CINCINNATI — More than 400 affordable housing units are coming to Cincinnati as part of the city’s Notice of Funding Availability (NOFA) program. And for local housing advocate Mary Rivers, they can’t get developed soon enough.
What You Need To Know
- The City of Cincinnati announced $7.1 million in Notice of Funding Availability grants to nine affordable housing developments
- In total, the projects aim to build or renovate 408 affordable units across 10 Cincinnati neighborhoods
- Mary Rivers, executive director of Over-the-Rhine Community Housing, feels affordable housing is needed now more than ever
- OTRCH has expanded its reach to other Cincinnati neighborhoods to meet growing community needed
The City of Cincinnati announced earlier this week awards of $7.1 million to nine affordable housing projects. Combined, they’ll create 266 new affordable housing units and renovate 142 existing units.
The total number of affordable units amounts to 408 – a more than 200% increase in projected impact from last year’s NOFA awards, per the city.
“It’s tremendous,” said Rivers, executive director of Over-the-Rhine Community Housing. Her organization received as much as $1 million for its Vandalia Point development in the Northside neighborhood. It’s creating 52 new affordable housing units.
The grid layout of the Vandalia Point development in Northside. (Image courtesy of Over-the-Rhine Community Housing)
“Affordable housing is needed as much now as ever and these funds help ensure many people will have access to quality housing in neighborhoods across Cincinnati,” she added.
Cincinnati Mayor Aftab Pureval wrote in a statement that putting money toward those types of projects is an overall investment in Cincinnati neighborhoods. The projects will remove blight, which, in turn, aims to attract new mixed-use development and bring jobs to surrounding communities, he said.
The round of NOFA funding projects affects 10 different neighborhoods.
“I want to be clear that this program, bringing more quality affordable units to our neighborhoods, has a profound effect — even beyond the over 400 families that will now have access to a home they can be proud of,” Pureval said. “It’s about making our neighborhoods whole.”
The NOFA program provides residential developers with loans of as much as 40% of total project costs not to exceed $1 million.
The city reported that 70% of the new units, or 186 of them, will target households at 30% to 60% of the city’s Area Median Income.
As a reference point, 100% AMI for a single person in Hamilton County is $59,830, while the figure for a family of four is $85,400, according to the county.
“That is the range we know there is a great need for in …….