and concerned about Northside. She participated in the input and planning sessions the EPA organized last month.
“What we had here were people who were working on major issues, who were really creating community,” she says of some of her neighbors who have already left. “I think that’s what brings me to the table — talking about diversity and inclusion in the neighborhood, making sure everyone is included.” ©
This article appears in Sep 16-22, 2015.
