Housing Our Future: Preserving Affordable Rental Housing

This year we have focused the major themes of the HOF Strategy; supporting vulnerable households, both renters and homeowners, producing more affordable housing, creating systems improvements that will support our housing needs as a region, and on October 15th on one of the most important of our overall goals – the preservation of our existing affordable housing stock. Building new affordable housing is a complex and expensive proposition, one we must accomplish. Holding onto the affordable housing we already have is proving to be every bit as complex and expensive. LISC has been reporting the numbers over the past five years. While we have been working hard and succeeding at producing new affordable rental units, we are losing those we already have at a rapid rate. We have produced 3877 new affordable housing units since 2020, but have actually seen a net overall reduction in total affordable units of 1173. When LISC first reported these findings, it was disappointing. We will present a deeper dive into these numbers on October 15th, with additional research by the team at LISC and Urban Insights. We will also be joined by housing providers in the field working to reinvest in existing affordable rental housing. Greg Johnson, Executive Director of Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA) and Aaron Gornstein, Executive Director of Preservation Of Affordable Housing, Inc. (POAH) will join us to share their efforts to reinvest in the existing stock of housing available to residents with very low incomes. Preserving and operating housing for these families is a daunting task but critically important as we strive to relieve the housing burdens for so many or our neighbors in the region. If we are going to solve the housing crisis in our region, we are going to have to increase production and get very serious about preserving the units we already have. Agenda • Welcome and Introduction Kristen Baker, LISC • Issue Framing Cali Khakoo, Principal Urban Insights • Panel o Greg Johnson, Executive Director, CMHA o Aaron Gornstein, Executive Director, POAH