Video: Columbus woman thankful to live in a Touchstone apartment
Carolyn Ford: thankful to live in Community Housing Network’s Touchstone Field Place community on Lockbourne Road.
Columbus has fewer affordable housing units per low-income household than cities like New York and San Francisco.Ohio needs over 264,000 more affordable housing units to meet the needs of its residents.While Ohio has made progress in increasing affordable housing, advocates argue that proposed federal cuts could worsen the crisis.Columbus has a more severe affordable housing shortage than both Cincinnati and Cleveland.Rural and suburban counties in Ohio also face significant shortages of affordable housing options.
There are fewer affordable housing units per capita in Columbus than in some of the nation’s biggest and most expensive cities, such as New York and San Francisco, a new report found.
The report shows that Columbus has 25 affordable housing units per 100 extremely low income households available compared to 31 in San Francisco and 34 in New York, according to the 2025 Gap Report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) and the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (COHHIO).
In Ohio as a whole, there are only 40 affordable units per every 100 extremely low income households in need, unchanged from the 2024 to 2025 Gap Report.
But Columbus and Ohio aren’t alone in their well-documented affordable housing shortage struggles, as the report found that no state has an adequate supply of affordable rental housing for the lowest-income families.
And, while the availability of affordable housing in Ohio has improved by 1.2% since 2024, there’s still a lack of more than 264,000 units in the state, according to the report.
A slow, but steady decline in lack of affordable housing
That figure represents modest progress made in Ohio toward reducing the shortage of affordable housing over the past year, with a slight decrease in how many units are needed, according to the report.
“Affordable” housing is generally defined as units where the cost of rent and utilities doesn’t exceed 30% of renters’ income.
For a family of three whose income is at or below the federal poverty line at $26,650 annually, rent and utilities would have to cost around $670 to qualify as “affordable.”
There are 438,108 extremely low income households in Ohio in need of affordable units, the report found.
Ohio affordable housing leaders said the findings show that state policymakers’ work to increase affordable housing supply is working.
“The new housing programs that Ohio created in the last budget bill are having a positive impact, even as pandemic-era housing assistance expired and rents continued rising,” said Amy Riegel, COHHIO executive director, in a statement. “Fortunately, the General Assembly has another opportunity this spring to maintain forward momentum by including the Home Matters to Ohio platform in the next state budget bill.”
The Home Matters to Ohio platform is crafted by a coalition of the same name that is pushing for several changes to housing in Ohio. Those proposals include improving the new Ohio Low Income Housing Tax Credit, protecting the Ohio Housing Trust Fund, bolstering legal protections for tenants and promoting zoning reforms at the local level, according to COHHIO.
Though Ohio is making strides toward improving the dearth of affordable housing, national housing advocates say the same isn’t true on the federal level.
Advocates say expected cuts to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) programs and staff, led by Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), will worsen the nation’s affordable housing crisis.
Renee Willis, interim president and CEO of the NLIHC, said cuts to already “deeply insufficient” resources for housing assistance are “senseless,” especially due to existing unmet need.
“We also need to support, not undermine, agencies like HUD to ensure that housing assistance programs are administered as efficiently as possible,” she said. “There is no path to addressing the housing crisis for the lowest-income renters that doesn’t involve increasing resources for assistance and supporting the agencies that administer our housing programs.”
How does Columbus compare to Cincinnati, Cleveland?
Columbus’ affordable housing shortage continues to be more dire than those faced by residents in Cleveland and Cincinnati, the report found.
Columbus has 25 available units for every 100 low income renters, while Cincinnati has 37 and Cleveland has 39, according to the report.
Still, each city needs over 50,000 more affordable housing units, according to the report. Columbus is in need of about 58,000; Cincinnati needs approximately 53,800; and Cleveland needs an estimated 52,000.
Beyond city limits, things aren’t much better, as the Gap Report found that rural and suburban counties also have acute affordable housing and available unit shortages.
The most impacted are Allen County, home to Lima, Ohio, with 33 available units for every 100 extremely low income households; then Fairfield County, with 31; Darke and Williams counties, with 28; and Delaware and Wayne counties, with 26.
Advocates expect Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine’s budget plan to invest $100 million in rural housing could help increase the supply in those areas, according to COHHIO.
Still, more than 70% of extremely low income renters in Ohio spend more than half of their incomes on housing costs, according to the report.
This story has been updated to add clarity to per capita statistics and to add a photo gallery.
@DanaeKing
Copyright for syndicated content belongs to the linked Source link
