Cincinnati Council is divided over how to spend about a million dollars leftover from a grant aimed at preventing homelessness. A few council members with opposing plans agree on one thing: the process for funding outside organizations, known as leveraged support, is broken.
City Council will return from summer recess on Sep. 8. At least six motions related to leveraged support have been filed; most, if not all, are expected to be on the agenda for that afternoon's Budget, Finance and Governance Committee.
The only motion with signatures from a majority of council members would allocate $300,000 to supplement leveraged support grants to outside organizations, unrelated to housing or homelessness prevention. Note: you can learn more about leveraged support in this article below.
Budget Committee Chair Jeff Cramerding is one of the sponsors of the motion, but he tells WVXU he would rather the funding be re-allocated toward the original purpose: housing and homelessness prevention.
“My colleagues were in a different position, and some wanted to spend all of the [leftover] Impact Award and take all the money from housing,” Cramerding told WVXU. “This was a compromise.”
This motion, which has enough support to pass unless someone changes their mind, is co-signed by Ryan James, Mark Jeffreys, Evan Nolan, and Jan-Michele Lemon Kearney.
Another motion (signed by Kearney, James, and Scotty Johnson) would allocate $500,000 for the city’s youth employment program.
Anna Albi has two motions: one asks for $125,000 to supplement leveraged support grants to Women Helping Women and the YWCA; the other motion requests $50,000 for Freestore Foodbank.
A motion from Meeka Owens and Seth Walsh would spend about $968,000 for the Access to Counsel Ecosystem program, primarily for direct rent assistance.
“Housing stability is the critical issue of today, and it is rooted in affordability,” Owens told WVXU. “We can't use affordability as a tagline and not actually address the problem and dissect it.”
The motion also includes $150,000 for youth homelessness prevention work at Lighthouse, and $50,000 for Bethany House.
The sixth and final motion, also from Owens and Walsh, proposes supplementing leveraged support grants from sources other than the leftover Impact Award.
Why $1 million is available
Three years ago, City Council approved a $2.1 million grant aimed at preventing homelessness with predictive data analytics. It was the first so-called Impact Award from the Human Services Fund. It was much larger than the city typically awards, and went to a coalition of several nonprofits led by Strategies to End Homelessness.
President and CEO Kevin Finn tells WVXU the project is unique and innovative, but faced unexpected challenges in the early planning stages. Most of the money was budgeted for direct services like case management and emergency rental assistance, but Finn says it was initially difficult to reach at-risk families because of outdated contact information.
Finn says those obstacles have been overcome, but by that time the project was behind on spending.
The city contract goes through the end of 2026, and about $1.14 million is expected to remain unspent at that time. Finn says the nonprofit has secured private funding to continue the project into 2027 and beyond; he gives the city credit for providing startup funding.
Fixing a ‘broken’ system
Leveraged support is normally part of the biennial budget process, but city administration delayed it this year. Two ordinances are expected to be on the agenda Tuesday that allocate nearly $1.7 million to some 30 organizations. Examples include the Children’s Choir of Greater Cincinnati, Mill Creek Alliance, and the Urban League of Greater Southwestern Ohio.
The amount allocated to leveraged support was reduced 5.1% for this fiscal year thanks to a general fund deficit. That’s partly why Council is trying to supplement these grants with additional funding, although the amount proposed is well above the reduction.
These dollars are unrelated to the Human Services Fund, which is managed by the United Way and a separate advisory board; you can learn more about that below.
Three Council members tell WVXU the process for leveraged support needs to change.
“We find ourselves in a moment of dealing with a broken process that is called leverage support,” Owens said. “We have more requests than what we have to be able to actually support, and so we find ourselves in moments of thinking, let's do the spread the peanut butter exercise — which ultimately is, at the end of the day, not impactful; is the antithesis to the Impact Award.”
Cramerding says the process needs to be “completely improved.”
“We’ve made a number of important financial reforms to how we did the Human Services awards, and leveraged support is next,” he said.
Albi says this year’s process has “not been great” for the administration or for the organizations applying for funding.
“My perspective is, we've got to get through this funding cycle here, distribute these dollars, try to do as much good as we can with what we have,” Albi said. “But long-term, I’m really interested in reforming this leveraged support process to make it better for everyone involved.”
What is leveraged support?
Within the annual budget, there are a few mechanisms for the city to allocate operating support funding for outside organizations or companies.
The first is the Human Services Fund. It equals at least 1.5% of the general fund each year. It is administered by the United Way. Organizations submit an application for a specific project or program that fits within priority categories set forth by City Council. Grants are awarded every two years as part of the biennial budget process.
The Human Services Advisory Committee, or HSAC, reviews all applications and decides which ones to fund; their recommendations go to Council for a final vote.
This is where the Impact Award originated, under the Council-established priority of “supporting, securing and stabilizing housing for high-risk populations.”
The other mechanism is what’s called leveraged support. These are grants intended to help organizations “leverage” other funding sources to amplify their impact. Organizations apply for a grant directly to the city administration, which makes funding recommendations to City Council for ultimate approval.
Grants are awarded in the categories of arts, environment, and equity and inclusion. Applicants must be an existing organization and must offer a service that directly benefits city residents. Awards are granted between $50,000 and $500,000, with an award above that ceiling only in “extraordinary circumstances.”
Organizations can get funding from both the Human Services Fund and leveraged support, but not for the same program.
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