Hamilton County’s Affordable Housing Leverage Fund has financed 948 total housing units over the last fiscal year, which ended March 31.
The program is funded by the city of Cincinnati, Hamilton County and several private donors. It's managed by the nonprofit Cincinnati Development Fund, which presented an annual report to a City Council committee Tuesday.
"The point of the program is that there are multiple sources coming in [and] we're making, oftentimes, multiple contributions to a project from multiple different programs," said Chief Strategy Officer Luke Blocher. "But that's all happening through one process which is making that easier to access."
About two-thirds of the new units will be in the city of Cincinnati. Blocher says before the AHLF was established a few years ago, the city was averaging 250 new housing units per year; now, that average is 650 to 700.
By the numbers: affordability and cost
The affordability of housing is defined by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which says housing is affordable when the rent or mortgage plus utilities costs no more than 30% of the household's income.
HUD publishes a list of the area median income, and breaks down households by a percentage of that AMI. Current AMI for the metro area is $111,800 — a household at 50% AMI is making half of the median income in the area.
All of the units financed by the AHLF are affordable to households making 80% AMI or less, which is $89,450 for a family of four. And 84% of the units are affordable to households making 60% AMI or less, which is about $67,000 for a family of four.
| AMI | Number of units |
| 0-30% AMI | 27 |
| 31-50% AMI | 206 |
| 51-60% AMI | 560 |
| 61-80% AMI | 155 |
The cost to build housing continues to increase. The average cost per unit for the multifamily mixed-used housing projects funded this year reached over $336,000.
The average public subsidy per unit was $27,526 — that represents only public funding from the city or county. Including low-interest loans from private sources, the average AHLF funding per unit was $46,418.
Challenges
The biggest challenge to building more affordable housing continues to be cost.
Blocher says the pandemic made pretty much everything more expensive.
"We had this huge, massive price escalation because of interest rates, inflation, material supplies, after COVID — all these things that we hoped would then go away," he said. "Interest rates never went back down. Tariffs came in and raised new, different costs. The challenges have not gone back down."
The city’s only annual contribution to the AHLF is up to $5 million in the annual carryover budget process. The county has no annual funding mechanism, but contributed significant funds in the past, including as part of their federal stimulus allocation.
City Council member Evan Nolan says everyone is going to have to step up.
"If you are serious about addressing the affordability crisis, we have to invest funds into projects like this — into the Affordable Housing Leverage Fund and into the neighborhood development funds," he said.
Blocher says one way local governments can help that doesn't cost any money is to "quadruple down" on coordination and collaboration.
"Just take the fundamental principle that every step in the process you add, adds time and money," he told Council members. "And we should be trying to condense those as much as possible."
Read more:
