The following article was originally published in the Ohio Capital Journal and published on News5Cleveland.com under a content-sharing agreement.
Housing advocates are urging Ohio senators to remove an amendment from the state’s two-year operating budget that would significantly affect a source of funding for local homelessness and affordable housing programs.
The Ohio House added language to their version of the budget that would change the Ohio Housing Trust Fund. The Ohio Senate is currently working on the budget and will send it back to Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, who must sign it into law by June 30.
“The Ohio Housing Trust Fund is the primary source of state funding for local homelessness, emergency home repair and affordable housing development,” the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio’s executive director Amy Riegel said during a press conference Thursday. “We see that making any type of change and overhauling it would be drastic and would make huge ripple impacts across the state.”
The trust fund was created in 1991 and is administered by the Ohio Department of Development. It is funded by a portion of the fees collected by county recorders, with half of the fees staying with the county and the other half going back to the fund — which requires at least 50% of the funds be spent in non-urban areas.
The House budget proposal would remove the requirement for county recorders to send the state Department of Development money to reallocate the funds, making it less effective across the state.
“This would leave counties with only the funds that they are able to collect, which creates a drastic impact on communities where they might not be collecting as many revenues as other counties,” Riegel said. “Shifting to a county-by-county approach will negatively impact folks who are struggling to just keep her roof over their heads.”
Robert Bender, CEO of the Provident Companies, is concerned counties could lose their leveraging ability and wouldn’t have the capacity to administer funds.
“We have an easy solution: just don’t mess with it,” he said. “This is really elected officials who don’t have enough information trying to tinker with something to make it better when it’s going to make it worse.”
The Housing Trust Fund provided emergency shelter for more than 27,000 Ohioans last year, Riegel said.
“That’s just one year,” Riegel said. “Multiply that by the last 23 years, and you can see this has a huge impact across our state.”
Housing advocates asked House lawmakers why the amendment was added, but Riegel said the rationale behind it remains unclear. Now, they are talking to Ohio senators about trying to remove the amendment.
“We have heard from many of them that they do support removing the language … however, it is the decision of the entire body of how to move forward,” Riegel said.
Habitat for Humanity of Ohio’s Executive Director Ryan Miller said they serve primarily populations of people who have paid off their homes, are living on fixed incomes and dealing with health issues.
“They have no other option, and we must keep the current funding structure in place to let them live in dignity and peace,” he said.
The trust fund is one of the most effective tools to reduce homelessness, said Becky Eddy, chief community development officer for the Integrated Services for Behavioral Health.
“The current regional approach isn’t broken,” she said. “Shifting to a fractured county-by-county model would slow things down, drive the administrative costs and ultimately increase homelessness across the state.”
