Housing Affordability, Neighborhood Vitality and Community Engagement

In a live recorded Brick by Brick event with our partners at the Dayton Metro Library and Dayton Daily News, key decision makers and community activists came together. They talked state of the neighborhoods, a new vision for the city, the role of renters, a rental registry to ensure livability, housing affordability, preservation and new developments.  

Panelists: Vice President of Housing for CountyCorp Adam Blake; Founder of the Dayton Tenant Union and community organizer with Advocates for Basic Equality Destiny Brown; architect and President of the Grafton Hill neighborhood Matt Sauer; Dayton Division Manager for Community Engagement, past President of the Huffman Historic District Mike Squire.

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Transcript

Ann Thompson:

What do you get when you gather four key Dayton decision makers and community activists to talk housing affordability, neighborhood vitality and community engagement? You get ideas. 

Matt Sauer:

I think overall Dayton’s neighborhoods need to get denser. 

Adam Blake:

Density is really a key and a lot of what we do is multi-family development and finding the right sites and putting together the capital stack is the large challenge.

Ann Thompson:

Destiny Brown, Matt Sauer, Mike Squire and Adam Blake talked successes, struggles and the state of Dayton neighborhoods at the LIVE Brick by Brick solutions conversation. Our partners at The Dayton Metro Library and The Dayton Daily News helped us put it on at the main library branch downtown. 

Destiny Brown:

There needs to be some structure in place for regular inspections for our local housing properties. Right now that does not exist.” 

Mike Squire:

It’s incredible how where it was neighborhoods it was 50, 60, 70 thousand dollars to buy a house. I look now you can’t find anything under 100. 

Brick by Brick based some of the questions on what community members told us leading up to the event. You might hear concerns of your own. 

Jessica Blocher:

We need a home because the home is really where the family is kept together and where it grows in love.

David Claybrooks:

Really the empowerment always should go back to the people, but the people make the decisions, the people, they say what they want, what they don’t want in our city and they should also have that some opportunity for their communities. 

Stay tuned for this special live-recorded event. This is Brick by Brick: Solutions for a thriving community. 

Ame Clase:

Brick by Brick is made possible thanks to leading support from Greater Cincinnati Foundation, AES Foundation and George and Margaret McLane Foundation, with additional major support from Laurie    Johnston, The Robert & Adelle Schiff Family Foundation, Murray and Agnes Seasongood Good Government Foundation and more. Thank you

Ann Thompson:

Thank you, Mark. It's my pleasure tonight to introduce our excellent panelists that we've assembled for this event. To my far right, Adam Blake has over 20 years of experience in commercial, multifamily and single family residential rehabilitation and project management. He puts those skills to use at County Corp where he is Vice president of housing. The private nonprofit Development corporation has a mission of building and renovating affordable housing and Montgomery County, either on its own or by working with developers thanks to Adam. Then seated next to him, Destiny Brown, a community organizer with advocates for basic legal equality. She's a Kettering Foundation, Dayton Democracy fellow and founder of the Dayton Tenant Union, which she founded in 2023. She has homeschooled her children, has run a home daycare business and is a birth doula. Thank you for being her Destiny. Matt Sauer is an architect focused on urban, small commercial and residential projects.

He's president of the Grafton Hill neighborhood and is a member of the Dayton Plan Board the Dayton Daily News called him somewhat of an unspoken Dayton celebrity with his stamp on so many local institutions. And Mike Squire works to connect people as Dayton Division Manager for community engagement. He sets up community meetings with developers and hears people's stories, their problems and concerns and tries to respond and solve things. He's past president of his neighborhood association, Huffman Historic District sustainability manager. Meg Maloney told the Dayton Daily News, he works to make Dayton a better place every day. Thanks to all of you for being here.

So let's start out with a question for all of you. We can just go right down the line. We can start with you, Adam. The question is, Dayton, as we know is a good place to live, but we all want to make it better. So what do you think the state of our neighborhoods is?

Adam Blake:

So I believe after 20 years of working in Dayton neighborhoods that we're moving in the right direction, the arrow is pointing upwards. There are a lot of serious investments that the city has taken with funds they receive, that they've put right back into the neighborhoods. And we're starting to see some of the effects of that, including specifically Wright Dunbar, Wolf Creek, and Northwest Dayton, as well as Edgemont, Carillon, some of those neighborhoods that have been traditionally historically underinvested in.

Ann Thompson:

Destiny.

Destiny Brown:

So I would say the state of Dayton neighborhoods really kind of depends on what neighborhood you're referring to. So one of the beautiful things, but also very interesting and sometimes disheartening things about Dayton is that there is such a difference in so many of our neighborhoods. So depending on where you are, the zip code, the corner you turn, it speaks to where some obviousinvestments have happened, and therefore the detriments and the effects of that over time.

Ann: Matt,

Matt Sauer:

I think my experience is that I'm heartened by a lot of the development I see in the neighborhoods. I think I would kind of echo Adam's comments that were on a good trajectory. I've been really surprised by places like Southern Dayton View and Five Oaks where you see a lot of renovation happening. And I think that's a good sort of litmus test for how the neighborhood's doing and what the future may hold for those neighborhoods.

Ann Thompson:

Alright, Mike?

Mike Squire:

Yeah, we have 65 neighborhoods and I would agree with Destiny's assessment and the rest of you that it's nuanced, right? There's neighborhoods that are doing really well, there's neighborhoods that are not doing well, and even in the neighborhoods that are not doing well that have had this investment, there's things happening. And so it, it's almost, Dayton is a very street by street and block by block city where your experience is heavily dependent on what block you're sitting on, what your neighbors are like, do you have a vacant house next to you? And so yeah, I think it's nuanced, but I agree also with Adam that I generally think as I talk to all of our neighborhoods from Forest Ridge to Stony Ridge, from Patterson Park up to Northern Hills that our residents, our neighbors feel like things are headed in the right direction, but we can't take our eye off the ball. We have to keep moving things forward.

Ann Thompson:

So we're going to kind of drill down on some of the things that you said. Matt, I want to come back to you. So earlier you had mentioned to me in a pre-interview and some others, you say that Dayton needs to have a new vision of what its neighborhoods look like. And what are your ideas and how would that happen?

Matt Sauer:

I think this, I wrote an op-ed for the Dayton Daily years ago about Dayton 260K, which really advocates that we use population as a metric for how the city is doing sort of the global health of our city should be measured somehow. And population was the metric I chose. I think that Dayton's neighborhoods, one probably overall need to get denser. You see a lot of development downtown. That in reality is not a lot of housing units. We think, oh, all these new buildings are being renovated or buil;, relatively speaking, we need all the neighborhoods to participate in that new development.

Ann Thompson:

I'm going to pause you for just a second. I'm being asked to move the microphones closer to you. I was wondering if everybody could hear, so hopefully that would

Matt Sauer:

Help.

Ann Thompson:

Okay. Alright, continue. Sorry.

Matt Sauer:

So density in our neighborhoods is better. Sorry, way to go, Matt. It was all me. Density in our neighborhoods is the main thing that I think is going to be transformative or needs to be transformative if we're to reach a larger population. And I think larger population brings with it a lot of advantages in terms of just human capital to use a kind of gross term, but you bring more ideas and voices and participants to the city and I think that's valuable. But the neighborhoods won't look the same. I mean, I think we're asking, or my vision is that we have more a mix of housing types in the neighborhoods, more density in the neighborhoods. And I think paired with that, I would say that we need to expand the commons in the neighborhoods. So city parks need to be more of a meeting place for neighbors and more of a focal point for those neighborhoods. Small scale commercial could come along with some of these multifamily developments. You're trying to make an intergenerational neighborhood out of every neighborhood so that people can age in place. They don't have to move to the suburbs to go to assisted living or even a senior apartment complex or something like that. So it's kind of a vision of both growth and then sort of a renewed sense of civics within each neighborhood of the city.

Ann Thompson:

A lot of things to think about. So Mike, there are success stories as we know Edgemont for one where Habitat for Humanity I was reading is looking at building 30 new energy efficient and affordable homes. There's a new $31 million Five Rivers health center facility. And in 2024, UD and Habitat came together to build the first new home there in 60 years. So how did it happen?

Mike Squire:

That's a big question. Okay, I'll give two answers to that. The first is the investment happened. So these partners are in the room. The city, as was mentioned, the city received $138 million through the American Rescue Plan Act. And as we listened to the community, the kind of resounding theme of feedback for where that money should go was into our neighborhoods rebuilding neighborhoods. And so there's a variety of projects in that. There's a dashboard where you can see all that stuff on the city's website, but particular to this case, part of that funding was to fund three new built houses in Edgemont with Habitat for Humanity who also assembled other funding and volunteers and all the work that goes into make that zero interest loan. I have the talking points down because I've heard it several times at this point. So that's like one answer is right, the resources on the one side, but the deeper answer to that is really relationships.

That effort started because Edgemont is a unique neighborhood that has a mix of people that are advocating for themselves, are passionate about their community, that have a deep rooted community in that neighborhood. And they have been building with the Greater Edgemont Community Coalition, the Solar Garden. They have built this foundation of community that when partners and external stakeholders looked at Edgemont, they saw something unique there that compelled them to invest. And so certainly Five Rivers Health building a $30 million health facility is a great anchor and was a stakeholder that was led by Gina McFarland who has a vision for that health center not just being its own thing in its own four walls, but looking outside of those four walls to the neighborhood. But what's important about that is that her inclination is not first to say, "Hey, What can Five Rivers Health Centers do out here?"

But to go to the neighborhood first, talk to residents and find out what the neighborhood needs. And out of that, there was partners that came along like Fifth Third Bank, CountyCorp, and a bunch of others that, I won't name everybody because I'll forget somebody that came together for an effort called Rock the Block, which was a Habitat-led beautification event a couple times a year and just doing things like painting the porches and doing trash cleanup and stuff. Nothing too exciting. It makes things look better, but that's not spurring house builds. But what was happening on the backend of that was there was relationships being formed, trust being built that brought about property transfers and excitement about what was happening in Edgemont. And so when you fast forward from that point to now, now we have three houses that are built and families are living in, and it's just changing. If you go look at the surrounding blocks around Five Rivers Health Center around Maitland and Campbell and Miami Chapel, you would almost not recognize them from what it looked like five years ago. So I want to give a lot of credit to Habitat and the external stakeholders that said, Hey, we're going to do something here. But more importantly, I want to say that the residents really paved the way for that to occur.

Ann Thompson:

Yeah, important to note. Well, we'll come back to community engagement and let's look at housing affordability and availability. And as we mentioned, the Brick by Brick team was out in the community talking to people at the library and they had definite opinions about housing. So 23-year-old Michael Davis was born and raised in new Lebanon and lives with his parents. We interviewed him with his girlfriend, Sidney Townsend.

Michael Davis (on tape):

So currently we're both struggling to find a place to live because most places, what three times the amount of what she make. And I was working at McDonald's, making a fairly good wage for the work. And with the same job back in 2020 before things exploded, I was able to purchase my own home. And it was a fairly easy process compared to how social media and how uneducated young people are to purchase homes. Most people don't even know everyone has a first-time home buyer credit. They're qualified as long as they've never bought a home before. And most people don't even know that

Ann Thompson:

The average rent, as a matter of fact, for a studio apartment in Montgomery County is 1042. The median sale price for a home is 220,000. That's unaffordable for a lot of people. Brick by Brooks Amaco Moore interviewed, who would like to buy a home?

Emiko Moore (on tape):

Being a homeowner, is that a reality for you or many in your generation?

Darshawn Romine (on tape):

No, no. It's a dream. It's a fast, it can be a reality once the resources are there. Once we get more paying jobs, we get more jobs. I don't mind paying.

Ann Thompson:

In 2024, the National Low Income Housing Coalition said the Dayton region was short about 18,300 units. RentCafe says Greater Dayton will build more than 2,000 apartment units through 2028 with 1,300 in the city. Huber Heights, Trotwood and Kettering are expected to build the rest. However, this is 41% less than what was built between 2019 and 2024, leading in part to rising rent and the difficulty of finding affordable housing. Dayton's Jalen Laird just moved to Cleveland and had to look for a place to live.

Jalen Laird (on tape):

Yeah, renter. I live in an apartment right now. It was definitely a process on finding the right place. I feel like right now it is kind of difficult for a lot of people to find the proper place to live in, especially just with the economy. I feel like rent right now is ridiculous, especially for the type of places that you're getting.

Ann Thompson:

So Destiny, let's go to you. What are you hearing from members of the tenant union about rising rents?

Destiny Brown:

So, very, very similar to what was spent here by some of the individuals on the videos, but part of... I think to the last point that the gentleman mentioned is really that intersection of quality and cost. It makes it even more challenging is that in general. I'm from Columbus and I, we see in general that Columbus will have higher rates or rent than the city of Dayton does. And typically there is a preconceived notion that Dayton in general is cheaper on rent and cost of living and all of these things, but a lot of times we don't think about the quality of that, what you're paying for. So I was startled personally by the quality of the housing stock here because it is old because there aren't a lot of metrics in place that ensure that there's regular inspections of the homes in the city of Dayton.

It can be years before a house is repaired and nothing really serves as a safety net that even if it's not habitable, it's not sanitary, it's not safe, that it is still not rented to people. So that's a lot of the challenge. It absolutely rent is way too high, but it's even more burdensome that it's also a deplorable place and you're paying full price, which poverty is expensive, so it costs a lot to rent from a place where maybe your insulation isn't good, so your utility bills are higher or you have infestations, so you're paying out of pocket for some of these things. So it costs, also cost even more than this high rate of rent when you're renting somewhere that's not in good condition.

Ann Thompson:

Yeah, I think we're going to ask you a little bit more about some of the anecdotal stories about condition coming up. Well, and don't worry, Adam, we'll get to you. I have questions. It's fine. It's in a little bit. So Mike, you're out in the community. What are you learning about the general affordability and the desire for people to be able to own a home?

Mike Squire:

Destiny has said it well, there is the desire to own a house, but when you're looking at neighborhoods across the city, even I've been with the city almost five years and I had 15 neighborhoods that I worked with before I became the division manager. And I kept an eye on house prices in the neighborhoods I worked with just having general knowledge of those neighborhoods. And it's incredible how neighborhoods where it was 50, 60, $70,000 to buy a house when I first started. I look now and you can't find anything under a hundred. And when you look at the housing stock, even just from an exterior standpoint, nothing's changed. And so I think that we hear that a lot is things have not kept up, but the housing prices have increased. And then the other piece that I hear almost universally across the city is just frustration with LLCs that exist outside of our area that are just transacting houses back and forth via cash or other methods that kind of price out our own people in our neighborhoods, but again, are not investing into our neighborhoods. They're just, to put it bluntly, they're not good neighbors.

Ann Thompson:

In fact, a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland I was reading showed that out of town buyers are increasingly competing to buy homes. As we know in 2024, about 30% of single family homes in Montgomery County were investor owned. Well, Bonnie Stiles and her husband sold their home and now live in an apartment.

Bonnie Stiles (on tape):

And I feel so bad for young people that they don't have the money to save so that they can have a down payment on a house. I mean, I'm so old, the first house that we ever purchased was $16,000 and sold it like six years later for $32,000 and now that has probably worth over a hundred thousand. So it's just, it's too bad.

Ann Thompson:

Probably more than that. Well, let's talk solutions. So Matt, you point to row homes as a solution to adding more housing, quickly. Explain how through a row home and if there's a certain definition we can ramp up with this strategy.

Matt Sauer:

So row homes are any attached housing. You see them downtown, you see them in Bright Dunbar going up right now on West third Street. I think it's the closest thing we've got to sort of an assembly line for housing that maintains a kind of ownership model where you own your house and or it can be rented to. But typically a lot of rows are for sale and you own the land underneath it and you own the row house itself. There are just so many economies of scale to building row houses because you're building basically eight at a time. The plumber is there to plumb eight houses at a time, the framer's there to frame eight houses at a time. It's extremely efficient. And things like modular are literally built in a factory, literally assembly line, but they have their own logistical kind of challenges and getting those boxes, those finished products to the site, you still have to do all the site work, you still have to connect utilities.

So I think row houses to me are sort of the way we bridge the, honestly, what's an affordability gap in terms of building new housing? Mike was saying that housing has gotten more expensive. It's gotten up to a hundred thousand dollars for a house that used to be five years ago, 60,000. That's actually good for the housing production side of things. The more the housing escalates in price, the more our appraised values arise in the city, we're going to attract more investment in new housing. So it's a bit of a double-edged sword. It becomes less affordable for people, but at the same time it could unlock more production. So row housing is kind of the midway point maybe in terms of how we deliver new housing outside of speaking about apartment buildings, which are even more efficient. But I think that's the way to sort of get more neighborhoods revitalized and probably the best way to do infill type housing production in our neighborhoods.

Ann Thompson:

So Destiny, what do you think the role of renters should be in housing affordability? Some people erroneously think renters don't pay their fair share when it comes to levies. So how would you answer that?

Destiny Brown:

Yeah, so I think the reality is when you look at the dynamic of a property owner and a renter, generally this is a person, obviously this is not an owner occupied home. So this tenant, their rental income is covering these property taxes for this property owner. So while this resident is not directly paying property taxes, their contribution to their monthly rent payment is what that is. So yes, it is an error to think that because a person's not a homeowner that they don't contribute to taxes because ultimately we see if a property owner, particularly mom and pop landlords in our city or anywhere, suffer it when they have vacancies because you typically probably cannot afford to pay your home mortgage as well as the mortgage for the other units that you may own without the presence of a renter.

Ann Thompson:

Thanks for explaining that. I'm trying to keep my eye on the questions that you've been submitting. Again, you can click on the QR code to submit questions or at the end you can just go to the microphone. So one of the questions Destiny asks, what is the Dayton Tenant Union's principle focus for 2026? I know we are going to be getting to some of the solutions, but what is your overall picture for next year?

Destiny Brown:

Thank you for the question that jumps me. I feel like jumps a little off, but a little bit just in terms of, because the group is focusing on several different points of advocacy, and one of them that we see is locally, the city of Dayton has several tenant protections in place, such as something on as pay to stay, which ensures that if you're behind on your rent and you come to the eviction hearing with all the money, you can make it right. And the property owner's required to allow you to stay. Things like late fee restrictions where a property owner can't charge more than $25 or 5% of your rent. These things exist solely within the city of Dayton. And the challenge that we see is that people come from Vandalia, Huber Heights, as we've seen in the video and have similar experiences but don't have the same protections.

So one of the key points of advocacy is to get countywide protections for people. And then the last one, which is actually very high on the list, is access to counsel, which just ensures that when tenants are going through an eviction or an escrow, that they have the presence of an attorney. So we see traditionally 99% of landlords in Dayton have an attorney when they go through the eviction process just to help them navigate it to understand the legal side. And 99% of tenants do not. So whether they are wrong and wrong or right, they generally are at a disadvantage without the presence of an attorney to navigate those situations.

Ann Thompson:

And you're looking to possibly expand that. Absolutely. So Adam, you're in the business of building and renovating affordable housing in Montgomery County. What is the need and what grade would you give your organization over the years for doing it?

Adam Blake:

Good question. I brought a few stats just to kind of set the stage. Over 60% of Dayton households make under $30,000 total. And in the occupancy rate for conventional rentals in the city of Dayton is 99.3%. So good luck finding an apartment.

And the occupancy rate for affordable rentals is 99.9% in Dayton. I think that helps set the scene a little bit about the need in Dayton, and this is throughout the state of Ohio and frankly most of the country. The important thing for us to really look at and focus on is where can we find appropriate sites to build more dense housing in Dayton? Matt alluded to this earlier, density is really a key and a lot of what we do is multifamily development and finding the right sites and putting together the capital stack is the large challenge.

Ann Thompson:

Yeah, well, Jessica Blocher lives with her husband and autistic son and a rented house. They eventually want to buy a townhome, but their family is trying to be patient.

Jessica Blocher (on tape):

God knows all of our families individually, even if we're young families or even if we're in the older generation and knows that we need a home because the home is really where the family is kept together and where it grows in love.

Ann Thompson:

Adam. There are bright spots talk about Wolf Creek and the tornado infill housing, apartments and homes.

Adam Blake:

So after the tornadoes of Ohio received a disaster recovery funding and a lot of that went to Dayton. In fact 80% of it was directed to the city of Trotwood where the most damage was done. We took a portion of those funds and started a program to create first time homebuyer opportunities for renters who are displaced by the tornadoes. And I can tell you all kinds of stories about that. The program was incredibly successful. Seed money from that federal funds allowed us to raise other funding for that program. It continues today. A great bright spot there is we just set our first Unibuilt home. So these were modular homes manufactured in Vandalia, Ohio in the Fairview neighborhood today. And that's one of five that we're doing with our little first tranche of funding that is a brights spott I think and speaks to what Mike was talking about, where the neighborhood is creating the momentum to bring partners like us in. Another great example of that is the Wolf Creek neighborhood. We are about to finish the construction of four market rate homes. So these are nice expensive homes in Wolf Creek, which probably hasn't seen any new builds since the Gem City Ice Cream Condos and Edison Elementary School. And then to compliment that, we are also building 27 affordable single family homes in the Wolf Creek neighborhood. So that should kind of help make opportunities both for people in every aspect of the economic spectrum.

Ann Thompson:

So somebody was asking what's going on with the Montgomery County Land Bank? Was that covered when you were talking about, I know that's part of Welcome Home Ohio and new construction. Do you want to say anything about that?

Adam Blake:

Back to what Mr. Squire was saying about organizing neighborhoods and attracting people to come help you do, complete your vision for your neighborhood. We are alongside Omega CDC, Learn to Earn Dayton and the Land Bank. They have a program where they are also investing in Northwest Dayton, and that is because the squeaky wheel gets the grease. These folks are organized, they're doing on the ground, door-to-door neighborhood programming. And there's really not a lot you're going to get out of me building five homes in your neighborhood if you're not organized and attracting people to your neighborhood. And that is what Omega CDC is doing in our partnership with the Land Bank.

Ann Thompson:

We hope you’re enjoying this live recorded event, Stay tuned after this short break.

Ame Clase: 

Brick by Brick is made possible thanks to the generous support of so many, including Diane and Dave Moccia, P & G, The Camden Foundation,  The Stephen H. Wilder Foundation, TJ and Susie Ackermann, Patti and Fred Heldman, a donation in memory of Frank and Margaret Linhardt, and more. Thank you. We couldn't do this work without you.

 Ann Thompson:

Welcome back to Brick by Brick, I’m Ann Thompson. This is a rebroadcast of a special live event November 20th sponsored by ThinkTV, The Dayton Metro Library and the Dayton Daily News where we discussed housing affordability, neighborhood vitality and community engagement. The panelists are CountyCorp’s Adam Blake, Founder of the Tenant Union Destiny Brown, architect and member of the Dayton Plan Board Matt Sauer and Dayton Division Manager for Community Engagement Mike Squire. Let’s get back into the discussion. 

Now I know we started to get into some of this Destiny, but let's talk about the challenge of evictions and Montgomery County responses. So Brick by Brick has covered A.B.L.E.'s pilot program of giving renters facing evictions access to an attorney, Destiny as with any city, there are plenty of apartments that are in poor condition and Dayton is no different. So give us some anecdotal stories of what kinds of conditions some tenants are facing.

Destiny Brown:

So we, in starting this work a few years ago, particularly in working with tenants, I think two stories in particular have stuck with me for a while. And one of 'em was the local apartment that I visited early on after getting some calls and visiting the tenants and there was such bad water damage to the units that, one neighbor, if she flushed her toilet, the water was coming down the wall at the unit next to her. So, as I went there several times and naturally anytime you have consistent water access, then you have mold. And then so several units, people just were having a hard time breathing, kids were sick, a lot of respiratory asthma stories kind of coming from parents and so forth. So I was surprised. I think that was kind of my thrust into Dayton's housing kind of apartment landscape in a way that felt like they were completely neglected.

The last story was just last week, which what surprised me about this tenant story was that she shared, she had such an extreme mice and roach infestation that roaches were crawling on her silverware and her pots and pans. They were in her air fryer, and she never used her kitchen, she just would always eat out. And when we talked to her about how did your resolution process go? Have you reached out to anybody? What did that look like? And her response was, well, they only fixed the really bad things, so I didn't think that they would do anything about this. And then she mentioned what she complained about was when sewage backed up in her sink and her tub and so much so that the water got on her shoes in her closet, sewage water, the shoes in her closet, she had to throw away all of her pots and pans clothing and all of these things.

I think the gravity of that for me was that it wasn't that bad to her. And not to say that her standards were low, but just that she perceived that her property owner would not address the mice and the roaches crawling on her silverware, but the sewage was like, okay, I have to say something now. So I think just the reality that people are living in those conditions and that it would not be addressed at such a dire state that then I have to get to this next thing which just is so inhumane before I feel like it'll be dealt with.

Ann Thompson:

What a lot of people like about you, Destiny is you've come with solutions. So we'll get to some more of those in just a minute. But first let's go for some more sound from somebody outside of library, Kenya Little is a landlord and when we talked to her, she was waiving the rent for a tenant who wasn't getting paid because of the government shutdown.

Kenya Little (on tape):

Yeah, sometimes you don't get landlords that are quite as understanding or empathetic to your situations and if they can't pay their rent, then they're forced to be evicted at times and it's really sad. It is disheartening. It's just the roll of the dice right now.

Ann Thompson:

Little says she would like to see city leaders put themselves in everyday citizens' lives and think how they're being impacted. So Destiny, another one of your ideas is a rental registry. How would that work?

Destiny Brown:

So there are two levels and options for this, and I see somebody in the room every time I talk about this that I look to. But the county, the state has a mandate for our county and there is a local ordinance for the city on rental registries. I think the value of this at whatever level, that whatever level it is implemented on is that there needs to be some structure in place for regular inspections of our local housing properties. So right now that does not exist. And I think a lot of people are surprised to learn that a property owner can own a house and never have repairs done. A tenant can complain indefinitely, be evicted, they rent to a new person and there are no metrics in place that require repairs or inspections on a regular basis. So a registry can provide the framework so that housing cannot go indefinitely without certain repairs. However, we know that there is housing, the cost of some of these repairs, it is not realistic to expect it to be done, but it should not be then rented. If we recognize that these houses are not in good condition, then we should not allow residents to be living in them.

Ann Thompson:

So enforcement is key. How would you pay for that and some of these other things?

Destiny Brown:

So one of the standards of typical inspections is that in order to rent in an area you have to pay a kind of registration fee. So that can be annual. But property owners ultimately, and let me just start by saying that while I advocate for tenants and organize the Dayton Tenant Union, we have wonderful landlords who work with the tenants that we serve. So this is not a tenants versus landlords ordeal, this is that people care about their community whether you're a property owner or a tenant. And as such, recognize that these concerns need to be addressed. And I'm saying that we got some of our property owners that work with the tenant unit in the room as well, but ultimately these infrastructures provide a path for property owners to pay a biannual fee to register their unit. And it ultimately just says that my property's been inspected, it is safe, it is up to code, it can be rented out, this is the annual fee that I pay. And if we required that from property owners in our city or in the county, then it would kind of manage itself. You produce income from these annual or biannual registration fees to support this structure.

Ann Thompson:

Now you mentioned earlier that you've been speaking to nearby cities like Vandalia, Huber Heights because ultimately you would like all these ideas to be countywide. So what would the timetable be?

Destiny Brown:

That's the tricky part with working with people. You just never know how long things will take. So the idea I think to Mike's point is that a lot of this is relationship. Is that part of the strategy that we are working to employ is that tenants that are in these municipalities are speaking to their leadership in those areas because they have a vested interest. You live in these communities, you see the impact. My expectation is ideally over 2026 is that we would see, and I can be ambitious with goals, so maybe it's not realistic, however we're going to shoot for it and see.

Ann Thompson:

That's great. Well Mike, as you know, the threat of eviction and poor tenant conditions are probably topics that you hear as division manager for community engagement. What are people telling you and what do you think about these possible solutions?

Mike Squire:

Yeah, there. So I spent a lot of time on the streets and with property owners, renters. I've been in just about every homeless camp in the city. And the stories that you hear are pretty incredible from people one on the things that they've gone through. I mean Destiny sharing that story is just incredibly accurate and unfortunately it's not isolated there. And we will get folks that are in bold. I was over in the Burkhardt neighborhood, I think it was last year, and a gentleman came up to me, I was just in a city vehicle just going through the neighborhood, and a gentleman came up to me and stopped me in the middle of the street to share with me the conditions that he was living in. And so we talked about how he could let housing come in and inspect the place and that he had a lot of concerns.

But what I do consistently hear from folks that are in housing that are in poor conditions is the threat of losing the house that they're in, whether that's sentimental because they love their house or because it's affordable and they don't know what's on the other side. And so we've talked a lot about that as the question mark of, okay, if I report this to my landlord, then what happens? And I hear that across the city that as we talk about solutions, Destiny has brought up some things that the city back two years ago, November of 2023, passed a housing policy framework that has over 50 recommendations that are addressing both internally city policies and things that we should be doing and looking at from zoning and housing, but also external partnerships with entities like CountyCorp and others. And so I think there's a recognition across our community that this is not singularly on the city government, it's not singularly on tenants or landlords. This has to be a complete solution where we're all thinking creatively about how we approach this.

Ann Thompson:

That's a perfect lead into our next topic. So there are a lot of issues when it comes to old housing including preservation and blight mitigation. Aron Haworth knows that firsthand, he lives in his childhood home that he inherited from his dad.

Aron Haworth (on tape):

I'll gone there for about five years and it's keeping up with maintenance and bills and all that. It's kind of hard, different is so expensive nowadays that it's hard to balance bills and everyday life plus own a house. It's kind of rough.

Ann Thompson:

Haworth says the biggest part is just trying to keep taxes paid on time and property upkeep and just everyday paying for the house. So Matt, there is a huge supply of old homes in Dayton, which is why preservation has become such a big topic. Are we doing enough to preserve old homes and what is the cost?

Matt Sauer:

I think probably the answer to that is yes or no. Yes and no. Obviously we have for the historic districts, we have protections in place to keep maintenance maintained and inspect. We have city's inspectors who go out and especially in those neighborhoods and keep track of renovations and make sure permits have been filed and landmarks has been approving things that are alterations to those houses. But I would say that you only have to go down. I mean in terms of outside the historic districts, I think there's a lot of vacancy and neglect and you can go down streets like Forest or West Grand and see ruins of grand old houses. So I think it's kind of a mixed bag. I mean, if you're a preservationist like me, I think you feel sad that these properties have been left to get into that state of repair. But I think it should concern everybody because this is our housing stock and the more vacant lots we have, the fewer places we have to house people.

Ann Thompson:

So somebody was wondering how do we get young families back into Dayton neighborhoods to revitalize some of the vintage houses?

Speaker 16:

That's for anyone,

Ann Thompson:

Anyone.

Adam Blake:

We need a child tax credit to purchase an old home, I guess

Matt Sauer:

Do it

Adam Blake:

Something like that.

Matt Sauer:

I think that's one of the unsung below the radar investments that's happening. I mean probably the biggest investment I would think in our neighborhoods is DIYers and people who want to put sweat equity into a house they've fallen in love with because of the woodwork and it's cheap because it's not been renovated. So I think the sort of 40 year success story of the historic districts is one way we could look at getting the stock of housing that's otherwise dilapidated sort of back into service. But again, I mean that's a long-term prospect we're talking about and it involves a lot of people making that choice to say, "Hey, I'm going to give up my weekends, put drywall up, or do other things that materially affect the house and by extension affect my neighborhood."

Ann Thompson:

So Matt, what about community reinvestment areas as a solution? What are they? Are they a good tool and what properties are eligible?

Matt Sauer:

They are a good tool. So municipalities in the state of Ohio are able to designate community reinvestment areas, which is essentially drawing lines on a map. And typically it's intended for places that have seen disinvestment to... The state effectively through the city. Gives tax tools to the municipality to say, "Hey, if you make an investment in your house, you bought a house for $50,000, you put $50,000 into it, we're going to freeze your taxes for 10 years at $50,000." Your assessed value of the improvements is going to stay where it is for 10 years. So that's a real incentive to say, "Hey, I need to put a new roof on. This is going to be a way for me to maybe afford that over time." But it also incrementally sort of raises the value of houses in the neighborhood because that tax abatement conveys to the next owner. So it's sort of a tax credit-ish way of making investments in the neighborhood. And over time I think it does raise the property values and hopefully encourages more investment.

Ann Thompson:

So Mike, some people might wonder, since Dayton has a lot of vacant buildings, why can't the unhoused live there?

Mike Squire:

I hear that almost every day and I think it's a valid question, right? Because you look at, we have a definitive population of people that are homeless and we have a vacant housing issue, and that seems as if it should go together and it just does not. And there's a variety of reasons for that. One is that most of those properties, 99.9% of those properties are privately owned. And so you have to get ahold of an owner, and for all of my neighborhood presidents that are sitting around here have experienced this, where every house and property has a story behind it of why it's sitting there vacant. And it is different for every single house. And so you have to figure out ownership and getting that into the right hands that are willing to reinvest in it. And then another piece of that is that it's not a lot of vacant houses are not habitable.

I mean people shouldn't live in them. And again, I can take you through some houses because I've been through many and many neighborhoods where you walk in and you're like, the outside of the house looks just fine and you walk in and there's a hole from the roof to the second floor to the first floor into the basement that is not feasible to bring back. And so you're looking at a hundred, $200,000 to bring that house back online to make it habitable. And again, there's that. Who is that then going to, who is paying all those costs? And I'm not the one that does rehabs and builds new houses, but the economics of it don't seem to line up. And so it just is not that easy unfortunately because it would be amazing if we could just one plus one equals two.

Ann Thompson:

Thanks for explaining that. So in our preservation episode, brick by Brick and the podcast and TV episode covered the Dayton Home Repair Network and the Dayton Energy Collaborative. So how do those programs work and how effective are they? Adam, I had your name written by this, but I don't know, is that you or is that someone else?

Adam Blake:

Sure, I can start

Ann Thompson:

And

Adam Blake:

They can jump in. This was another effort that grew out of the disaster of the tornadoes. Organizations that were doing similar activities in the community learned that they could work together and share case management and share notes about a lady who needs a new roof or whatever. So we started meeting regularly and that just kind of grew into an ad hoc Dayton home repair network. The benefit of that for taxpayers and residents is that because we're working together, we are stretching scarce resources as far as we possibly can. And we're combining scarce resources to have a real impact on that home that has systemic problems and is not safe to live in, but the elderly social security recipient cannot afford to make any repairs. And we have been able to attract not only local funding but outside funding to invest in households in Dayton. So it's been very impactful and I'm very excited about the future of the network and the impact we can have in the neighborhoods.

Ann Thompson:

Circling back to preservation and the money, Matt, where does the money come from and is there a lot of it, I'm guessing probably not.

Matt Sauer:

No, I was looking today at the, so historic tax credits are kind of the big headline item or way that historic properties are redeveloped. And you look at the Arcade downtown or the Center City building, which is starting construction. Those buildings all tap historic tax credits as part of the rest of their tens of millions of dollars of budget. But those are really impractical funds for homeowners to use or anybody who's not taking on a million dollar project. And a lot of my clients that have used, tried to use tax credits, ended up never following through. There's a lot of paperwork involved and it's costly upfront to go after those credits and it's a competitive process at the state to get awarded. So really, I mean I think the couple working on the weekends, putting sweat equity into their historic house is really where a lot of that comes from, especially in our neighborhoods.

Ann Thompson:

Destiny. Another solution could be the Landlord Home Repair pilot funded by Dayton's sustainability department. Do you want to talk a little bit about that?

Destiny Brown:

So, there's actually some awesome people here, part of that as well. This is an awesome crowd. Let me say that. So this is a very small pilo,t and similar to the access-to-council pilot, truly to just learn about the best ways to employ different solutions. So what we've seen traditionally is that home repair dollars go to own our occupied homes, but when we talk about mom and pop landlords who may just not be able to afford repairs for a tenant like a furnace or some costly things, that there needs to be some supports in place for repairs for homes that are occupied by tenants where a property owner just needs some assistance to get over the hump. Now we're not talking about hedge funds or out-of-state investors, but truly people who may just own a few homes and they need some support. So those are one of the one avenues kind of that, an exploration of how do we identify solutions?

Ann Thompson:

Great, we look forward to following that. So Adam, and as we shift to neighborhood voice and engagement, you can imagine residents of some neighborhoods are frustrated because development promises have been made by the city but not delivered,

Adam Blake:

Which is why the work that Mike Squire and his team is so important that they do in neighborhoods: to elicit information from the neighborhood about what they want in their neighborhood. Back to my earlier point, it doesn't make any sense for me to go and invest your money or anybody else's in a neighborhood that isn't organized and hasn't defined what they need. We need to be following the neighborhood, not leading the neighborhood. And it's very important that people are organized, that they have a voice and that they use it, that they, and I get it, they invest their precious free time in attending city commission meetings and things like that. But I'm telling you, I've been doing this for a while. The squeaky wheel always gets the grease. I also completely understand the frustration of neighbors, people in neighborhoods that have been promised, things that have never been delivered. I think the good news moving forward is that's kind of not happening now. There's a lot of holding people responsible for the things that they say. CountyCorp is a local organization. We've been in Dayton for 45 years, but we have reputational risk. I can't tell you one thing and do another thing because it'll be in the Dayton Daily News tomorrow. So, it's just really important to hold people accountable but be present.

Ann Thompson:

So one of the neglected neighborhoods over the years is Westwood, David Claybrooks is president of the Westwood Neighborhood Collaborative.

David Claybrooks (on tape):

I think really the empowerment always should go back to the people, but the people make the decisions is the people. They say what they want, what they don't want in our city, and they should also have that same opportunity for their communities. I definitely think it's a partnership. It most definitely is a partnership, but the power still should lie within the people.

Ann Thompson:

So Adam, do you make those neglected neighborhoods a higher priority or how do you decide where developments go?

Adam Blake:

I was thinking a lot about why are we working in the neighborhood we're working in, and the thing that occurred to me was we go where the action is. And by action I mean where those residents are taking care of business, where they have attracted other investment that we can leverage with our funding in a community. So it's really about, again, following the neighborhood, their vision and the hard work that they're doing and complimenting them.

Ann Thompson:

And to follow up with that, let's talk about the challenge of making a city better and then getting complaints of gentrification. How do you balance investment and growth decisions with existing residents in mind,

Adam Blake:

Rather, she answered that one. (laughter) I think Wolf Creek is kind of an example of that where you have two relatively for that neighborhood, large projects, the Gem City Ice Cream building, and we built four single-family homes in that neighborhood that are going to be for sale very soon. Balancing that with the investment in affordable housing that were also about to do in the same neighborhood, so two very large investments, but we're covering a wide economic swath. With that,

Ann Thompson:

Matt, as a member of the plan board, you probably want a lot of buy-in from residents. Are you seeing more participation in these types of feedback sessions now that people can do it easier? They don't always have to be in person,

Matt Sauer:

Planning Board actually is still in person.

Ann Thompson:

Oh, it is. Okay.

Matt Sauer:

During COVID, we were on Zoom and I think was really probably an uptick in the amount of participation we had because it was just so convenient for people to attend those meetings. I think Adam made the point about devoting time. It takes a lot of time to go to a community meeting or a plan board meeting or a busy meeting or a commission meeting, and they're often at really inconvenient times of day. So if you can remote-in from your car out in the parking lot of where you work, that to me is a good sort of compromise between trying to schedule everybody and making them very accessible. So I would like to see more of that sort of online presence integrated even into our live meetings, I guess.

Ann Thompson:

Mike, you set up community meetings with developers and residents. The people side of this is complex. When a neighborhood hears subsidized housing coming in, what's the reaction? People do want to be heard?

Mike Squire:

Yeah, mixed. I want to be careful how I say this. I think I fully believe in the power of people's voice and just because you have a fear of who's coming to your neighborhood, what it's going to do to your property value, you already have a lot of affordable housing in your neighborhood, and so you're kind of pushing back on that. I don't inherently think that means that you're in that NIMBY crowd, not in my backyard. I don't think that's the case. I think we can have more of a discussion and nuance about that, but also recognize that there are times where we, as a community, I'm including myself in this push back on projects because it's dense, it's affordable, and so you immediately jump to a conclusion and you don't hear that out. I think there's also some responsibility that developers and people that are doing these projects need to take on and how they approach neighborhoods because there is something there about how you enter into a neighborhood as a developer that elicits a reaction.

And so I think there are times where the reaction's negative, but it doesn't have to be because we can take a different approach to it, and that's to build trust. And so I give a lot of credit to our planning folks at the city because they're lean. As long as the developer's willing and most of them are, we actually go beyond what is required through Plan Board or BZA. We hold meetings in the neighborhood before we even get to the legal processes that you have to go through to get a variance. Those things we hold neighborhood meetings. We have in Dayton, we have a land use boards that review and make recommendations for projects before they get to plan board, before they get to the board of zoning appeals. So we have multiple layers before we're getting to that big public meeting that we try to make accessible at different levels.

Ann Thompson:

And I hear you saying that developers should go about it the right way. It's not like you come in and say, I'm going to save your neighborhood.

Mike Squire:

Yeah. Yes. I could give you some really good examples, but yeah is we've had examples of developers that have come in and they have that mindset, I'm coming in to do something amazing in your neighborhood and your neighborhood has been disinvested in. It's terrible. And I'm almost not making that up. There has been that kind of conversation in initial meetings and if you think about that from, if somebody came into my neighborhood and that's how they started the conversation, I'm going to have a negative reaction because guess what? I love my neighborhood and yes, I understand that it's not the most perfect place in the world, but it's my neighborhood. And so on the opposite side of that, we see, Joe Craig's here, and we have a project in the old Julienne site, Forest and Grand. And Joe was in those initial meetings, there was a really negative reaction to this. I forget how many units are coming into that site, but

Matt Sauer:

-260.

Mike Squire:

Thank you, 260 units coming into the site and with perfectly legitimate questions around traffic and all that kind of stuff. But there was a lot of objections and pushback initially. But what I really credit the Magnus group, the developers that were coming in to build these is, they really took an approach of education talking with the neighborhoods. They met regularly with Joe, with the neighborhood. By the time it got to plan board and commission, there was not a single person that showed up in opposition to the project. That's not to say that everybody in Five Oaks agrees, or everybody in Five Oaks is like, yay, glad this project's coming. But it did get to a point that there was enough agreement and people felt that they were heard, that they did not feel like, "Hey, I'm going to go down to commission to object to this." I think that speaks a lot to the approach that developers can and should take in a neighborhood.

Ann Thompson:

What would be your advice in a neighborhood if you're trying to get maybe more development or I know you've said that it's important to be headed in the same direction.

Mike Squire:

Yeah, I've had this conversation with a lot of our neighborhoods lately about the important... There is nothing faster that will derail projects in your neighborhood than interpersonal conflict. It's not that there is absence of conflict in neighborhoods. The beauty of our city is that it's diverse and that is a wonderful thing. That also inherently brings about conflict. However, there is a difference between healthy conflict and disagreement that leads to drama and that's the fastest way to send Adam the other way because he's got enough things going on as it is, and there's 65 neighborhoods. So he has other choices as a developer. Now he's awesome. So he tends to hang in there a little bit longer than some others. But when I say everybody, it's that we have as a neighborhood, a general vision and goal and we're headed that way. It's not that we're always going to agree, it's not that we're going to go right a little bit go left a little bit, but it's that we have maybe a neighborhood plan that we've formally adopted.

And so we have a structured thing, but even informally that the neighborhood association board that the people that are engaged are showing up are generally saying like, "Hey, this is the vision we have." And so you see that in many neighborhoods. Wolf Creek is an example or Edgemont where they have this general air of we are pretty open to any housing type coming in here. And so that has allowed developers to come in and propose kind of things that maybe other neighborhoods would not [support], which is okay, but that's kind of their lean and they've kind of had a unified vision in that.

Ann Thompson:

Do you agree with that, Adam?

Mike Squire:

Yeah,

Adam Blake:

With literally everything he just said. Yeah, thanks.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.: 

“Hey, it’s Hernz Laguerre Jr., one of the team members behind Brick by Brick. If you think about it. We all have a different perspective about what a thriving community should look like. That’s why we need to hear from you. We want to know what a thriving community looks like to you. Maybe it’s more housing, more parks, or stores even safer sidewalks. Whatever your vision, we hope you’ll share it with us. To do that by heading to the Brick by Brick show page at cetconnect.org or thinktv.org. There you’ll find an audience question button. Just fill out the survey and that’s it. We look forward to sharing your hopes and dreams with  the rest of our neighbors in future episodes.

Ann Thompson:

Destiny. Ultimately you told us that you're for smart development saying Dayton needs to create equitable investments that benefit residents and that resonate with the people. How do you do that when we're in desperate need for more housing?

Destiny Brown:

So one of the things that I appreciate really about, and then just to give TMI - I live in Wolf Creek - so a lot of the developments that are happening is on my block down the street right there. So something that I appreciate about the work, particularly the CountyCorp does is we hear how difficult it is for a first time home buyer. And I can speak as someone who recently bought a home that it is nearly impossible for a first time buyer to compete with an out-of-state investor or somebody who's coming with cash and all of these dynamics. So one of them, there are so much value in programs that reserve housing for first time buyers and then you couple that with things like down payment assistance and other factors. And I think it creates opportunities that otherwise don't exist for some people. The other one is that developments, when I say kind of fair or equitable investments of housing or developments, it is to ensure that if you have a building or adding housing multifamily or condos, that if you have a hundred units in a building, is that maybe 10 of them be affordable or that there be some requirement that this is not something that just shuts people out by default based on the price of it. But that there's mindfulness that if these multifamily dwellings or these housing options are coming into communities that they, particularly communities that have not had the same investments, that there's a mindfulness, that there's some portion of it that's affordable, that's mindful to avoid gentrification, that you're ultimately not seeing what we see happen all the time, which is that a lot of time new developments come into communities and old people have to go because they don't qualify for that anymore.

Ann Thompson:

So we have one more question for the panel, just a heads up of how this is going to go. So we'll ask it and then they can think about it and we're going to play some library responses and then we'll get some more audience questions. So you can either go to the microphone, be thinking of your question, we wanted to reserve about 15 minutes for questions or if we don't have any with the microphone, I can just read because there's plenty of them that I didn't get off from the QR code. So the question to think about is what does a thriving community look like to you? But first let's hear from the library responses,

Grace Williams:

A beautiful clean environment and always helping each other and always, I would say more into kids, helping kids to learn how to getting out and fill the grass. Tons

Sydney Townsend:

Of small business, tons of small business. That is the number one thing we need. We need to stop centralizing with Walmart and Taco Bell. We need local restaurants, local businesses. We need to put those up on a pedestal. 100%.

Michael Davis:

Alright. I think just everyone stop thinking about themselves and thinking about love by neighbor. Everyone love each other coming together. If you see someone struggling, don't be afraid to help them out. Like this community specifically, we got a community garden up there at the park that people can come in during the summer, pick what they need. There's multiple blessings box that people donate in this town that anyone can go up and take what they need. I think there needs to be way more than what there already is.

Darshawn Romine:

Keep your community safe, clean, look out for one another, build up your community standards and protect each other in that community. And I think it funnels back down when we take care of our inner city communities, just like the suburbs, when the suburbs and the inner city communities even into the center of your city. When we all do what we need to do and we're all on one accord,

Ann Thompson:

What does a thriving community look like to you?

Jalen Laird:

Oh, helping each other. Being able to help each other. Being able to afford the essential things just as groceries or, I think that's the biggest thing is being able to uplift one another so we are able to build each other up.

Ann Thompson:

All right. So had some good responses there. Adam, what does the thriving community look like to you?

Adam Blake:

To me it's a community that doesn't need a CountyCorp.

Ann Thompson:

Putting yourself out of a job.

Destiny Brown:

So, to me it's equal opportunity. It is that the same benefits and amenities and outcomes exist in Dayton, that exist in Oakwood or that exist in Kettering or other places where they're thriving and they have what they need.

ANN: Thanks for that destiny, Matt.

Matt Sauer:

My mind went immediately to busy town, like the butcher is here and there's the cutaway, and there's the worm driving the apple car. I think children honestly are the sort of ultimate expression of the thrivingness of the community. I mean it represents your optimism in that place and your optimism for the future. And to me, more kids on the street, more kids in the playground. That's it.

Ann Thompson:

Okay. Mike?

Mike Squire:

I would say a thriving community to me is a community where every person can flourish with whatever that means for them. And I'm certainly biased, but I believe that the city of Dayton is the best place now and in the future for that flourishing to happen across the region and the state.

Ann Thompson:

Alright, thank you. Does anybody have any questions that they want to ask on the microphone? If so, head to the microphone and why don't you go ahead.

Resident Question (no name):

So Matt, I had a question for you. Sorry, Mike. Back in the 1930s, FDR built these new deal cities like Greenbelt, Maryland, which had a lot of the ideals that you guys have brought forth. It's a centralized, walkable city, walkable bikeable city so everyone can get around. And there was a centralized town center with a grocery store and a civic center and it had mixed use housing. So you had very compact housing, you had single row housing, apartments and single standing housing. Do you think that model would work now in the 21st century?

Mike Squire:

That's a good question. I feel like I want to defer to Matt a little bit on this actually. I think there's a recognition in the city that we have underwhelming, underperforming business districts. And so to that point, there's a lot of opportunity in our residential neighborhoods to have nodes of activity that encourages that mixed use and encourages walkability. And I'll balance that with the fact that, and I have this discussion with our civil engineers all the time. We have 50 years of auto-oriented development in the city and so we have to do a lot of right sizing of our infrastructure here to both meet our population but also make it possible for different modes of transportation and things like that. Main Street being a great example of that, going down to one lane each way, which was very controversial, but I hope everybody that drives on North Main now has a good experience and it's also safer for everybody.

But a lot of our neighborhoods were built with that intention. My neighborhood in Huffman; best neighborhood in the whole city, in deference to a few people out here. So, William Huffman that kind of platted our neighborhood with originally the Davis sewing machine company and then Huffy Bikes. My house built in 1880 big two story house is right next to a cottage. And that was the vision for our neighborhood was that William said he wanted the supervisors and the leaders in his factory to live next to the line workers so that when they made decisions, they understood the impact of that on their workers. And so I think that there's, the opportunity is there, but we have a ways to go. I dunno, would you add anything?

Matt Sauer:

I would just maintain that the street grid Dayton's more or less a street grid kind of town. And to me that allows for such a greater diversity of uses and housing next to this or open space or whatever that I think those master plan communities, those utopian communities that were planned sort of in the early part of the last century, ended up being a little too rigid, didn't flex the way that cities, I think that grow more organically or even with a street grid.

Porothea Dennis/Audience Question:

Yeah. Thanks for your question.

You want to go ahead? Hello everyone. Thank you all for this good information because Dayton has the best kept secrets and especially Ms. Destiny, you were a best kept secret to me. My name is Porothea Dennis. I am the president of the Jane Reece Neighborhood Association. And in my neighborhood along with we are a part of Old Dayton view, there are a lot of vacant lots there that Greater Dayton Premier Management owns. As you know, all of the projects that they close and those lands are sitting there vacant and we have this homeless issue. I'm one of the residents that wakes up in the morning and homeless people are in my backyard sleeping on my porch. So I created my own homeless coalition or unhoused coalition with some of the stakeholders here at the table, also. So what would you say to Greater Dayton Premier Management about making those vacant lots into infill housing or something like that to help combat some of this? Because some of these people was displaced. You had thousands of people living in these projects as we called them, but I grew up in the projects and if it wasn't for the projects, I wouldn't be who I am today, character and everything. So the projects are not bad, it's about the people that are em and who you choose to associate with. So what do you think about that going to Greater Dayton Premier Management asking about infill housing to help try to combat some of this homelessness?

Destiny Brown:

So thank you. Thank you for that. So what I will say is that we have gotten to a point, and I have to acknowledge the efforts of GDPM's president Jennifer Heapy after a long road of getting to recognizing that our missions are the same in a lot of ways is that we want to see our communities do well. And GDPM's reputation, and I'll be honest with you, I didn't start with a good reputation, a good impression of the work that they're doing because my experience has been on the tenant side, the tenant story, the challenges that they're having. But to sit down with Jennifer and to really understand her vision and her hope for the work that they want to do is commendable. I will say that one thing I respect about her mission or her vision is that she's willing to work with community members.

So we've been able to sit down and talk about some of the lots that they have, not necessarily in Dayton View, but in other areas of the city to see how can maybe community members kind of take sake or take ownership of some of the lots that they have that they maybe don't have a use for or don't know what to do with. So just in terms of understanding that there are pathways where community can come in and say maybe, I think it just comes to Mike's point in beginning is relationship and conversation is just to move to that place. The other thing that I'll share is that I also have, when I moved to my neighborhood, I lived next door to a house that probably had about 15 homeless people sleeping in it, and I was sitting on my back porch and saw them coming in and out. And I have children, young children, I don't have a fence in my backyard and it's terrifying. So I commend you for recognizing the issue and proposing a solution and making it happen. But to that point, I think it's also that something that we could collaborate with organizations to say, "How can we help each other?" Because we know that federally HUD is going through some challenges and the reality of them being able to also invest and change and do is complicated as well. So as much as maybe our leadership or local leaders want to do something, the funding has to be there and the manpower has to be there as well.

Ann Thompson:

So I have an online question for Adam. This is a very pointed question here. The Ohio Department of Development just launched a new grant program called the Residential Economic Development District Program or Read to build Workforce housing within 20 miles of new job sites that create at least 700 permanent jobs. The person says all of Montgomery County is considered an eligible maybe district. Are you aware of any work in Dayton to take advantage of this grant? It also calls for changes in zoning policy to allow for more density.

Adam Blake:

I am not aware of that at this time. I have not attended that webinar on the new program, so I know literally nothing about it.

Ann Thompson:

Alright, well stay tuned for that.

Adam Blake:

All right.

Ann Thompson:

Okay.

Resident Question (no name):

In a time of global investors like BlackRock, is there a way that for the city of Dayton to incentivize local home buyers, do you think we're doing that now? Are you hearing that amongst your network? And if we're not, how can we make that happen? Any of you.

Speaker 16:

Go ahead.

Destiny Brown:

To incentivize local home buyers. This something, and I don't know that this would completely align, but something that I appreciated learning about was an old program. And I know that there's mixed opinions on it, but Lot Links that allowed for people - and I know that it had its drawbacks and challenges - but it allowed for people to have access to make a purchase at a low price if they would contribute their own sweat equity or had a plan on how they would do these repairs. So my thought is that in a time where it's so hard to qualify where it is so complicated to get into home buying or it really renting or anything else, that there would be value in excess for a low cost if there is a plan on how you will improve it.

Ann Thompson:

Thank you for that. Let's take the remaining four questions. I know it's getting close to time. You want to go ahead?

Resident Question (Brie Hope/Howie):

Hi, good evening. Thank you all for being here. My name is Brie. Hope I like to go by Halle. Yeah, so my question kind of similar, but basically how can aspiring homeowners or mom and pop landlords compete with the corporate like buyers? I have a personal anecdote. My great-grandfather, his name is Ned, used his GI bill to buy several homes in the Dayton area. And then my great grandmother, her name was Laura, was the landless. And that story inspired me such that it's like I want to replicate that, but right now it's just so unaffordable even to buy one home. I just wonder if you foresee that mom and pop landlords could maybe see a return and see successes in the Dayton area.

Ann Thompson:

Who wants to take that?

Adam Blake:

Well, I mentioned the inventory numbers and the occupancy rate numbers. The challenge is there's very little inventory available to purchase and that drives obviously prices up. One solution to the corporate purchasing of single family homes is local zoning to help address that issue. And CountyCorp is an organization that's considered a socially responsible developer. There are portfolios of single family homes in Dayton that are coming up for sale, they'll be available for sale. I'm going to keep this really simple. You want people that have that local reputational risk that I mentioned earlier, being involved in the ownerships of those projects. Otherwise you're just going to have problems. It doesn't really answer your question, but...

Mike Squire:

I think there's two things here and neither of them are like silver bullets. One on the home ownership side, there are a lot of great programs that people can jump into and CountyCorp has those programs among other agencies. And so knowing what resources [are] out there to help pursue home ownership, and a lot of those are tied to education and financial literacy and all that kind of stuff. But there's great (interrupted by library PA)

library PA:

Library debt. The library will be closing in 30 minutes.

Mike Squire:

That's our queue.

library PA:

Please make your final selections and proceed to the exit.

Mike Squire:

Debbie, thank you for the bilingual shout out. I appreciate that.

library PA:

30 minutes, please make your final selections and proceed to the exit.

Ann Thompson:

Okay, you were saying.

Mike Squire:

Yeah, I have four kids so I can just keep talking, but I know not everybody can listen to that. So that's one thing is knowing what resources are out there for home ownership, there are resources out there for home ownership. The other piece is that from the city standpoint, I think this goes maybe back a little bit to the other question is that the city, again through ARPA funding and through other funding sources, has invested in vacant home rehab. And so we were working with partners like the Land Bank and CountyCorp and others to revitalize those vacant houses because guess what, not everybody has that time. Has the resources or the knowledge to jump into a house that's 50, 70, 80 years old that has been sitting vacant for 10 years and wants to jump right into that. And I was an example of that.

I was a young, me and my wife and our two kids at the time moved into a 140- year-old house. And if that house had been vacant, we would not have done that. But the people before us had done some work and it was good enough that we could move in and then we could put our own touch to it. So the city's investing from that standpoint, again, trying to shore up and then make available. And I know we're short on time, but the other part for neighborhoods that's really key, and I say this because I did this myself when I was president of our neighborhood, is doing some of the digging and research on vacant houses in your neighborhood can be impactful because there's no one else doing that legal work for you. And so going and researching, finding out who owns that vacant house, how long have they owned it, does it owe back taxes? I may or may not have entered some of those to find out if they were viable or not. I'm not putting anything on record... to understand like, "Hey, is this house even worth investing in?" So I think there's some things that neighborhood groups, associations in particular, but others can actually do on the ground that can free up some of those houses that are stuck to get them out of that and into productive use.

Ann Thompson:

Alright, what's your question?

Speaker 25:

Good evening. My name is Kemo A'Akhutera. I'm a former real estate investor in the city. I've been doing investing, fixing and flipping as such in underserved communities since 2009. And I currently have a company called Mod Fab Inc. Or Modular Fabrication Inc. Incorporated. We focused on building homes out of shipping containers where people can live, work and play other types of buildings, et cetera. So my question is, given the projections in the brick by brick that Ohio may still be catching up on housing supply by the time my grandkids have grandkids, respectfully, because traditional construction is moving at, let's call it a reflective pace. In the spirit of collaboration, because we all love collaboration, can someone explain why aren't modular builders like Mod Fab being deployed like the Avengers? We can put a home up on a vacant lot faster than most committees can schedule a follow-up meeting. So my question is what's the barrier to letting the faster kids play?

Ann Thompson:

Yeah. What about that? And then are shipping containers allowed? Are zoning, does zoning need to be changed?

Mike Squire:

Let me not speak outside my area too much, but the city is going through over the next year or two, a pretty big zoning overhaul called Adapt Dayton. And I think we're looking at a lot of things like that. A lot of stuff is on the table around zoning to make our zoning code, which is 20, 30 years old at this point, like catch up with the times. And I think that's part of the conversation. There is a allowances, but it's, again, it's restricted by setbacks and all this stuff based on the particular zoning code of that parcel that you're planning on building on. And then you have all the building permitting side too. So I won't be overly helpful. It's not my area, but I think the vision there is to look at that soon.

Matt Sauer:

If it's an industrialized unit, that's approved by the state of Ohio. It is. I don't think there's any restrictions to that. Exactly. You're operating in the same sphere that Unibuilt and other modular.

Ann Thompson:

Thanks for the question. Appreciate it. Good question. Want

Matt Sauer:

To go ahead?

Resident/Steven Ware:

My name is Steven Ware. I've been a Dayton area resident most of my life. The topic of walkable cities came up earlier and one way to easily make things more walkable is with continuous sidewalks. So currently with pedestrian or crosswalks, the sidewalk dips down to the street level, the pedestrian crosses the street and then goes back up on the other side. Continuous sidewalks. It stays at the sidewalk level instead. So that forces vehicles to slow down and use caution when they're going over a pedestrian crosswalk. And furthermore, it's easier on wheelchairs or anyone else who's using some kind of mobility device. I was wondering would the City of Dayton ever consider using continuous sidewalks at maybe some of our busier crosswalks?

Ann Thompson:

I'm glad you brought up pedestrian safety. We have an episode on that, so I'm glad it's important.

Mike Squire:

Yes. Yeah, the answer is yes. We have deployed in some areas like Belmont, we have a raised crosswalk there. I hate to be the stodgy city guy, but there are cost implications not just with the physical build of that, but also with drainage around. And I think there's some creative ways to get around that, but we are moving to that more and more. A great example over on Fifth Street around Sinclair's campus is a great example of that, and we're starting to deploy that in other areas. Laura, with the Wayne Avenue Traffic Safety Coalition, that's a proposal for Wayne Avenue, which is one of our busier corridors is we've had a pedestrian death there. We've had accidents. It's like a necessary thing. And so we're looking at raised crosswalks at a few points on Wayne Avenue for just that reason.

Speaker 16:

Thank you.

Ann Thompson:

Okay. Thank you. You want to go ahead?

Resident Question (no name):

Believe it or not, I was going to ask the last guy about the question about ADUs and plots of land. So I'll go with my other question. With Dayton now being more than 50% renters and the documentation that shows net worth is higher among homeowners stability in neighborhoods, is among homeowners with the constant push for more rental units. With a lot of the programs coming out there at two 50, 300,000 per unit, is there a possibility that a lot of our programs are going to have similar generational effects as what redlining did to the African-American community in the past?

Adam Blake:

That's a really good question. The good thing about Dayton is we have room for both with a lot of opportunity, a lot of vacant lots for single family infill housing. We do, as the stats that I said earlier with the occupancy rates the way they are, we do need multifamily rental housing for sure. I am not smart enough to think about the implications for the future on that. That's a great question.

Destiny Brown:

I would just say that if you look at some of the, for example, the CountyCorp homes in the area are between $250K and $350K. So for the very same $250K, you can have a life long renter or you can have a homeowner. So you're absolutely right, and it's just a matter of priorities and investments. So it's ultimately the same amount of money. It's just a decision on whether you're going to build wealth and intentional investments for communities that have suffered or if you'll continue redlining legacies that perpetuate renting long time. Thank you.

Ann Thompson:

Well, we want to thank you for all your questions. I'll apologize that I only got to a few of the online questions, but Dayton and Montgomery County needs more people like you who are intelligent and engaged. So thank you so much for coming to this event. We hope to have more of them. And please join me in thanking our guests, Adam Destiny, Matt and Mike. Thanks so much, guys. Really appreciate it.

You can also see what you heard today. We’ll have a video link attached to the web article at thinktv.org and cetconnect.org. That’s where you can also find links and articles to all our other topics including food insecurity, solar, pedestrian safety and more. There’s also a big green button where you can tell your housing story and any solutions that you think we should all get behind.  

Coming up on the next Brick by Brick, Toxic Housing. 

You say that you have to see the mold visually. What happens when you go into the house or the apartment?

Jeremy Hessel:

The inspection is looking for that mold that is what the complaint has been made about, or even water intrusion. So, they’ll be looking in living spaces, bathrooms, bedrooms, just to find that mold that’s being complained about.”

We’re talking mold, lead paint, lead pipes, bad housing materials and more. How prevalent are they and what kind of a difference getting rid of them can make. That’s on the next episode of Brick by Brick. 

That’s our show. If you like what you hear, please rate and review our podcast. It makes it easier to find. We hope you learned something and if you did, please tell your friends and family about it. For Hernz Laguerre Jr. And Emiko Moore, I’m Ann Thompson. We’ll be back soon with more solutions. Take care. 

Our show is produced, hosted an edited by me, Ann Thompson with reporting and story editing from Hernz Laguerre Jr. and Emiko Moore. Our Executive producer of Mark Lammers. Audio sweetening provided by Mike Schwartz. Zach Kramer runs the lights and cameras. Derrick Smith is our production specialist and Jason Garrison is our production manager. Kellie May heads up our marketing and promotions, along with Mike Shea and Bridgett Dillenburger. Elyssa Stefenson handles the website and Josh Lusby and Steve Wright are our designers. Bill Dean and Andres Kruza are the engineers for the show and our Chief Content Officer is Colin Scianamblo. Our music is from Universal Production Music. Brick by Brick: Solutions for a Thriving Community is a production of CET and ThinkTV, Southwest Ohio PBS member stations.