Brick by Brick

Local Leaders Look For Big Ideas to Solve Homelessness 

CET Season 2 Episode 13

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As the number of unsheltered people ticks up, state and local agencies are scrambling to find enough beds. They’re also having to navigate changing federal policies which threaten funding. Creativity is key and, in some places, it helps to solve homelessness. This includes the use of data analytics to keep people in their homes and state laws requiring developers to build affordable housing. Brick by Brick convenes a roundtable to talk solutions.

Interview guests: Patrick Bailey, Assistant Director of Human Services, Planning and Development for Montgomery County; Kevin Finn, President and CEO of Strategies to End Homelessness; and Kathy Rowell, Ph.D., sociologist, teacher and the Del Mar Encore Fellow for the Dayton Foundation at the Fitz Center for Leadership in the Community at the University of Dayton.

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Ann Thompson:

Rising rent, stagnant wages and a shortage of housing continues to take its toll on the low income, forcing more people into shelters and out on the streets.

Kathy Rowell:

One little boy, when I asked him what his dream home was told me, he said, I don't even have a dream home. I would just like a dream bed. He was 12 years old and had never slept in bed.

Ann Thompson:

Homelessness is up 3% in Ohio and 18% nationally among children, it rose 33%. Many disappear from school as their families have to move.

Amy Riegel:

The kids are coming to school saying, well, we had to sleep in our car last night,

Ann Thompson:

Criminalizing the unhoused as a growing trend. It's happening increasingly in Ohio and surrounding states. Changes in federal funding policy are also a roadblock leading to uncertainty.

Patrick Bailey:

They're basically saying that continuums of care can only have 30% of their funding and permanent housing. Montgomery County currently has 87%,

Ann Thompson:

But some communities are finding solutions including a housing court in suburban Columbus, statewide success with veterans and the use of data analytics in Cincinnati.

Kevin Finn:

To be honest, I feel like we've caught lightning in a bottle. We know how to reduce homelessness. This is not rocket science.

Ann Thompson:

Can these programs and others be replicated? In this episode, we're talking homelessness supportive programs called Continuum of Care and what the future holds for the unhoused in a society where the cost of housing continues to go up. Stay tuned for a special conversation, and my colleagues, Hernz Laguerre Jr. And Emiko Moore will join me at the end for some takeaways. Let's get into it. 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:

Hello, and welcome to Brick by Brick, where highlighting solutions for a thriving community in southwest Ohio. I'm your host, Ann Thompson. It's hard to capture just how many people are unhoused. The point in time count was in January, but many agree that excludes those temporarily staying with friends or family, living in hotels and people in prisons or detox centers. So the number is probably much higher than last year's 639 in Montgomery County and more than a thousand in Hamilton County. Montgomery County served more than 4,000, and Hamilton County served more than 7,000 in 2025. Brick by Brick wanted to bring together a panel of experts to talk about the problem across the region and possible solutions. Dr. Kathy Rowell is a sociologist, teacher and the Del Mar Encore Fellow for the Dayton Foundation at the Fitz Center for Leadership in the Community at the University of Dayton. Patrick Bailey is Assistant Director of Human Services, Planning and Development for Montgomery County, overseeing the Continuum of Care staff and Kevin Finn is president and CEO of Strategies and Homelessness in Cincinnati, the unified funding agency for this area’s Continuum of Care. Now, our conversation. Kathy, let's start with you. Help us personalize homelessness. You have spent lots of time for your book, especially facing eviction and housing insecurity with unhoused people. Give us some examples of different segments of the population you encountered in what they experienced.

Kathy Rowell:

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, I started doing this work about 40 years ago. I started working at a shelter and I've had opportunities to sleep outside with folks I've slept in shelters. And recently, as you know in the book, interviewed a lot of folks struggling, and I think the part of the story that we often don't hear is it affects so many people and all walks of life. But in particular, I wanted to share two stories. First of all, I think that one of the fastest growing numbers are seniors and senior citizens, and increasingly social security is not covering the cost of housing. And we ran into a gentleman who's featured in the book who, I mean I remember, I will listen to the person interviewing him and I still to this day think about him a lot. He passed not too long after we wrote the book in shelter, and he had been on social security most of his life, and then they raised the rent and he didn't have much family and ended up in a shelter.

He was crying during his interview. This was not how he thought he was going to end his life. I think that's a story that we're not hearing or the numbers of seniors affected by this. And a lot of it has to do with rising rents. Also health insurance. I mean, the cost of healthcare has gone up. And so that's a segment that I think about quite a bit. And then the book. And then I have a documentary that came out recently focuses on children. And during COVID, I basically was at the shelter most days interviewing kids and for, I don't know what's happened to us, but I think that the pain that children experience when they're living unhoused is really hard to hear. They shared stories of leaving pets behind, toys behind. And one little boy, when I asked him what his dream home was told me, he said, I don't even have a dream home. I would just like a dream bed. He was 12 years old and had never slept at a bed. He had slept on a sleeping bag his entire life.

Ann Thompson:

Those stories are really hard to hear. And as you mentioned, among the hardest hit, our children. Brick by Brick, interviewed director of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, Amy Riegal, who said There are now homeless liaisons in schools.

Amy Riegel:

And what we're hearing from more and more of those school-based liaisons is they are seeing the families who are moving between very high overcrowded situations who are doubled up, maybe spending a few weeks, a few nights and an extended stay hotel, but that the kids are coming to school saying, well, we had to sleep in our car last night. Or that perhaps they slept in a location that was not fit for human habitation.

Ann Thompson:

So disturbing things to hear. You mentioned children. What other trends, Patrick and Kevin have you been seeing in terms of the unhoused?

Kevin Finn:

Well, I'll jump in since we're talking about families right out of the bat. So in Hamilton County in 2023, we found 11 families sleeping in cars. In 2025, it was 326. So that is an incredible increase. I think we're also doing a better job of finding them, but clearly family homelessness and families sleeping unsheltered is absolutely an issue.

Patrick Bailey:

And I would concur with that. I know in Montgomery County we've seen our overall homeless numbers have been relatively stable. There's been modest increases, but when we look at the number of unsheltered folks, it's increased significantly.

Kevin Finn:

Homelessness is on the rise, and homeless shelters don't magically have more beds when homelessness goes up. So a lot of times where you see that increase is people who are unsheltered.

Ann Thompson:

And as Amy was talking about, you have children and they suddenly disappear from schools because their families have to move.

Kevin Finn:

A lot of times for our family shelters in Hamilton County, by the time a family comes into a shelter, the kids have already changed schools four or five, six times in one academic year because as they went from couch to couch with friends and family and things like that, those were their last options before becoming literally homeless. A lot of times each of those moves necessitated a school change.

Ann Thompson:

Well, Patrick, what are some of the hurdles to getting some of these people help?

Patrick Bailey:

I think one of the key aspects is lack of affordable housing. I mean, housing has become so expensive, not only in Montgomery County, but really across the country. And I know the fair market rent over just the last six years has gone up in Montgomery County over 42%. I mean, that's significant. People's whose wages have gone up 42% in the last few years. So if somebody was on the verge just barely making it six years ago, well, if your rent went up by 42%, I mean clearly there's some, is it rent? Is it food? What are you, what's missing from the equation that you're actually going to be able to pay for? And many times it ends up being I can no longer afford the place that I'm living in because I got to feed my kids. I got to keep my family.

Ann Thompson:

And in many cases, people are working, but as you referenced, they may just…

Kathy Rowell:

Yeah, I was going to add the benefits cliff is another really serious issue so that folks are afraid to earn too much because then they lose a lot of their benefits, especially when it comes to healthcare and childcare. And we have a really serious issue with that in our country. And I know that there's some legislation being looked at to do something about that.

Kevin Finn:

A lot of times people, if they know anything about homelessness, what they actually know is a stereotype, like what we're talking about. These are the actual causes of homelessness, issues with benefits, issues with cost of housing. For us, most homeless people are not mentally ill. Most do not have a substance abuse issue. It is economic issues that have led to them being homeless.

Ann Thompson:

And it can come on quick it sounds like.

Patrick Bailey:

And it's really also about livable wages. When we look at Montgomery County, what a livable wage is for a two bedroom, you're talking 20, 21 bucks an hour. I mean, you have to have a pretty decent paying job that's going to pay 21, 20 $2 an hour. Its minimum wage definitely is not going to cut that.

Ann Thompson:

So here we have an increasing problem. And then what services are available in both Hamilton and Montgomery Counties to help them?

Kevin Finn:

Well, one of my biggest frustrations is that the largest funder of homeless services is the federal government, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, most specifically. But they require people to already be literally homeless on the street in a shelter or fleeing domestic violence before you can help them. Whereas preventing people from getting to that point would've been a much better way to approach the issue. But our federal government largely does not fund prevention efforts that would've kept people from ever getting to that point.

Ann Thompson:

Let's define the term that I've mentioned, continuum of care. What is that? What does that mean?

Kevin Finn:

Well, the Continuum of Care is a program from the Department of Housing and Urban Development that's the largest funding stream to help homeless people. So that's one sort of use of the term continuum of care. But in order for communities to tap into that funding, they have to sort of organize themselves in a certain way. And that organization and a local community is also referred to as a continuum of care. So there's a Montgomery County Continuum, there's a Hamilton County Continuum, there are nine of those just in the state of Ohio.

Ann Thompson:

What does that look like in Montgomery County?

Patrick Bailey:

Our continuum of care has lots of services. One of the things that Kevin just talked about was diversion, and that's an important piece, and he's exactly right. There's really little funding from the federal government for diversion. One of the emphasis that we started to focus on this last year was diversion efforts. Trying to, as people are approaching shelters or really struggling methods, housing focused problem solving with these folks and trying to see what we can't do so that we can do everything that we can so they don't actually enter shelters. So one of the things that we did is we had some extensive training for all of our community providers to try to, it was another step that we took to try to help before they actually entered shelters or entered homelessness. What are some things that we can do to try to actively help them prevent that? But in addition to that, in Montgomery County, we have our shelters. We have our family and a women and family shelter. We have a men's shelter, we have youth shelters, and we also have domestic violence shelters, and we also have lots of different housing that's in place and case management services really to try to help folks that are struggling with barriers, addictions, whatever the case might be to try to help them problem solve and find employment and find their way to a safe place to live.

Ann Thompson:

Kevin, we'll save the data analytics program innovative for a little bit later. But what services are provided in Hamilton County?

Kevin Finn:

Well, where most of the funding goes is to what's called supportive housing. So those are housing programs largely that get people back into housing after they have been on the street or in a shelter typically. So permanent supportive housing programs, which are for chronically homeless and disabled people who are experiencing homelessness. There's also something called rapid rehousing, which is not targeted at people who are disabled, more toward people who are homeless purely for economic reasons. Those programs are out there and they do a great job of helping people get out of homelessness. There's a serious capacity issue though, where we're only able to offer an opening in one of those programs to about a third of the people who are experiencing homelessness, which means two thirds don't receive those sorts of assistance.

Ann Thompson:

We hope you're learning a lot from Kathy Rowell, Patrick Bailey and Kevin Finn. Our conversation on Continuum of Care continues in just a moment.

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.


Mark Lammers:

As you can tell from this conversation, a lack of housing can occur for a number of reasons, which is why the community responses are as varied as the roots of homelessness itself. Hi, I'm Lambers, executive producer for Brick By Brick. The organizations working with the Continuum of Care networks in your region are on the front line of that effort. We appreciate them coming together to have this regional exchange around the solutions and challenges. So how is your neighborhood or community providing support for your unhoused neighbors? Share that effort and your own thoughts on this topic by clicking the link in the podcast show notes or by visiting cetconnect.org or thinktv.org. And visit our Brick by Brick show page. We look forward to your shared feedback and ideas. Thanks.

Ann Thompson:

Welcome back to Brick by Brick. Now more with Kevin Finn, Kathy Rowell, and Patrick Bailey on the current state of homelessness and available help. Now might be a good time to mention the federal governments pivot in continuum of care. So we had heard about housing first, the strategy, getting somebody housed and then helping them with other services like mental illness or drug addiction. And back in November, the government said, well, we want to change this and just let's address mental illness and substance abuse first. I know this is kind of being held up in the courts. How has this or the threat of this affected how you're thinking about this and funding Patrick?

Patrick Bailey:

I mean, I think several ways. I mean, I think one of the concerns is that in Montgomery County, we have 26 different programs that are funded by hud. And the way ours are set up is they're staggered, so they start and stop at staggered times. So we have programs that start in February, March, April, May, June. Well, if this funding gets delayed, it's going to cause issues with providers getting funds in the door to operate their programs. I think another one of the challenges that with this, what HUD has signaled through the notice of funding opportunity is their emphasis on 30%. They're basically saying that continuums of care can only have 30% of their funding in permanent housing. Montgomery County currently has 87% in permanent housing,

Kevin Finn:

We’re at 94%.

Patrick Bailey:

Yeah, and I think I've heard across the country it's like close to 90%. So if you're going to take permanent housing from 87 or 90% and drop it down to 30%, that means we have to transition all of these folks into transitional housing or other types of housing projects. And again, the permanent housing is like the name says it's permanent, it's long-term where transitional is only for two years. So it creates a quandary. Folks, I think all the continuums of care are scurrying around trying to figure out what are the next steps that we're going to try to do? And if this lawsuit does go through how we're going to organize our community resource resources to best help folks that are in need.

Ann Thompson:

Let's talk about another challenge criminalizing homelessness by saying you can't sleep in public places outside. Kathy, what have you seen in southwest Ohio when it comes to this?

Kathy Rowell:

Yeah, and this started a while ago when we started criminalizing sleeping on park benches. And then we saw the recent Supreme Court case. I think what's happening in southern Ohio, and it's actually everywhere, is that we've seen cities begin what I call closing encampments. And what ends up happening, I know in Dayton I've had some concerns about it, is that it involves law enforcement. So law enforcement show up sometimes without much notice, and they show up with bulldozers and folks lose everything. And I understand people's concerns about encampments, but there's a way to do it humanely and a way not to. And one of the problems is we close an encampment, where do they go? The shelters are full, and some of these folks had burned bridges at the local shelters, so there's no place for them to go. And we're also increasingly seeing, I call it the competition of counties now, where counties are saying, if you're not from our county, we won't help you.

So if you became homeless in Montgomery County and no longer can go to shelter, you've put in your 90 days as sort of the new limit, and then you decide, let me go to move and try to start over. Their county's not serving other people now, and you have to have evidence of that. But I think it's nationally, and part of that's tied to the misunderstanding of homeless folks being mentally unstable or drug addicted or criminals, and we're seeing a different perspective of that. That's just not true. And yeah, sure, there's people with mental health issues. Sure, there's people with drug addiction, but criminalizing that has never worked in this country. We think we'd learned from history, but we don't seem to. But we have definitely seen an increase in closing of encampments, and I know Utah is looking at developing a detention camp for the unhoused, and we're seeing it's really hard to see.

Ann Thompson:

Well, let's talk about something that when it comes to making lemonade out of lemons, here's something positive that came out of a community that criminalized homelessness, that's Licking County here in Ohio. As Amy Riegal explains.

Amy Riegel:

There was a housing court that was established, and the housing court actually sees any individual who's experiencing homelessness, who is interacting with the police on any misdemeanor or felony charge, and they go to the housing court and the home court. They help them to talk about what their housing opportunities are going to be or could be.

Ann Thompson:

It'll be interesting to find out how that continues to work. Kevin, let's talk about another innovative idea, data analytics. I think it's called the Housing Stability Collaborative in Cincinnati. Where did you get the idea, what is it and how is it working?

Kevin Finn:

The idea is to use predictive data analytics to use data from community partners in the area to data that has some sort of predictive value of whose situation has gone downhill kind of thing. And then use predictive data analytics to identify those households by name, who are most likely to get an eviction notice. So that's the first part of the project. The second part is reaching out to those families and proactively offering them services with the goal being they never get the eviction notice. So we received sort of startup funding from the city of Cincinnati to try this with families who were residents of the city of Cincinnati. It went live in July of 2024, and what we're finding is it's about 97% effective in keeping families from ever losing their housing and at a cost of about $3,800 per family. Now, the cost of serving that same family if they become homeless and come into the system is $22,500. So we are literally helping six families for the cost of one by using this innovative homelessness prevention model, which I always just have to mention again, government sources primarily federal, do not fund prevention. So that is the type of intervention that if we could do more of it, we could significantly reduce homelessness if there were resources to support that sort of thing. Other than the city of Cincinnati and a few others, there's not been a lot of support for that sort of thing yet.

Ann Thompson:

And you were out fundraising and what does this look like for this year and future years?

Kevin Finn:

The City of Cincinnati is currently funding that effort through the end of 2026. We're hoping to extend it through the end of 2027, but we're in the early stages of a fundraising campaign to try to secure more resources for that. To be honest, I feel like we've caught lightning in a bottle. We know how to reduce homelessness. This is not rocket science. Almost every homeless person I've ever met at one point had housing. How about we just keep them in it? And we can do that and achieve better outcomes at a significantly lower cost, but it takes resources to do that.

Ann Thompson:

Patrick, I know that you know about this program. Have you thought about doing it in Montgomery County?

Patrick Bailey:

We have our system performance evaluation committee that has actually been looking at data analytics. They've been working with a professor at UD and he's been engaging his students and trying to look at the data analytics to kind of help examine changes in the number of changes in folks' circumstances in the greater Dayton area. So they've kind of started, I would say, on the initial stages of looking into that. What we have been doing though is we're currently working on a strategic plan, and a part of that strategic plan is really trying to help move, looking at two to three initiatives that would help move the needle in our community. And we've, as a part of that strategic planning process, have been using qualitative and quantitative analysis to try to really get the best bang for our buck because we are really, again, we want to reduce the number of folks that are experiencing homelessness. We want to see those numbers drop year by year by year, and you have to be very strategic, very calculative. You have to look at all the types of resources that you can in order to try to help that. You need to be very thoughtful.

Ann Thompson:

Let me throw out some ideas here as we think big picture in Ohio. So Amy Regal that we heard from earlier has said that other states, Minnesota and Michigan, are requiring developers who are building apartments to have a certain number of units for low income, making them do that. She says Ohio is kind of behind. So there's that idea. Tiny houses, Patrick, I know you were recently quoted in an article about an effort in Dayton. There's also one in Clermont County. What about those solutions and are there others?

Patrick Bailey:

I mean, I can speak to the tiny homes. I think Tiny homes, the one positive thing about 'em is they are cheaper to build because they're smaller units. We've got a provider in our community that's in the planning stages for Beacon Place, which would be a 40 unit affordable housing, permanent housing spot. The units are like 500 square feet, but they're trying to get their funding stack in place in order to try to move forward with it. And the one thing that's kind of cool about that is it's designed specifically for folks that are experiencing homelessness. It's also a community center that would be a part of it. And the plan is also to have case management as well. So it's wraparound services that helped those folks that were previously experiencing homelessness.

Ann Thompson:

As we wrap out the interview, wanted to get your thoughts on the future of the unhoused or local continuums of care, and also what gives you hope, Kevin?

Kevin Finn:

Prevention. Prevention, prevention. To me, that's the future because it is saves people so much trauma. There is so much trauma that people experience on their way toward literal homelessness. So not only can we prevent people from becoming homeless at a lower cost and with better outcomes, but we save people all that trauma, which has long-term impacts for them into the future. So my hope is that some of the resources that are already available, I mean, we get over $30 million from the federal government to fund homeless services in Hamilton County. We're not allowed to use any of it for prevention, but if we could just move a little bit of that to prevention, we could make a meaningful impact. So I'm optimistic that in the future, we're doing two studies on our prevention programs with Notre Dame University right now, and we're hoping that with that sort of documentation of how well prevention works, that in the future we'll be able to shift resources in that direction.

Kathy Rowell:

Yeah, I would have to agree that it's prevention and I am really excited about the right to counsel in eviction court. So the work happening around this country, it's a national movement, but whatever we can do to reduce eviction, I know that there are actually other organizations, not just the county in Dayton and Montgomery County that are doing some of the data analytics Learn to Earn is taking on a pretty big project to do eviction prevention with Dayton Public Schools. It's going to be coming out really soon. So I think anything we can do for prevention and why I love all the tiny homes and all these various programs, I think they help us certain population. Ultimately, we have to take a real look at cost of housing, affordable housing. We have outside investors that are coming in and buying up a lot of the properties and raising prices.

And also it gives me hope are actually the people who experience it themselves. They often come back and do work. Some of my very best students over the years were unhoused folks. In fact, I ran into one the other day and one of them, I have a former student who works in city government now to try to go do something about it. So I think we forget that they're folks that once they get housing and they have stability in their lives, they're able to do some really great things in our community, and I think we need to take more time and really listen to their ideas.

Patrick Bailey:

I agree. Prevention is key, is much cheaper than the alternative. I also think that it's important. I think partnerships are very important. I think when you gather a group of folks that are committed around the table, we look outside of our systems, we look at the healthcare system, we look at the mental health, we look at all the other systems that have aging system and we try to look at things and try to creatively problem solve this issue together, that there's real strength in that. There's real opportunity, there's real opportunities for us to make a big dent in the future. So

Ann Thompson:

There is so much to talk about, but for time, we'll have to leave it here and follow up. Thanks to sociologist and author, Kathy Rowell; assistant Director of Human Services and Planning with Montgomery County, Patrick Bailey; and CEO of Strategies to End Homelessness. Kevin Finn, thanks to all of you. 

A big problem requires big ideas. It's time for takeaways, and we welcome multi-media journalist, Emiko Moore and Hernz Laguerre Jr. Hey guys. 

Emiko Moore:

Good to be here. 

Ann Thompson:

Emiko, what did you think of the conversation?

Emiko Moore:

Well, I found it interesting that all three experts agreed that the best prevention is to help keep people housed. And when Kevin Finn spoke about prevention saves trauma, it made me think of how much trauma is involved in homelessness. You don't think about it. For example, a child that may have to move schools five or six times in a school year. I mean, think about what kind of academic success that child would have. Or if you are a 12-year-old child who's never had your own bed and that's your dream in life, you imagine all the different impacts that the whole family experiences.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

Yeah, Kevin Finn and I, we had this conversation during the data analytics episode in season one about how the proactive approach just saves the city money in the first place to compare $3,600 needed to help a family not be evicted as opposed to the 20,000 plus dollars that's needed after their homeless. It almost seems like a no brainer as to which method helps more being proactive.

Ann Thompson:

Well, Patrick Bailey was talking about the importance of having partnerships, and after our interview ended, cameras are off, Kevin and Patrick started talking about how they could help one another when it came to data analytics with Kevin offering his data analysts and his data system. And so that'll be interesting to see how that develops.

Emiko Moore:

And it's really exciting to see when cities can work with other cities and share what works for them.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

And I think on top of that, it's good for us to learn, right? And to learn what misnomers or misconceptions could be dispelled. I think one misconception about all homeless people being on drugs and alcohol abuse, Kevin said in his experience, majority of people that he encountered who are homeless aren't facing drugs and alcohol abuse. A lot of them are dealing with economic issues, and the evidence backs him up. The National Coalition of the Homeless says one third of people who are homeless have substance abuse issues. Those same folks turn to drugs and alcohol to deal with the stress of homelessness. I think that adds to the whole treatment first versus housing first debate. And there definitely still needs to be a lot of research and a lot of investment to see what solution has the biggest impact.

Ann Thompson:

Well, there were just so many topics and solutions that we weren't able to get to in the discussion.

 

Emiko Moore:

It seems like we need to have a few more of these discussions. 

 

Ann Thompson:

Good idea. Thanks for your thoughts, guys.

Hernz Laguerre Jr.:

No problem.

Ann Thompson:

That's our show. We hope today's conversation gave you a better sense of our local community's responses to help our unhoused neighbors and how federal, state and local support plays a role in those efforts. We also hope you'll keep the conversation going at home and in your own neighborhoods around this issue. If you want to sound off on this issue or any solution we cover, we'd love to hear it. You can do that by scanning the QR code on your screen and filling out a feedback form. Until next time, for Hearns Deger Jr. And Acomb Moore, I'm Ann Thompson. We'll be back with more solutions soon. 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. Mike Shea and Bridgett Dillenburger are in marketing and promotions. 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.