From Availability to Affordability

From availability to affordability. Renters, homeowners and future homeowners face significant challenges looking for a place to call home.

The Senate’s Select Committee on Housing, chaired by Senator Michele Reynolds, R-Canal Winchester believed that it was important for hearings to be held outside of the Ohio Statehouse, in different communities around Ohio.

,Following lengthy hearings in Marietta and Lima, the committee held an eight-hour forum in Cleveland at the Cleveland Foundation. Troubling stories ranging from rising valuations and property taxes affecting retired Ohioans to inspiring stories of first-time home ownership lifting people out of homelessness and giving them and their families hope for the future took center stage.

Watch all three of our stories covering the Housing Committee’s important work as it moves toward a goal of revising and updating best practices for home ownership, the foundation of building wealth for families who call Ohio home.

The Cleveland hearing highlights the hardship facing a retired teacher who owns her home outright but faced unaffordable increases in her property taxes, to a first-time homebuyer who never thought she would ever have a place to call her own.

The Lima hearing raised different issues facing medium-size cities struggling with renovating older or abandoned downtown buildings, as the number of homes on the market doesn’t come close to meeting the demand.

The Marietta hearing showcased a different battle that rural areas face compared to metropolitan Ohio. There is not only a lack of homes for sale and apartments for rent here, but a lack of developers as well.