CINCINNATI — Three years after launching a bold initiative to bring new homeowners to neighborhoods overrun by bad landlords, the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority is looking for new ways to grow its CARE Homes Initiative.
“My prediction is that we will be successful in raising funds so that we can purchase more,” said Laura Brunner, the Port’s president and CEO. “I am very confident that if we had $20 million, we could spend it, making good decisions on some bulk purchases.”
The Port has gotten national attention for the program, which began in 2022 with a $16.5 million bond issue to finance the purchase and renovation of 194 homes, previously owned by Raineth Properties. The Los Angeles-based landlord lost its properties in foreclosure, after the city sued it in 2019 for failing to pay property taxes and neglecting rental properties in Price Hill, Avondale, Bond Hill and Evanston.
The Raineth purchase was quickly followed by the $1.5 million purchase of 60 lots in Sedamsville. They were owned by a local landlord who was jailed for not addressing building code violations and stalking a former tenant.
Eighteen of the Sedamsville properties are now being renovated so they can be sold to new homeowners for up to $180,000. The Port has already sold 47 of the Raineth properties for an average price of $150,000. And it’s talking to tenants about trading their leases to mortgages.
“Our original goal was to turn these 194 homes into home ownership within five years,” Brunner said. “Because of the number of vacancies and the extent of work that needed to be done, it’s going to take longer than that. So, at the end of year three, we will have all the vacant 60 homes sold and then it will take more than two years to turn the rest of them.”
Go on a journey with one of the homeowners in the video player below:
Examining the impact
The program is already having a subtle but significant impact on streets like Winfield Avenue in West Price Hill, where four Raineth properties were among the 57 parcels on the no-outlet street between Carson Elementary School and Elder High School.
The Port sold two of the four properties to new homeowners.
Ella Carre moved to Winfield in November, trading a Pleasant Ridge apartment for a home where her great-grandson could ride his bike without risk of heavy traffic.
“I seen this story on TV about it, the Port houses,” Carre said. “They’re supposed to be fixing it so they can sell the houses to low-income people. So, I looked into it and decided to do it.”
Carre was born in Haiti and moved to Cincinnati in 1976, working as a nurse’s aide and serving in the U.S. Army Reserves for 14 years.
“She was so steadfast, and she was so patient,” said Barry Bates, a Coldwell Bank realtor who guided Carre through the Care Homes program. “When this house came up on the Care list, this is where she wanted to be.”
Within a few months of moving, Carre befriended the owner of an apartment building next door. She suspected some of its tenants were drug dealers, while others were just noisy. Whatever the problem was, Carre said things have improved in the last few months.
“She mentioned the fact that her husband was the one who took care of the property and then he died suddenly,” Carre said. “I kind of feel bad for her ‘cause she seemed so sad.”
That’s the healing power of home ownership, Bates argues.
“If she can impact that one house next door, you multiply that four-fold for the other Raineth properties on the street,” Bates said. “It’s that rock that falls in the water. It starts to ripple."
'Something we could make our own'
Two miles west of Winfield Ave, another ripple is spreading from Ashbrook Drive, where first-time home buyer Taylor Murch saw a renovated Raineth property as a bargain.
“This one was definitely a bit more finished than others we were looking for in the price range,” said Murch. “But also like a blank slate for something we could make our own.”
Murch and his wife, Emma Wiskowski, paid $195,000 for the 69-year-old home on a quiet cul-de-sac near Western Hills High School, according to Hamilton County records. Raineth bought it from Bank of America in 2015 for $21,500.
“The roof is a little bit older,” Murch said. “But all the major appliances (are new). So, furnace, water heater, all new electric.”
Photos from the Hamilton County Auditor’s website show how the home deteriorated in the last two decades. Now, its future includes a young couple with remodeling plans, including a first-floor laundry space, a greenhouse and garden.
“We had a neighbor here who was very friendly and greeted us and told about the history of the house. And they were happy that we were moving in,” Murch said.
Is it worth the investment?
These are stories that Brunner wants to proliferate in Hamilton County, which has yet to recover from a national foreclosure crisis that peaked in 2008. Home prices plummeted and institutional investors responded by purchasing more than 3,000 single-family homes in which problems emerged.
Rising rents, evictions, subpar maintenance and the removal of landscaping were among the problems the Port was trying to solve with the Care Homes Initiative.
“We might own 800 vacant lots in the county, inside our land bank,” Brunner said. “Building new houses on all those lots, that helps. It’s one thing that needs to be done. But most of those vacant lots are in the same neighborhoods where most of these institutional investors are. So, if you’re trying to bring the whole neighborhood back, you’ve got to eliminate the bad owners in the rental properties at the same time you’re trying to build new houses on the vacant lots.”
The work isn't cheap, but Brunner argues the bonds will be paid off by the sale of properties, rental income from the roughly 130 properties that were stabilized by the Port and grants to offset renovation costs.
The Port spent an average of $75,000 to purchase the Raineth properties and more than $75,000 per home on repairs done to date. In Sedamsville, the Port is seeking $4.5 million in funding from the city, county and state.
Bates, who describes himself as “Miss Ella’s” realtor, has no doubt the spending is worth it.
“I grew up in Evanston and my sister still lives in the home that we grew up in,” Bates said. “That whole area around there has changed. I can see what’s different over there. It’s very visible.”
