Issue 3 and Affordable Housing

There’s an extremely controversial ballot initiative that will appear on the ballot on May 4th within the City of Cincinnati. Not only will voters be deciding which two mayoral candidates advance to the November election, they will also vote on a ballot initiative known as Issue 3. The Enquirer does a nice run down of what Issue 3 is here. But the gist of it is this: if Issue 3 passes, the City of Cincinnati will need to set aside $50 million annually to an “Affordable Housing Trust Fund.” Over the short life of this blog, I’ve talked quite a bit about Affordable Housing and how our county is in need of 40,000 affordable housing units. Considering the poverty rate in our city is 26% and our childhood poverty rate is still around 40%, the lack of housing for low-income people is at an all-time high. During the past 8 years of this mayor’s term, I don’t think anyone would say fighting poverty has been one of this administration’s top priorities. Quite the opposite actually. The city’s administration, which is basically just another arm of the Cranley machine, has basically been on a mission to scare the entire city over Issue 3. They even went as far to create inaccurate and false ballot language for the Issue 3 initiative. Most of those elected officials at City Hall have made it clear that Issue 3 makes them extremely uncomfortable, and that’s why I am so intrigued by it. Making elected officials squirm is something we should all get excited about.

Cranley and the city manager swear up and down that city services will be slashed and city employees will lose their jobs. If that is true, that would obviously make this issue dead on arrival for most voters. However, what the mayor and city administration aren’t telling you is that the Issue 3 offers up five various options on ways to fund the affordable housing trust fund. The city manager and mayor only discuss one option of funding and it’s paying for the fund through the city’s general fund. Other sources of funding could include a personal income tax on the award of stock options for publicly traded companies, charging fees to developers on large projects, funds or grants from the State of Ohio as well as revenue generated from the lease of the Cincinnati Southern Railway. The sad reality is the administration, mayor and the Republican councilmembers want this to fail without ever doing the leg work to figure out how to truly fund the affordable housing trust fund. If this city council and mayor wanted to fund affordable housing, they would’ve done it by now. But anyone who pays attention to City Hall knows the real estate developers run City Hall. Creating affordable housing isn’t something that these developers want to do, because market-rate housing is much more profitable. Within the language of Issue 3, it actually encourages the city to give tax credits to developers that build affordable housing. Something that should already be occurring, but building affordable housing has never been a priority for this city in a long time. Tearing down or gentrifying affordable housing, on the other hand, has been at the top of list for the past 8 years. Do you honestly think the mayor and city council would let thousands of city workers be laid off if Issue 3 passes? It seems highly unlikely to me and it’s just a scare tactic because the mayor doesn’t like peon citizens telling him how to spend the city’s money.

I don’t think Issue 3 is perfect. $50 million annually seems like quite a hefty price tag and if workers were to be laid off and public services are cut, lots of Cincinnatians would be negatively impacted. Issue 3 was ultimately crafted because the elected officials at City Hall haven’t fixed the ever-growing affordable housing crisis. Simply put, Issue 3 is an attempt to force the city’s hand. If the elected officials at City Hall think Issue 3 is such a bad plan and they have a better one, it’s time to present it. I’m not entirely committed to Issue 3 and I’m still on the fence, but you can probably tell which way I’m currently leaning. But based on what I’ve seen so far out of City Hall, here is what I suspect the mayor’s playbook is:

Stage 1: Tear down Issue 3 and threaten city employee’s jobs as well as cutting basic services like trash collection. Pump out lots of fear.

Stage 2: Rally and consolidate votes to ensure Issue 3 fails on May 4th.

Stage 3: Once Issue 3 fails, carry on with business as usual at City Hall and continue to ignore the affordable housing crisis.

If City Hall hasn’t presented us with a better plan at this point, it’s probably not coming. Most likely, their “plan” is just the status quo and kicking the can down the road. The only thing we’ve seen from the mayor is proposing $5 million of the $291 million federal stimulus money going towards the Affordable Trust Fund. Additionally, councilmember Jan-Michelle Kearney did suggest putting $50 million of that money into the trust fund. I have to give Kearney credit because at least she’s throwing out ideas and attempting to solve this problem, despite being just one person in a building full of hundreds. I would think her idea would be a much more popular option for many Cincinnatians than simply just trashing Issue 3 and then doing nothing about the problem. The mayor suggesting $5 million dollars is going to fix the affordable housing crisis is like pissing in a river, it’s just a drop in the bucket and the mayor knows that. And speaking of that federal stimulus money, the mayor proposed $5 million of the $291 million going toward demolishing homes around the city. For those who are good at math, he wants the same amount of money that the Affordable Trust Fund would get to go towards tearing down houses. I’m not sure about you, but I’ve never been a fan of vacant lots and my neighborhood now has plenty of them thanks to The Port. And by the way, The Port would also get $5 million of that sweet stimulus money if the mayor has his way. So essentially, the mayor proposed more money going towards demolishing homes than actually building affordable ones for low-income residents. If you want to know a governing body’s priorities, just look at their budget. Money talks and bullsh*t walks.

In the end, when you look at the possible financials surrounding the affordable housing crisis, it’s pretty evident solving this issue isn’t a priority for our city’s governing body. Like I said above, the residents of this city are all ears if there are better proposals out there. We are eagerly awaiting to hear them, but until then, it appears Issue 3 is all low-income residents currently have.

As always, thanks for reading.