It’s getting increasingly harder to find an affordable place to live. Sky- high rents, fluctuating mortgage rates, expensive home prices and a shortage of housing are all contributing factors. Every year there are incentives for banks to create affordable housing. How much are they doing and is it making a difference? 

Interview guests: Damon Allen, senior vice president Federal Home Loan Bank-Cincinnati; Susan Thomas, President Fifth Third Bank Community Development Corporation and co-chair National Housing Crisis Task Force, Roddell McCullough, chief corporate responsibility officer First Financial Bank; Kenya Taylor, vice president community manager Chase Bank; Elisabeth Risch, executive director Housing Opportunities Made Equal (HOME) 

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If the U.S. builds as many homes as it did last year, experts predict it will take an average of seven and a half years to close the housing gap. How do we speed up construction? One way might be to increase the production of 3D printed houses. This technology is starting to take off in Texas and a few other states. Could it make sense in other parts of the country? 

Interview guests: Interview guests: Sandy Curth, PhD researcher who designs and builds sustainable 3D printed structures; Dr. Ali Memari, director Pennsylvania Housing Research Center and Penn State Bernard and Henrietta Hankin Chair in Residential Building Construction; John Smoll, owner Open Vision Builders 

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Vacant land owned by the government may be able to help ease the housing gap. Most of it near urban areas and transit lines, is controlled by local governments. And with the help of the Center for Geospatial Solutions (CGS), communities are starting to realize they may have land to build more housing. 

Interview guest: Director of the Center for Geospatial Solutions Jeff Allenby explains how his nonprofit agency can quickly comb through reams of data to locate land for potential housing. 

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Responding to a study in 2023, Northern Kentucky is trying to increase their housing stock. Local leaders and non-profits collaborated to create a menu of options called Home for All: Northern Kentucky Housing Strategies. We look at some of the 50 solutions included and talk to stakeholders about the next steps.

Interview guests: 

Tara Johnson-Noem, Executive Director at Northern Kentucky Area Development District; Mayor Ron Washington, Covington Kentucky; Stephanie Stiene, Director of Financial Wellness and Volunteer Engagement; Judge/Executive Gary W. Moore, Boone County; Brent Cooper, President & CEO at Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce; Colton Simpson, Deputy Judge Executive in Grant County, KY; Seth Cutter,  Vice President of Public Affairs - CVG Airport; Sharmili Reddy, Executive Director of Planning and Development Services of Kenton County; Wonda Winkler, President & CEO at Brighton Center, Inc.; Bradie Bowen, Covington KY Resident (Former teacher and administrator for 22 years)

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More than half of Americans say they would consider living in a tiny home, defined as large as 600 square feet. As traditional homes get more expensive the interest is increasing. Also, many see tiny homes as a possible solution to homelessness. Local efforts are underway to create villages of them.

Interview guests: Alam Graham, CEO Mobile Loaves & Fishes (Community First Village) in Austin, TX; Juan (John) Perez, Co-Founder and President Vista Village in Columbus, OH; Debbie Watts Robinson, CEO Miami Valley Housing Opportunities; Earl Crossland and Larry Plum, Co-Founders Tiny Homes for Humanity in Cincinnati; Clermont County Commissioner Bonnie Batchler

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The federal government gives developers the equivalent of $10 billion a year to build low-income housing in the form of a tax credit. Without this government subsidy, known generally as Low-Income Housing Tax Credits (LIHTC), there would be a lot fewer affordable units. There are limitations, including the funding. Is there a better way to do it?  

Interview guests: Anthony Orlando, PhD, associate professor of finance, real estate and law at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona;  Roger Valdez, director of The Center for Housing and Economics; Ryan Gleason, executive director Ohio Housing Council; Mary Burke Rivers, executive director Over-the-Rhine Community Housing; and Ben Eilerman, director of real estate Over-the-Rhine Community Housing. 

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An effort to improve one man’s suburban Dallas neighborhood is now spreading across the country, even touching South Bend, Indiana. Incremental developer Monte Anderson coined the term “gentlefication,” valuing people and buildings as he envisions what an area could look like. He’s teaching other cities how to do it.

Interview guest: South Dallas community developer, landlord, and “town maker” Monte Anderson helps others find their “farm.”

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The U.S. housing stock is old and getting older and its deterioration is causing health, safety and financial concerns. Saving it is cheaper and more sustainable than building new. But preservation is still expensive. How do we preserve housing before more low-cost rental units are lost? 

Interview guests: Executive Director Ohio Community Development Corporation (CDC) Association Torey Hollingsworth, Dayton Housing Inspection Division Manager James McDaniel, Chairperson Dayton Home Repair Network Aileen Hull, and CMHA CEO Greg Johnson

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Over time, property is almost guaranteed to go up in value. That’s a problem if you have a limited income and want to buy a house. Unless the house is in a community land trust (CLT) which retains ownership of the land and restricts the resale price of the home. CLTs are slowly gaining steam across the US and there is evidence this model is working.  

Interview guests: Civil rights activist who helped start the first US CLT Shirley Sherrod, Executive Director Atlanta Land Trust Amanda Rhein, Executive Director Yellow Springs Home, Inc. Emily Seibel and Renting Partnerships founder Margery Spinney. 

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Ask ten people what a thriving community looks like to them and you will likely get ten different answers. But usually at the top of the list is access to affordable housing and healthcare. With 2025 approaching, Brick by Brick went searching for answers, talking to adults and teens. Interact for Health reports on roadblocks and successes for Southwest Ohio. In Dayton plans are underway for a wellbeing index, and a Middletown neighborhood is already seeing improvements after the installation of a community garden.

Interview guests:
Interact for Health Vice President Ashlee Young, Founder of Dayton’s Collaboratory Peter Benkendorf and Middletown Connect Program Manager DeAnna Shores.

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Thousands of people in Cincinnati and Dayton either can’t find a home they can afford or can’t afford the one they live in. Both cities are taking steps to address the housing crisis. What are they doing and is it enough? Brick by Brick hosts two city leaders, from Dayton and Cincinnati, to talk through possible solutions. 

Interview Guests: Cincinnati Councilmember Jeff Cramerding and Dayton City Commissioner Shenise Turner-Sloss. 

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Modular construction, built inside a climate-controlled factory and then trucked to a site for assembly, has been slow to catch on in the U.S. It makes up less than 4-percent of the housing stock, compared to 15-percent in Japan and 45-percent in Scandinavia. Is it the answer to increase the housing supply? And what about other ideas like container homes? 

Interview guests: McKinsey & Company Senior Partner Jose Luis Blanco, Dayton City Manager Shelley Dickstein, Unibilt President Greg Barney and InnovaLab Ohio Chief Operating Officer Tamara Sullivan

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Old buildings make up an increasing share of the U.S. rental stock. Experts say a healthy supply of these aging apartments help cities and neighborhoods thrive. But fixing them up takes money and political will. Atlanta Developer Marjy Stagmeier, who wrote the book Blighted, renovates rundown apartments and has an education model she says others can replicate. 

Interview guest: Atlanta developer, landlord, author and affordable housing “solutionist,” Marjy Stagmeier. 

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Look around and you’ll see plenty of vacant buildings. Can they be turned into housing? Adaptive Reuse is on the rebound and estimates say ninety-percent of real estate development in the next decade will involve adaptive reuse, or repurposing buildings for something other than their intended use. Most cases involve offices or hotels but factories, warehouses, malls and schools are also undergoing transformations. We even found a bowling alley transformed into housing. 

Interview guests: CBRE Senior Associate Marianne Taylor, Executive Director UC Real Estate Center Carl Goertemoeller, and CEO G.F. Bailey Co., Tim Forbess

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Cities that want to add hundreds of housing units at a time are embracing the addition of large-scale apartments alongside other types of housing. These big multifamily housing projects are on track to break national records this year and add an estimated 2-million units by 2028. But will the current economic climate allow the building boom to continue and do communities want large-scale apartments in their neighborhoods?  

Interview guests: Yardi Matrix Manager of Business Intelligence Doug Ressler, Vice President of the Greater Cincinnati Northern Kentucky Apartment Association Justin Seger, and Assistant Anderson Township Administrator Steve Sievers 

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Housing Choice Vouchers are portable subsidies that low-income families can use to lower their rents in the private market. But is this 50-year old solution to the housing crisis working as well as it should? The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) and local entities like the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority and Greater Dayton Premier Management, which receive the federal funds from HUD to issue the vouchers, are trying to make changes but budgetary constraints are hampering their efforts. 

Interview guests: 

HUD Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Public and Indian Housing Rich Monocchio, Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority CEO Greg Johnson and Greater Dayton Premier Management CEO Jennifer Heapy.

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Shane Phillips says we’re not building as much housing as we did in the 1960s when we had 120 million fewer people. He says the scarcity has caught up with us and offers up 54 ideas to tackle the housing crisis. In The Affordable City Phillips suggests everything from letting renters decide what they value to prioritizing the three S’s: Supply, Stability and Subsidy. 

Interview guest: Shane Phillips, urban planner, policy expert, podcast host and author of The Affordable City. 

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Cincinnati’s South Cumminsville is a largely low-income African American neighborhood along the once polluted Mill Creek. Seventy-percent of people live within a block of property with possible contamination and asthma rates among children are high. A nonprofit organization is helping  green it up through retrofits and near net-zero homes. Residents are hopeful and city leaders hope it can be replicated in other communities.

Interview guests: Executive Director of WIN Sister Barbara Busch, President of the South Cumminsville Community Council Derrik Feagin, VP Council on Aging of Southwestern Ohio Ken Wilson and Cincinnati Vice Mayor Jan Michele Lemon-Kearney.

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As evictions and the number of people experiencing homelessness remain high, keeping people in their homes could come down to an algorithm. If homeless prevention agencies got a heads up on who was at-risk and what types of bills they were having trouble paying, they could help prevent an eviction even before an eviction notice. Cincinnati and other cities are trying it. Maidstone, England has data to back it up. 

Interview guests: Kevin Finn, president of Strategies to End Homelessness; Amy Riegel, executive director of the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio; Raúl Ordóñez, University of Dayton professor of electrical and computer engineering, and more. 

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Vacant and abandoned property accelerates the decline of neighborhoods. How can we make this land more productive? An increasing number of governments and non-profit organizations are turning to land banks as a partial solution. 

Interview guests: National Land Bank Network Director Brian Larkin, Montgomery County Land Bank Senior Advisor Mike Grauwelman, The Port’s Executive Vice President Philip Denning, Common Orchard Project Director Chris Smyth

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If we had an abundance of entry level units, there would be a lot of different opportunities,” says Charles Marohn. “A person who is in their first job, a person who’s just getting started with their family, a couple that has just gotten married, people should be able to move up when they’re ready.” In his book Escaping the Housing Trap, Marohn says because we can’t afford for housing prices to fall, one strategy is to look around your neighborhood and instigate a building boom of 600 sq. ft. houses. Among other things, in an interview with Brick by Brick, he talks about what a difference incremental developers can make.

Interview guest: Engineer, Author and Strong Towns CEO Charles Marohn

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We don’t have enough houses or apartments. However, plenty of people may have extra space in their house for a separate garage, attic or basement apartment. And they might even be able to build a separate structure in their backyard. California, Oregon and Washington states have built an estimated 100,000 of these, so-called-Accessory Dwelling Units or ADUs. They are now legal in Cincinnati and conditional in Dayton. Can these structures ramp up here to help fill the housing gap?

Interview guests: ADU expert Kol Peterson, Miami University Assistant Architecture Professor Jeff Kruth, KeyBank Vice President Kenya Taylor, UC Berkeley researcher Mohammed Alameldin

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Vehicles spend most of their time parked. And because of that, for years cities have dictated how many parking spots developers should include based on sometimes arbitrary numbers. But do those numbers still make sense and could reducing them allow for more housing and development? An increasing number of cities are getting rid of those so-called parking mandates or parking minimums, including Cincinnati. 

Interview guests: Author of The High Cost of Free Parking Donald Shoup, President of the Parking Reform Network Tony Jordan, Cincinnati Councilmember Jeff Cramerding and City Officials from Buffalo, Minneapolis and Tulsa.

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We like to keep things as up to date as they can be here on Brick by Brick: Solutions for a Thriving Community. This is a short update from host Ann Thompson regarding the next episode release date.

Please offer feedback on the series through this short survey. 

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Cincinnati and Dayton have some of the highest rates of eviction filings in the nation. And with rents continuing to rise, it’s unclear when those evictions will start slowing down. On this episode of Brick by Brick we examine one possible solution that could even the playing field in eviction court. It’s called Right to Counsel, or the right of a tenant to be represented in court. Dayton is starting a pilot program to either help keep people in their homes or at least avoid an eviction on their record.  Does Right to Counsel work and is it worth it? Some landlords are open to the idea.

Interview guests: National eviction researcher Tim Thomas, officials from Cleveland and Philadelphia: cities seeing success from Right to Counsel

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