CINCINNATI — New affordable housing is coming to Pendleton.
Construction crews have been working on Bennett Point for months at the corner of Reading Road and 12th Street. The complex has two buildings.
“It is going to be made up of one-, two- and three-bedroom units and it will have a laundry facility that is open to the public. As well as washer/dryer hookups inside. It will also have granite countertops, luxury vinyl tile flooring. We’re reimagining affordable housing,” said Senior Communications Coordinator for Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority Lesley Wardlow.
Wardlow said there will be a total of 56 units, and 33 of them will be project-based housing.
“The project-based voucher ones the subsidy stays with the unit. It does not go with the family versus section 8 or housing choice voucher, it goes with the family, so they choose where they want to go with that voucher. With these the subsidy actually just stays with the unit,” she said. “We have already received 800 applications ... so the need to fill affordable housing is definitely there. People need it and people want it.”
For these people rent will be 30-40% of their income. CMHA pays the rest using federal funding.
“This area is a high rent area, so the affordability of our rent is not going to be as high as you would pay somewhere else, so you know you pay based on what your income is,” she said.
Wardlow added the complex will have a fitness center, a gathering room, and a public laundry facility.
“There’s no laundry facility in this area at all. No public laundry facility, so that was one thing we wanted to do to help out the community,” Wardlow said.
She noted they are still accepting applications but the hundreds of applications they have already seen shows there’s a need for more affordable housing.
Valerie Daley is the senior program director at Local Initiatives Support Corporation Greater Cincinnati. Part of what they do is conduct research on affordable housing in the area.
“In Hamilton County, we’re short about 31,000 households at the lowest-income bracket. So, those are families that are working but making not enough to meet their housing costs. And, that income is about $18,000 for a family. That’s 30 percent of the Hamilton County area median income. So, that’s a significant portion of our overall household, about 1 in 10,” Daley said.
She noted Hamilton County ties for second with Lucas County in the state for the prevalence of households that are severely cost-burden. Cuyahoga County takes the first spot. She said 26.5 percent of renters in Hamilton County are cost-burdened.
Daley said the city and county have made some progress on the affordable housing front.
“Over the past five years we’ve been able to reinvest in about 1,700 affordable units and over the past just a couple of years we’ve been able to fund 1,600 units,” Daley said.
In an email, Daley added the “City of Cincinnati and other Hamilton County jurisdictions are exploring changes to their zoning codes to allow for production of more housing types, including attached single-family homes and smaller multi-family units that might have fewer than 10 units. Many zoning districts currently only allow for the production of single-family homes. Policy changes that expand housing type options in those districts could result in greater production of units.”
Wardlow said the first 23 units in the first building will be done in September and the remaining units will be completed by the end of the year.
She added they will first process all of the applications to make sure the applicants qualify, and then they will put them in order based on when they applied.
There will also be some public housing and market-rate units available. Applications for those units are not open yet.
