Only a third of Cincinnati neighborhoods added housing units between 2010 and 2020, according to a new report from the Cincinnati USA Regional Chamber.
The chamber's Center for Research and Data released the report this week, as a follow-up to its report on Embracing Growth: Principles for Regional Housing. Director Brandon Rudd says despite gaining more than 12,000 residents that decade, Cincinnati lost more than 2,000 housing units from 2010 to 2020.
"One way that it happens is that people buy up buildings that have multiple units in them, maybe taking homes that have been converted to two or three units and converting them back into single unit homes," Rudd told WVXU. "In some of the neighborhoods that haven't seen as much investment in housing, we've seen buildings that have gone offline because they were dilapidated, they've been torn down."
RELATED: A new property tax task force aims to help homeowners cope with big increases
Avondale had the largest decrease in housing units, losing over a thousand.
(story continues after table)
"Some neighborhoods that you think of as being the most desirable in the city — Mt. Lookout, for example — only added 20-some net units over the decade that we looked at," Rudd said. "It's probably not for a lack of demand, kind of giving credence to the idea that it is these regulations and zoning policies that are keeping us from building the housing."
Cincinnati officials are pitching a comprehensive zoning reform package known as Connected Communities, aimed at making it easier to build housing, especially in Neighborhood Business Districts and along major corridors.
RELATED: Mayor Pureval wants to redesign Cincinnati. Here's what that could look like
The analysis also shows a correlation between housing growth and a smaller increase in home value: the ten neighborhoods that lost the most housing units saw an average 346% home value increase from 2010 to 2023; the ten neighborhoods that added the most housing saw an average 155% value increase.
"This is a cumulative increase over a 10-plus year period, so it sounds kind of high but that's a big difference between a 155% increase versus a 346% increase," Rudd said.
Rudd says analyzing rent as well would show a more accurate view of housing costs, but that data is not available on such a granular level.
See the full report at this link, or embedded below, including details about methodology:
