A home, available for sale. (Photo by Brandon Bell/Getty Images)

Housing advocates are optimistic Ohio lawmakers will put forth legislation to increase the supply of affordable housing during the next General Assembly.

Home Matters to Ohio, a coalition of affordable housing advocates and businesses, are asking lawmakers to increase the number of Ohio Low-Income Housing Tax Credits to $500 million annually, improve the single-family housing tax credit program, establish a home improvement program, provide legal assistance to qualified renters facing eviction, and support innovative solutions for housing. 

“This housing policy platform really focuses on what we’ve already done well by bolstering our existing programs, but also has some new and aspirational programs that we think will address our housing gaps,” said Homeport CEO Leah Evans. “Collectively, these policy recommendations will help move the needle on housing in Ohio and provide measurable change in the amount and quality of housing and most importantly, the well being and stability of Ohio community residents.” 

Home Matters to Ohio is a coalition of affordable housing advocates and businesses including the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, Habitat for Humanity of Ohio, the Ohio Capital Corporation for Housing, Ohio Housing Council, Ohio Land Bank Association, and the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, among others. 

One of the biggest housing challenges is the cost, Evans said. 

“It costs so much to produce housing nowadays in our market across the state, so how do we manage that cost?” she said. “On the other side, affordability, the residents that we’re often talking about that are the most vulnerable, their wages have not cut up with inflation, so they’re not making enough to meet those minimum standards of what we see going on across the state in terms of rent.”

Ohioans need to be earning at least $20.81 an hour working a full-time job to be able to afford a “modest” two-bedroom apartment — a 9% increase from last year’s report, according to a report issused earlier this year by COHHIO and the National Low Income Housing Coalition. 

There is a shortage of 267,382 affordable rental units available to the 444,768 extremely low-income households in Ohio, according to a report released earlier this year by COHHIO and NLIHC. 

Ohio landlords filed nearly 108,000 eviction cases last year — the most since 2015 — and homelessness in Ohio increased 7% in 2023 over the previous year, according to COHHIO.

Two new housing tax credits were born out of Ohio’s last state budget — the single-family housing tax credits and the Ohio Low-Income Housing Tax Credit. A new tw0-year state budget is due by July.

“We hope that we’ll see some expansion of those programs,” said COHHIO Executive Director Amy Riegel.

Housing advocates are asking lawmakers to expand OLIHTC to $500 million per year through FY2031.

The Ohio Housing Finance Agency received applications that could have created 3,505 affordable housing units in the first year, but were only able to fund 859 units.

Lawmakers will wrap up the current General Assembly this month and the new General Assembly will start in January. 

“I think when you start a new General Assembly and the budget cycle, that’s really when a lot of the funding gets done,” said Tony Long, general counsel of the Ohio Chamber of Commerce.

Five bipartisan lawmakers created the Senate Select Committee on Housing, which held hearings across the state for almost a year to learn more about the housing challenges Ohioans are facing. 

The committee released a report with 23 recommendations — including  increasing opportunities for homeownership, consumer protection for renters and homebuyers, alternative forms of housing, tax policy, increasing density, capacity-building grants for local governments, zoning technical assistance, third-party review of services, and modifications to the Ohio Housing Finance Agency.

Riegel is optimistic the Senate Select Committee will be able to help move housing legislation. 

“Some of the proposals might not seem as flashy or as bold, but I think that they actually could have more of an impact on housing policy than some of the programs that were larger last time because they do get to those underlying issues,” she said.

Follow OCJ Reporter Megan Henry on X.