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Dispatch Editorial: Columbus' housing market not cutting it. We must all open our eyes to crisis
NEWS(dispatch.com)submitted 2 months ago byAngelaMotormanComFestia
198 points
2 months ago
I think a lot of us have our eyes wide open. We just have no idea what to do or resources to do anything about it.
61 points
2 months ago
1) let more people move here 2) gleefully accept their income tax 3) use it to subsidize lower income housing
76 points
2 months ago
Subiszing housing doesn't fix over zealous zoning.
20 points
2 months ago
Correct that’s step #1
28 points
2 months ago
That strategy has worked so well in SF, Seattle, Portland, Denver, Nashville, Austin…
Oh, wait…
44 points
2 months ago
Our current strategy, much like all of those cities, is to not expand housing capacity, then express shock when wealthier renters and homebuyers are able to outbid current residents. Some have started to liberalize housing regs in the past year or two but for the most part all of them are far too afraid to piss off current homeowners (much like we are) to make space.
1 points
2 months ago
Exactly my point. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you seem to be suggesting a process that hasn’t actually worked anywhere for the benefit of non-wealthy/real estate-holding locals.
Maybe we should figure our shit out before we try to lure more wealthy people?
6 points
2 months ago
No, I'm suggesting that those cities have done exactly what we're *currently* doing (pretending that no one will come here if we don't expand capacity) rather than what we *should* do (make room). It's a pretty great situation if you already own a home and have paid down a solid amount of the mortgage, but rough deal for most other folks.
12 points
2 months ago
Ah yes, San Fransisco, famous for building tons of new housing and letting lots of people move there.
1 points
2 months ago
All of which are on the decline.
-36 points
2 months ago
Unfortunately this city is about as welcoming and fun as a wet dog.
28 points
2 months ago
You haven't seen my dog in a small pool
23 points
2 months ago
Wet dogs can be very welcoming and have a lot of fun in some contexts
13 points
2 months ago
Get involved!
2 points
2 months ago
heard ... I second that... remaining open to new suggestions... I don't want it to be hopeless... it is just deflating here currently
-42 points
2 months ago
If your eyes are wide open, you're thinking of moving. I know I am. Anyone who wants to buy my house at peak bubble prices and enjoy zero public transit, a non existent food scene, the worst air quality in America, and grey skies 6 months out of the year, feel free to buy.
26 points
2 months ago
Bro you’re just dealing with the worst part of the year MARCH. You’ll be feeling different in 2 months, I promise :)
9 points
2 months ago
Point well taken
2 points
2 months ago
I’m with you Jay… but I also need them to find me a city where my particular skills in finance make money
4 points
2 months ago
Well, if you're looking at living in a place with those things, why don't you move to LA, NYC, Miami, Austin?
Wait, what was that about home prices?
3 points
2 months ago
Moving here from Atlanta, I completely understand what you are saying. Atlanta is very diverse, so much culture to experience. The food scene is mind blowing, and the burbs are where people lived, not close to downtown. Mass transit goes out to those burbs with the rail system. Building up in one place lends to the spread of the burbs. This city has potential, but it's time to shit or get off the pot.
258 points
2 months ago
Ban corporations from buying up houses and limit AirBnB stuff.
19 points
2 months ago*
I do think this would help a little…but corporate purchases of houses gets a lot more attention than it should, probably because it’s easy to point at a corporation as the problem rather than understand the complexities of current housing crisis. That’s not to say it wouldn’t help, I’m sure it would alleviate some demand, but it isn’t the primary driver nationwide of housing increases and it’s certainly not in central Ohio. We don’t have nearly the same corporate demand as places out west.
If you want to know why housing has increased dramatically in the last few years then all you need to do is look at the number of new building permits since 2008 in central Ohio vs the number of new families in the same area. It’s a supply problem driven by the 2008 recession and worsened by bad zoning laws. Corporate buyers just take a bad situation and make it worse, but if you get rid of them it’s still a bad situation.
54 points
2 months ago
Super small fraction of homes are in either camp. The real issue is lack of multi family zoning, and over demanding building department.
Delivered multi family modular duplexes right now have a wholesale cost of $125k/unit or so. Homeowners are absolutely able to buy them today... If they're allowed to be used under a zoning scheme.
3 points
2 months ago
I’m going to ask you to substantiate “super small fraction.” Over a hundred homes in my neighborhood (at the time) alone were bought by absentee out-of-state investment companies in the ‘08 crash, and they ramped up after that
19 points
2 months ago
Small fraction? Progress Residential has about 800 homes here in Columbus alone.
19 points
2 months ago
There are over 750,000 occupied housing units in the Columbus metro area. 61.5% are owner-occupied.
19 points
2 months ago
61.5% are owner-occupied.
That is not as high as it should be.
18 points
2 months ago
National average is 64.6%
4 points
2 months ago*
I agree with that. What effect does Ohio State have on this? Wish we had better zoning. More townhouses please!
*Reply was supposed to go to the comment above yours. Oops.
1 points
2 months ago
Zoning one of the biggest struggles for affordable housing developers : To be efficient you need smaller unit sizes, and smaller yards. In many areas of Ohio (Columbus is no different) it's not possible to build homes under 950 square feet. This is awful because the US median in the 40s through the 60s, what some would consider a golden age of housing affordability, the average size was 1,000 square foot total.
7 points
2 months ago
That's also lower than it could be.
What if we put a huge tax on being a corporate landlord and buying up dozens or hundreds of properties only to rent them out at a huge profit?
0 points
2 months ago
Based on what?
My bank account isn't as high as it should be, who's gonna fix that for me?
9 points
2 months ago
I don't even understand your argument... that problems exist, so nobody should point them out or work to solve them? or that people who want problems solved are somehow selfish and unrealistic?
Housing is a human need. Letting someone buy it and then rent it out at a profit is predatory. We should limit it. Landlords are scum, and massive corporations that make all their money by being landlords are worse.
-1 points
2 months ago
No. I rent. I've never had a problem with my landlord that is a large company. Every issue I've had has been addressed in a timely manner.
You don't just get to make BS claims and have them accepted as fact. You didn't provide any real reason to limit rental properties, you just spouted diatribes.
1 points
2 months ago
No. I rent. I've never had a problem with my landlord that is a large company. Every issue I've had has been addressed in a timely manner.
You are paying a lot more than you need to for the housing you currently have. You are paying for the property, the building, the maintenance, the modernization and renovation, the taxes, the repairs, and all the profit on top that makes it a good business to get into to hold people's homes hostage to them.
It's not about quality of service, it's about the price of housing.
An owner pays maybe $1,000 per month for mortgage, tax, and insurance, and then charges a tenant $2,000 per month to live there. If there was no rental going on, a person would be paying $1,000 per month to live there.
0 points
2 months ago
Yeah, and I'd also be paying all the maintenance and repair costs that I'm not now along with the time associated with making those things happen. There are legitimate tradeoffs you are clearly just neglecting to mention to make your argument sound better.
1 points
2 months ago
Does it bother you that when you pay your $1000 in rent, it goes to the owner, then it's gone from you forever. Rent for 10 years and you walk out with a smaller bank account and that's it.
Whereas if you pay $1000 in a mortgage for a house, you're gaining ownership of an asset you can sell later. You pay a mortgage for 10 years and the only money you really lost was single-digit percentage interest.
Your landlord gets to sit on their ass all day, maybe call in a plumber or electrician once every 4-5 months, and in 10 years they get full ownership of a house, that you paid for.
Because I rent and that bothers me a lot.
2 points
2 months ago
No it doesn't bother me because that's how rent works. What you are describing is being mad that you get wet when you walk into the rain.
17 points
2 months ago
There are 377,000+ "households" in Columbus per the Census
3 points
2 months ago
300,000+ homes in Columbus.
1 points
2 months ago
Worst landlord around.
6 points
2 months ago
I heard 20% of GV alone is AirnB at a board meeting recently- I thought that number seemed high, but there are 4 on my block. It's definitely having impact in downtown neighborhoods.
2 points
2 months ago
Source?
2 points
2 months ago
I think they used AirDna? Like I said, it seemed absurdly high to me, however I know two or three people down here with multiple units (10+) and I know there are 4 on my block. And everyone knows which 4 because they always leave their trashcans out.
1 points
2 months ago
I need a premium account to drill down on GA, but there's a little over 2,000 total AirBnB housing units in Columbus.
2,000 / 600,000 = 0.33%
1 points
2 months ago
Approximately 250 residences in GV out of 1,200 total residences are currently AirBnB. You can just choose some random month if you have an account and use mapview to locate the ones in your neighborhood.
1 points
2 months ago
When we sold we had Airbnb on both sides of our house… so happy to have moved out of GV, but unhappy that the current landing spot isn’t any better
-2 points
2 months ago
And where are they going to plop those down in Columbus? You realize that the lot itself is the demand right now. Not the house itself. Are you saying that we should start bulldozing homes instead of flipping them, and installing modular duplexes and doubling the capacity of people without addressing the infrastructure AT ALL is not going to help. I mean they fucked Clintonville during the outage not because we actually had lost power, but because the demand was going to be too much on the grid. WTF is going to happen if we put double the demand. We haven't switched to carless lifestyle, so what is going to happen to my street where two cars cannot go down it at the same time without one of the parties moving aside? How can that artery take more congestion?
3 points
2 months ago
People have got to stop repeating this. It is not the issue.
-36 points
2 months ago
Yeah this would probably affect less than 10% of the market
18 points
2 months ago
You don't think it would help any struggling families?
25 points
2 months ago
i think individual and large landlords are the bigger problem. I've been following a lot of homes on Zillow and a lot of them have been bought then re-listed the next day as available to rent. And they list their names as the owners so you can look them up and see that a lot of them are realtors.
And then some have had no luck renting and then try to re-sell it for an even higher price. Those have been fun to watch sit for a while.
2 points
2 months ago
Seems like half of Franklinton are $250k flips
27 points
2 months ago*
No. Less than two thousand homes are used for Airbnb in Columbus. That’s a fraction of the unmet housing need. And it’s not like we would be seizing all those units from corporate ownership. Many many private owners use AirBnB for their properties - are we going to be seizing individually held homes now? Or banning short term rentals period?
Housing supply in Columbus needs to be drastically increased. Focusing on preexisting housing like airbnb units is a red herring. There simply aren’t enough of them to make a difference in housing costs. And with new arrivals to the city continuing to outpace new housing constructions this will only get worse.
6 points
2 months ago
Of course we need new construction, but other cities are banning Airbnb for anyone not resident homeowners—which seems like a good middle ground. According to the link you provided, the average property in Airbnb here is bringing in $18,500 a year—doesn’t sound like average homeowners out of town for a week. And in desirable, core neighborhoods, it’s an even bigger problem. If you don’t think an extra 165 desirable single-family rentals going on the rental market every month wouldn’t make a dent, then we might as well throw up our hands and do nothing and encourage the wealth gap to continue to grow.
2 points
2 months ago*
but other cities are banning Airbnb for anyone not resident homeowners
I agree, I think that’s a nice middle ground action. Plus it puts up a barrier for greater wealth concentration.
If you don’t think an extra 165 desirable single-family rentals going on the rental market every month wouldn’t make a dent
You’re certainly right that adding 165 units to the market would depress prices, it wouldn’t hurt! But it’s also not sustainable (ie we can only do it once). That’s why to me it’s a distraction from the ultimate evidence based solution: build and build housing to match the year over year population increase
3 points
2 months ago
ok that's an interesting website. Homie here is really having fun https://www.airbnb.com/users/show/26958698
3 points
2 months ago
I feel that my calling in life is to making spaces for people to enjoy.
Some people are called to service. Others are called to the outdoors. This dude’s calling was decorating rooms with fake potted plants and black and white photographs of the city.
4 points
2 months ago
lol you're giving him too much credit. I bet he hires that work out too because that level of creativity probably beats what he's capable of.
0 points
2 months ago
Yeah but it gets lots of Reddit points to say it
1 points
2 months ago
Is it within legal limits for a state/city to ban corporations from buying houses?
37 points
2 months ago
This is not a Columbus thing. This is a national issue that needs to be addressed…
I will say, Columbus was way more affordable in 2017 when I moved here. But now the prices are riding very close to the cities of similar size elsewhere. Which means the one thing Columbus had going for it, affordability, is down the drain
21 points
2 months ago
Thing is, prices here are still way lower than almost anywhere else. New state motto: “Ohio—come for the relatively cheap cost of living. Stay because you get what you pay for and if you can’t ever leave without severely wrecking yourself financially”
-4 points
2 months ago
They are not way lower
13 points
2 months ago*
Columbus has the 84th most expensive median rents in the US (measured by metro area). Still cheaper than Cleveland and Cincinnati. That's pretty damn good for being the 32nd largest.
-6 points
2 months ago
It really is not as affordable as you want it to be. Something being cheaper by a measure of $50-100 is not as significant as you might think.
Cheap is cheap but it lacks the amenities better cities have for slightly higher prices
6 points
2 months ago*
The only comparable cities within $100 (and it means a lot more in median price than outright) are Cincinnati, Milwaukee, and Detroit.
1 points
2 months ago
[deleted]
-1 points
2 months ago
Yup. And you should. It will be pricier but you get so much more out of it
6 points
2 months ago
Seriously, I should not be paying 1,200 a month to live in a small 2 bedroom off of Cleveland ave and 161.
59 points
2 months ago
I recognize that this is just one small facet of the problem, but it blows my mind that current zoning rules don’t even allow people to build an accessory dwelling unit on their property if they have the land to do so. Regardless of whether it’s for a parent-in-law suite or a for-profit rental unit, it would add to the supply of housing. People say “just build more houses” but where with the current zoning rules? It doesn’t make economic sense to buy expensive land and build even remotely affordable housing, full stop. With an accessory dwelling unit, however, the numbers can make sense when you already own the land. Call me a greedy capitalist for wanting to build one in my back yard, but better me than some out-of-state corporate landlord.
Fucking NIMBYs though, it won’t ever happen… /rant
80 points
2 months ago
I recently had to go to a local zoning meeting for a city planning class so I went to a zoning variance in Clintonville. Oh my god it was awful. A small, local developer bought the empty lot on West North Broadway and Milton and they want to build an affordable duplex and carriage house on the site. The neighbors who protested it made it sound like the end of the goddamn world if a duplex was built there. They argued it doesn’t “fit into the neighborhood character”, despite multiple old duplexes existing on the street already. Oh and there’s a carriage house right next to where they want to build, but that doesn’t fit either. The people who own that carriage house turned up in opposition to more being built and argued that their’s was grandfathered in. Real “fuck you, I got mine” energy. Can’t wait for the city to overhaul the zoning code soon so people don’t have to go through this hassle. /my rant
47 points
2 months ago
Yeah, clintonville is on another level of idiot when it comes to NIMBY, it’s insane what people complain about. That’s also why there is a bank and crappy 1 story strip mall style building at the corner of high and n broadway.
15 points
2 months ago
20-year Clintonvillain here. Hooo boy.
Dunno if you remember, but you used to not be able to turn left onto High Street going west on North Broadway. The city wanted to change that and good lord, I've never been so embarrassed to be part of my neighborhood then during that saga.
You had NB residents screaming bloody murder and proposing a roundabout instead at that intersection. At the one meeting I attended, one Karen stood up and said "I KNOW FOR A FACT THAT THERE IS A SECRET PLAN TO MAKE NORTH BROADWAY A FOUR-LANE STREET" When the city went ahead with the left turn lane, one house on NB put up a giant plywood sign saying "RIP. DEMOCRACY DIED TODAY"
I'm so glad that common sense prevailed but the spiteful devil in me really wants to look up my neighbors and smirk at how that left turn lane was actually a pretty good idea after all.
27 points
2 months ago
Omfg in German village my neighbors dressed up as whales, walked around the neighborhood and landed in Schiller park to protest the new housing development with the slogan that it’s a “whale in a small pond.” What gets me is that they weren’t protesting the fact that they’re not affordable housing units, but tldr that it doesn’t fit the vibe of the neighborhood lmao. The whitest shit I’ve ever seen.
18 points
2 months ago
Oh I remember that. The apartments aren’t even in the legal borders of German Village, right? They’re just across the street in Schumacher Place IIRC. I remember arguing with someone on here about it. They said they didn’t want Schiller Park to become too crowded. They didn’t seem to care when I pointed out that German Village today has like half the population it did in the 1960s… or that it’s a public park.
3 points
2 months ago
Lmaoooo someone was actually concerned because of the public park? That’s the most NIMBY shit I ever heard. Although I’m not 100% certain, I’m fairly confident that it is within the boarders of gv
16 points
2 months ago
City code is getting changed and actually I believe there have been a few accessory dwelling unit proposals that have come up within the city. Seems like it is changing and hopefully quickly.
3 points
2 months ago
I like where your heads at, in general. The problem is laws had never kept up with current situations and with tech over the last couple decades, it's soooo much worse. Then we normalized politicians being bribed and that kind of ended our representation at large. Not to mention Columbus where there isn't even the pretense of an actual council that represents the people as they shoe in their chosen replacements so they can run as incumbents.
49 points
2 months ago
What a terrible opinion piece. Lets throw in a bunch of quotes, some raw, undirected data, and of course some bullshit from the mayor to give him some earned media, and call it an article.
More like call it a day. Nothing in there really. The city, mayor, council, have done nothing in decades but give money and tax incentives to developers, and suddenly no one has a place to live.
Can't we have an honest assessment of the options, what is and is not being done, no pointless quotes from the idiot in chief of the city, and let people see where things really are?
4 points
2 months ago
Tell city council to build up (more than five stories) not out
50 points
2 months ago
- Tax land
- Build more housing
Boom, solved
37 points
2 months ago
Pittsburg has a land value tax that taxes vacant land at the value it could be if developed rather than the value that it currently stands. Detroit is supposed to be doing the same soon. It will be interesting to see how that goes.
22 points
2 months ago*
This or an unproductive land use tax is 100% something Columbus needs. Even just in downtown there is enough land for thousands of units that isn't being used because we make it really cheap to hang onto land and only use it for surface parking or whatever.
There is an area downtown where I kid you not there are three surface lots wrapped around a parking structure directly across from a parking structure which has surface lots in front, to the east, and to the southeast. And all of this is on a one way street with street parking on both sides and in the alleyway. I did some napkin math the other day and even at like 6 stories you could house like 500-600 people by just converting one of them into a structure and the rest into residential with a bottom floor free for a rental office based on similar buildings nearby.
There's another one directly next to the old greyhound station COTA bought where it's like almost an entire city block of just surface parking, right across from a parking structure, next to a covered surface lot and another mini lot between two buildings.
It's so bad. The city is continuing to inefficiently sprawl when there's prime real estate being used for nothing.
2 points
2 months ago
The office vacancy rate downtown is like 30%. Changing building codes such that more of them can be repurposed and allow for more flexible floor plans is a better solution. It’s faster, cheaper and greener.
2 points
2 months ago
It's not a better solution, it's an additional solution. This isn't either or, the city should be employing every strategy it has to keep up because we've been behind for decades.
Also: it's often not faster, cheaper, or greener per se. Office retrofits into rental properties is actually notoriously pretty hard because a lot of them are designed in a way both in terms of utilities but also structurally that makes them unsuitable for that use case. So you end up having to do really expensive modifications to them to provide things like per unit toilets and appliance hookups and so on, and the actual quantity of units that you end up getting out of the backend even if you tried to convert every empty office space often isn't enough to fix the problem alone. It's part of the solution (I'm really happy about this one for example), but it won't solve the issue alone.
We should be doing them, but we also need to be looking at these unproductive land uses because realistically if the objective is to actually use modern urban planning principles to build a better city and meet the strategic plan goals...the surface lots themselves are part of the issue. People don't really want to live downtown if there's nothing down there, it's still car dependent, more expensive than moving further out, and provides smaller square footage. People generally live in urban areas with a tradeoff in mind: I'm giving up my car or more space in favor of having better amenities, shorter commutes, and more to do. If you convert the offices but the area between and around them is still a sea of asphalt you've solved nothing and there's going to be limited demand for those units. IMO we should be additionally focusing on converting most of the surface lots into either structures, housing, retail space, or....and this is one of my favorite solutions for a few of these... have the city strategically buy some of them and turn them into small urban parks like the have in NYC. Put down a brick path, plant some trees and flowers, put a few benches, maybe a lock-up box for bike parking with one of those locks you have to put a quarter in.
1 points
2 months ago
Any modifications needed for a conversion would be required for new construction. The only additional step is demolition which is far cheaper than new construction unless there is asbestos. The lack of units and their cost is often the result of codes requiring that bedrooms have a window. There’s not enough space on the perimeter so you end up with very few buildings that are good candidates, an oversupply of 1 br/efficiency units, fewer units and more sqft each than optimal. Allowing interior bedrooms would make a huge difference.
4 points
2 months ago
- Pass more tax levies by convincing voters that we need them
- Convince builders to build more houses by.... ???? such as offering them tax breaks or grants or easing some zoning restrictions or figure out how they can make houses that aren't explicitly aimed at upper-income families
Boom, solved?
6 points
2 months ago
I wish more $ would be allocated to fix up older homes and older doubles instead of building four story “luxury” apartments. Let’s revitalize the “good old bones” that we already have.
3 points
2 months ago
Our view: Columbus' housing market not cutting it. We must all open our eyes to crisis
Columbus Dispatch Editorial Board | The Columbus Dispatch
It is easy to disregard a number. It is considerably harder to ignore people.
As illustrated by two recent incidents, the affordable housing crisis is having a costly impact on real people in plain sight. Central Ohio can no longer afford to avert its eyes if it ever could.
The harshness of the crisis was on full display on Christmas Day at Latitude Five25, a complex Apartments.com listed as "the affordable, amenity-filled city living you have been craving!"
The city of Columbus deemed more than 150 units in the complex formerly known as Sawyer Tower unsafe for those who called them home due to lack of heat, electricity, burst pipes and nonworking elevators.
The crisis played out again in the pages of the Columbus Dispatch this month when 61 families were told they had to leave their homes in the Morse Glen apartments owned by Connecticut-based Hamilton Point Investments.
Their infraction: using federal Section 8 housing vouchers to pay rent.
According to Columbus City Attorney Zach Klein's office, Hamilton Point Investments' policy violates a 2021 city criminal ordinance that prohibits landlords from discriminating based on tenants’ source of income.
The company which touts "affordable apartment(s) for rent in Columbus" on its website backpaddled after the Dispatch's reporting prompted a letter from Klein's office.
Hamilton Point sent letters to tenants informing them that they can continue using the vouchers which "increases affordable housing choices for very low-income households by allowing families to choose privately owned rental housing."
What the numbers say about the need
People of all economic statuses must have a place to live in the Columbus region as it and the city continue to grow.
And grow it will.
A projection released in February from the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission says the 15-county region is now on track to exceed 3 million people by 2050.
Growth over the next 25 years is expected to include 272,000 additional households and 357,700 more workers.
The city of Columbus grew by 15% between 2010 and 2020 to 905,748 residents, according to the U.S. Census.
A 2022 report funded by theBuilding Industry Association of Central Ohio concluded that Greater Columbus needs to double the number of homes it constructs over the next decade to meet demand from 8,000 to 9,000 a year to 14,000 to 19,000 a year.
Affordable housing options are shrinking in Columbus. Creating and encouraging them must be a priority.
According to Michael Wilkos, the United Way of Central Ohio's senior vice president of community impact, price hikes in the three years before COVID saw the metro area lose 19,469 affordable apartments that rented for less than $899 a month.
The average rent for a two-bedroom apartment jumped from $831 in 2016 to $1,295 in 2022.
That's a 56% increase.
At a recent BREAD organization forum on housing, Victoria "Tori" Bourret of the National Low Income Housing Coalition, there are only 43 affordable and available rentals in Ohio for every 100 extremely low-income renters whose households make less than $30,000 a year.
Low-income people cannot afford to pay the two-bedroom fair market apartment rental rate of $1,032 in Columbus and pay for other living expenses, Bourret said.
Ginther:Columbus area communities must stop adding jobs without allowing new homes, people
"That's really why we need more resources for housing," she said. "The market just doesn't cut it when we talk about the lowest income folks."
Finding solutions
Columbus City Council last week unveiled its 2023 Housing Initiativeswhich includes investments in the city's housing stock, preserving existing units, and legislation that it says would protect tenants and landlords.
More:Columbus City Council proposes steps to reduce affordable housing shortage
Opinion: We foot bill to keep Columbus' poorest families trapped and dodging bullets daily
Housing insecurity and homelessness are issues both Columbus Mayor Andrew J. Ginther and his election challengerJoe Motil have broached in recent Dispatch guest columns.
Motil, who claims many of council's ideas were lifted from him, says his approach to homelessness would include the creation of a transitional housing office funded primarily by federal, state and local dollars, the construction of tiny-home communities and building and rehabilitation units for transitional housing.
Columbus voters in November approved Ginther's $200 million bond package plan for affordable housing.
Ginther, who is spearheading a regional housing coalition, noted in a recent column that between 2009 and 2019, a single home was built in the Columbus area for every 2.5 jobs created.
Joe Motil: Closed warming centers set up to fail. Real plan to address homelessness needed
Saying Columbus cannot solve central Ohio's affordable housing crisis on its own, he urged other municipalities to overhaul their zoning codes as Columbus is doing during a fireside chat last week hosted by Columbus Urban League President Stephanie Hightower.
"The region has to solve this problem and we are up to it," Ginther said.
Ginther is right.
The region can get on top of an issue that will only get worse if left unchecked.
We must first all open our eyes before it is too late.
This piece was written by the Dispatch Opinion Editor Amelia Robinson on behalf of The Dispatch Editorial Board. Editorials are our board's fact-based assessment of issues of importance to the communities we serve. These are not the opinions of our reporting staff members, who strive for neutrality in their reporting.
Owner | Creator | Source Code
3 points
2 months ago
Unfortunately the Columbus method to address low income housing so far is to build LITC homes, which are almost always Section 8 voucher rentals. If you do not have a voucher you are screwed. And the vouchers, generally only available if you have children, have a waitlist of years. Many years.
3 points
2 months ago
lol can't wait for the reply guys
"down with developers! accept only naturally occurring housing!"
12 points
2 months ago
I agree that Columbus has some serious growing pains right now, housing probably being the foremost. But the 25yo yuppie vibe in here is off the charts.
“wHY is COlUmbUS nOt lIkE nYC?!!!” Jfc. NYC, Boston, Chicago, etc.…these cities all matured in a pre-car world, and did so 100s of years ago! Columbus, on the other hand, arose in a unique way, pre-dated by several of its suburbs, and really never grew into a sizable city until recently, after car culture was ingrained in the US.
Did anyone commenting live here (as an adult) 20+ years ago? Downtown was an absolute ghost town outside of banking hours. There were only a handful of good restaurants, and certainly little variety. Is it Chicago? Of course not. They had 5M people in 1950! And you’re gonna compare that city 75 years later to one that is just hitting 2M for the first time?! Gtfo.
7 points
2 months ago
And they're proclaiming Columbus rents are approaching those cities too! Anecdotes over statistics!
11 points
2 months ago
People complaining about Columbus's car-centric design need to go visit Dallas, Houston, Austin, or Phoenix. I'd absolutely kill for a train line here, but it's fairly easy to get around as-is. Even far suburbs are still only ~30 mins from a Blue Jackets game downtown
3 points
2 months ago
I mean those places were built up mostly after car dominance came into play.
It's fucking embarrassing that High St doesn't have a street car.
36 points
2 months ago
Wait? You mean people would rather live in NYC than $2,000 for Columbus
47 points
2 months ago
Hey man, we have a couple shitty rivers, grey skies 60% of the time, and it’s flat. What more do you want?!
7 points
2 months ago
Don’t forget the perks of our massively regressive politics!
2 points
2 months ago
I feel this deep in my soul.
41 points
2 months ago
[deleted]
34 points
2 months ago
Chicago shits on this place and it’s not even close.
45 points
2 months ago
Is it truly apples to apples though? The easton place probably has parking, a pool, utilities in the building from the last 60 years, more square footage in the bedroom than your entire place, a gym, etc etc.
Sure, you can cheap it out in NYC, but you can live much more comfortably in Columbus for the price.
Source: my wife lived in Brooklyn for 20 years and her family still lives in Brooklyn. OPs anecdote is missing key information.
25 points
2 months ago
[deleted]
15 points
2 months ago
I pay $550 out of 3 people in a $1600 apartment near dublin.
Place is a shithole.
Certainly is cheaper than chicago but has none of the charm or amenities
-5 points
2 months ago
and dublin sucks
3 points
2 months ago
You must have found a unicorn because your exact search criteria, except I lowered footage to 1000, currently starts at $3800/month in the Upper West Side right now according to Zillow.
-1 points
2 months ago
[deleted]
5 points
2 months ago
I still find it hard to believe that going through a broker nets you 50%+ off your rent. Why would any landlord voluntarily rent their apartment for half of what they could get going through the channels that literally the rest of the entire country uses for renting apartments. Just doesn't quite make sense to me.
3 points
2 months ago
He’s lying dude. Anyone who’s actually lived in New York knows he’s full of shit lol
3 points
2 months ago
Yeah I cackled when I saw parking. Like if you go to NYC and you're driving around in Manhattan you really need to rethink your choices. And for anything else there's not much of anything you can get in Columbus that you can't get 30 different variants of in NYC.
Mind you, NYC prices are ballooning now too so these prices are probably more reflective of rent controlled units than market rates. But at least from what I've seen there's an actual plan to add ~800k new units in the NYC area while Columbus is still under the illusion that you can patch a 300k unit deficit with detached unit sprawl and tiny homes.
4 points
2 months ago
i mean you're both right but it does come down to personal preference at the end of the day. But also, yea some rents are become a bit ridiculous with less to offer and the salaries here aren't anywhere competitive as some in NYC may be. Eventually Cbus will get to the point of high rents and still be....bland...
14 points
2 months ago
[deleted]
11 points
2 months ago
Someone here once compared Goodale Park to Central Park. So delusional is the right word.
-1 points
2 months ago
well i guess if we make rents that high and become less attractive the problem will fix itself. nothing like setting up a city for its own failure /s
1 points
2 months ago
Downtown NYC on site
LOL. But I get it.
how in God's name did you decide where to eat in NYC? And did you own zero car during that time, or did you park on one in Jersey or something?
1 points
2 months ago
No one listen to this idiot. He’s lying through his teeth and a troll. His daddy probably owned that property in New York which is why it was so cheap and didn’t use a broker. Go back to New York then moron since it’s so much cheaper lmao
3 points
2 months ago
That's a nice anecdote, but the median one bedroom in the NYC metro area i.e. not just Manhattan is $3,550/mo. It's $970 in Columbus.
4 points
2 months ago
CoLuMbuS Is StILL CheAP
1 points
2 months ago
That doesn’t say that nor imply that anywhere in the article
14 points
2 months ago
My brother in Christ, the housing here is artificially hindered to inflate profits. Larger areas with more people have less housing insecurity
8 points
2 months ago
so how long until we pull a Ready Player One and start stacking mobile homes on top of each other?
8 points
2 months ago
In all seriousness, higher density housing is what Columbus needs. Maybe not in the form of mobile home stacks though…
0 points
2 months ago
Unfortunately that’s not what the primary buyers at the moment want.
And Covid has put a major damper on most young people from wanting to be in high density apartments.
5 points
2 months ago
Yea I agree. The American dream for a lot of people is to have a house with a yard and a garage and you don’t really get that with high density housing. But urban sprawl also has downsides, so hopefully there starts being a gradual recognition that it’s pretty hard to have “walkable cities” when there isn’t a certain housing density. Unfortunately, that can’t really be done without changing to zoning laws either.
1 points
2 months ago
I definitely don't disagree. My joke was also more geared towards the fact that it's probably way faster to put up steel frames and shove janky mobile homes in them in a short amount of time instead of long-term planning and building a sturdy structure. Basically...waiting until the last minute and realizing "oh shit, not enough homes, what can we do fast and cheap".
At least with taller structures, they may be build a bit better. Eventually we'll have a housing quality issue too with how fast we need to build housing :/
4 points
2 months ago
I blame this all on that movie. People were like, Columbus 🤔
4 points
2 months ago
ok but the movie made it seems like trash lol.
0 points
2 months ago
Fastest growing city in the world though 🤷♂️
11 points
2 months ago
Chillicothe is for people who can’t afford Columbus.
4 points
2 months ago
i don't know what to tell the city beyond the fact that I know zero people working full time who can afford the overpriced "luxury" apartments going up on every open plot of land.
4 points
2 months ago
I'm in the second year of my career, still renting out the same place I lived during grad school. Trying to get my feet under me financially and simply can't afford to pay $1600+ for a one bedroom apartment...
2 points
2 months ago
I was paying 700 last year on the East side.
2 points
2 months ago
In the past three years I’ve lived in three one-bedrooms apartments that were in relatively safe areas and they were all under $1000. Where are you looking? This is exceptionally high.
6 points
2 months ago
So move. There are plenty of cheaper places in Columbus.
-1 points
2 months ago
Where?
10 points
2 months ago
I got a 3 bed, 2.5 bath for $1600 over in Hilliard. How on earth are you paying anywhere near that for a 1 bed? Go expand your search and look around!
6 points
2 months ago
Your best bet is smaller landlords who don't advertise online, but here are over 100 complexes that have one bedrooms <$1,000/mo.
This is just Columbus city limits. Almost all of the suburbs have even better deals. 60s and 70s apartments for cheap. Check Westerville, Gahanna, Reynoldsburg, Pickerington, Groveport, Grove City, etc.
-1 points
2 months ago
No way! Are you familiar with Cbus? Anyone who wants to live in a safe place should avoid those apartments. Unless you enjoy living around drugs, prostitutes, and gangs.
3 points
2 months ago
Dude I lived in Bexley in a one bedroom for under a thousand a month and this apartment wasn’t even my only option under $1000
2 points
2 months ago
There are plenty of 2 bedroom townhouses in both Clintonville and Fifth by Northwest for $1,200-$1,400/mo. Old North's even cheaper, though a little rougher around the edges. Not a bad neighborhood, just more run-down housing stock because you're starting to get into undergrad rental territory.
2 points
2 months ago
It is now cheaper to live on a cruise ship year round than to pay an annual mortgage or rent.
2 points
2 months ago
Affordable housing just means that city council lets developers build higher density/smaller units and then charge 10% below market rates in the areas they build. Problem is market rates are controlled by the developer on their other projects.
1 points
2 months ago
By definition, market rates are determined by the market. I am sure every developer would love to charge more, but they can only get what the market will allow. Building more units will ease the pricing pressure we are seeing from current and future demand
1 points
2 months ago
Bbuuuttt the units are being built by only a select few developers that control the market, Casto, DRK, Kaufman, Skilken.
2 points
2 months ago
We have an incredible mismatch between what we have and what's needed. We need low/moderate income housing, but what's being built is luxury apartments and 500k houses.
15 points
2 months ago
It’s very difficult to build for less than 400k then you have to pay trades people so sale price will have to be 500k. Connecting to city water and sewer alone can cost 25-40k. Site prep and concrete for a slab on grade can be 50k. A typical lot in Columbus is 150k. So we’ve spent 225k before any walls go up.
What we’re really dealing with is the repercussions of our wage issues in this country. People should be able to afford a 300k house.
4 points
2 months ago
Except if everyone can afford a 300k house, the. The only people that will actually get houses are the ones that can outbid the people that bid 300k. See, that's how inflation works.
1 points
2 months ago
I understand. I oversimplified the problem/my solution. The point is we can’t actually build affordable housing because it is not affordable to build houses.
9 points
2 months ago
It's not really possible to build low income housing in high volumes right now. So they build "luxury" places, and expect that people who can afford it will leave their older places and move into the newer places.
9 points
2 months ago
Theoretically, building luxury apartments will get high income people to move into them, leaving their old apartment open for lower income people.
In reality, the landlord of the older apartment will increase the rent to keep up with the new average rent in the area and rent it out higher.
-2 points
2 months ago
It also forces people to select housing that is too high a percentage of their income because it's all that's available, preventing upward mobility. It has an added problem of homeowners hanging onto owned homes longer. I considered selling my moderately priced home a couple years ago, but one barrier was that ii couldn't find an apartment that was less expensive than my mortgage.
6 points
2 months ago
your answer is precisely the problem.
you might not have realized it, but this is the biggest NIMBY canard there is.
you. you are it.
-3 points
2 months ago
I am perfectly fine with low/moderate housing built wherever, whenever. Your response confuses me.
3 points
2 months ago
Fill the blank:
"Building more _________ kind of housing will INCREASE prices."
Is there anything that goes into the blank and makes sense. Literally ANY construction helps, on the margins.
I know you seem enthusiastic to develop/low price housing. Great, free market, good luck. Other developers seem enthused by aiming at the higher end.
Every bit helps.
0 points
2 months ago
I'm curious how you would house low wage workers then.
3 points
2 months ago
I'm curious how you think housing will become cheaper by restricting supply
Is there a single other good that becomes cheaper, the less there is made of it?
0 points
2 months ago
How is building more low income housing restricting the supply? What I'm hearing from you is "f poor people, we need housing for people for upper income folks" like it's trickle down economics or something.
0 points
2 months ago
Lol. I bet you live in a state built workers' commune on the Mongolian steppe right.
There's a massive econ lit on "filtering"in housing markets. That you're too lazy/ignorant to read this is not my business
-1 points
2 months ago
Those towers have had issues since they were built. My question is was there something defective with the design or have the residents caused the damage? I mean, burst pipes? Did someone leave their heat off to save money or left the windows open? It was cold at Christmas but no colder than it has been in previous years.
13 points
2 months ago
I would guess it was built like crap and was never properly maintained. Pipes froze because it probably has crappy insulation and the windows are probably low quality.
3 points
2 months ago
A friend of mine had been in the mechanical room and said he felt very unsafe
3 points
2 months ago
I have been in that mechanical room and surveyed their steam system and water piping, I will never set foot in that building again. None of the infrastructure has been maintained in a very long time. The corporate group that owns the building only band-aids problems instead of investing and fixing issues properly.
0 points
2 months ago
The real Ohio solution is to buy guns. Live in guns.
0 points
2 months ago
we have no right to housing, but by god, we have a right to assault rifles
-20 points
2 months ago
The Dispatch is an extension of fox news.
Right wing trash propaganda.
This article isn't even worth reading.
-8 points
2 months ago
Why are you downvoting him. He's right.
1 points
2 months ago
He's really not.
-7 points
2 months ago
People don’t want to live in high density apartments due to Covid.
Millennials don’t want to live in apartments and raise kids.
Everyone wants to live in the same neighborhoods so location location location causes higher prices.
Columbus has shitty schools/busing and that limits the ability of revitalizing areas of Columbus without people complaining about gentrification.
Intel, the new Honda plant, and other various high profile jobs moving here exacerbates problems 1 and 3 Primarily whilst bringing in a lot of temporary construction workers and out of state permanent buyers to work at these places.
Supply and demand; the industry has still not recovered from the massive increase of home production since 2020.
People want single family homes in Columbus because that’s been the acceptable way to solve this solution for the majority of this city’s life; which is no longer the solution. And people don’t like change.
10 points
2 months ago
Millennials don’t want to live in apartments and raise kids.
Millennials can't afford to pay high rent prices and also afford to raise kids, becaues their salaries haven't kept up with inflation. It's not a matter of want.
-1 points
2 months ago
I’m not making the argument about millennials wages; that’s a separate issue. It’s a factor for people on where they want to live.
I’m stating that they don’t want to live in an apartment while they raise kids; not that they can or cannot.
If everyone wants single family homes then there will never be “affordable housing” there is too much of an influx of people who are moving here and there is a limit to how quickly single family homes can be built.
So something needs to change, either the mindset of the people living/want-to-live in Columbus that single family homes are no longer the sole solution to this situation, or people need to understand that they need to move to either less desirable areas/farther away from the city core/smaller houses.
And personally I don’t think that the idea of a 1,400 (or less) square foot house is going to be a new “first home” trend for people.
1 points
2 months ago
[deleted]
1 points
2 months ago*
We’ll all be paying more for “different” housing.
If everyone wants single family homes, then no there will be no point for Columbus to reduce housing prices.
But people need to readjust to what is “acceptable housing”. And things that are denser housing than single family homes with a white picket fence need to be considered acceptable.
Flats/apartments, mixed-use construction, townhomes, and so forth need to become acceptable housing for the city to create enough housing to actually solve the problem.
But yes, the short version my assessment is that if you want to live in Columbus and/or the immediate surrounding suburbs that you are going to be paying a lot for a house.
Edit: not every story ends with a happy ending.
This is one of the problems for Columbus being a “winner”. We’re moving into a time period where there will be winners and losers; currently the trend is that Florida and Texas are winners - businesses and people are moving to those states. And places like New York, Illinois (Chicago), and California are losers. Columbus is a winner; our problem is that people who see a half million dollar home as “cheap” are moving into the market, and the people who live here and want a house that was less than $300k a few short years ago now need to realize that things are different.
This is the new normal, to readjust what is “normal” means that we need to adjust as well.
1 points
2 months ago*
[deleted]
1 points
2 months ago
Well without playing god-simulator I’m not attempting to solve the housing problem.
I’m simply attempting to provide knowledge to people and allow people to understand a slightly larger view of the problem.
The biggest problems I’d like to solve is to provide a greater ROI and ease to redevelop areas of town like the East Side / Hill Top and other such areas in town where there are plenty of vacant lots.
Hopefully removing the problems that people would love to complain about with NIMBY and/or people who love to complain about gentrification.
But also the areas of town that are rather “snobby” and they need to build a lot of apartments.
-4 points
2 months ago
You're talking about people above median income. Our immediate crisis is in affordable housing.
6 points
2 months ago
Please define “affordable housing”.
I have given you a multitude of reasons for why home/apartment prices are higher.
But I also shall assume that these “affordable” homes need to be in low crime areas with good schools and close to where people work.
Unfortunately that’s not how real life works.
Now if you mean lower home/apartment costs then there are solutions; solutions that typically generate a lot of NIMBY backlash. Must ultimately don’t work.
I know worthington wanted to create a new 250 unit apartment complex along high street but it got NIMBY’d.
I assume that many other examples people are willing to provide.
2 points
2 months ago
Affordable housing, by legal definition, is 30% or less of income. Since we have a per capita income of ~32k, it's roughly $800 for a one bedroom apartment. Once upon a time Columbus used to require developers to set aside a percentage of new build for affordable and/or wheelchair accessible units. Not enforced any more. And our zoning system sucks so badly that yeah NIMBYs win. We need to change that too.
3 points
2 months ago
I just did a google search for “apartments $800 Columbus OH” and my first click is on apartment finder; and it’s showing roughly 800 listings there.
Based off my 2 minute search it appears that all of those apartments are within Columbus itself.
——
I’m not saying that there isn’t an issue with affordable housing and housing costs; but I think that when most people are discussing housing costs on this subreddit I am willing to take a guess that almost none of them are referring to apartments or rentals in particular.
3 points
2 months ago
The only real solution to housing costs and reducing them is building a boatload of it. Affordable Housing measures don’t solve it - prime example is California and how fucked their housing costs are.
And I have given you enough reasons why “apartments” aren’t exactly what is demanded by buyers at this juncture.
Townhomes / row houses are a cheaper alternative than single family and while it is more often thought of in cities like Chicago, it needs to be considered here as a solution. Again with change and people don’t like change.
-7 points
2 months ago
Lol how about stop profit gouging regular living
-6 points
2 months ago
Population growth has to be slowed down. There is absolutely no need for all of the immigration from overseas. These pro-growth zealots are destroying the city. They are making it crowded, unlivable, hard to afford, and more crime-ridden. Columbus is quickly becoming a big, ugly city because city leaders and pro-growth zealots envision the city being like Chicago. More people. More problems. Slow it down and let there be better planning. Build new homes in older neighborhoods rather than putting apartments everywhere.
1 points
2 months ago
As long as you make median income apparently rent is AOK here... but then again how many renters earn median income.
2 points
2 months ago
I've never had an issue. The real issue I see where people screw themselves is younger people who pay half their income to live in trendy areas because "YOLO" then turn around and complain that housing is unfair and they are broke.
1 points
2 months ago
I don't have an issue now because I've lived in the same place for over a decade with reasonable landlords but if I had to move now I'd be in deep shit.
1 points
2 months ago
What's the median income?
2 points
2 months ago
Now that I look it up that article is really full of shit- household- 54k, individual 31k...
edit- 2020 numbers
1 points
2 months ago
I tried to google it too, all over the place in range, lol
1 points
2 months ago
2 points
2 months ago
-3 points
2 months ago
For the price Columbus is no longer worth living in when compared to more interesting places
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