ONC Reporting –
Advocates for the homeless in Ohio say effective and well-funded federal programs have helped cut the number of homeless veterans nearly in half over the past decade.
Federal agencies with a “housing first approach” have prioritized getting veterans into stable housing quickly without preconditions and provided greater assistance to landlords willing to help.
Marcus Roth with the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio says the same approach should apply to all homeless people.
“It’s been really refreshing to see that we can make progress for homeless veterans. If we apply the same approach to other populations we can help other folks, too.”
There are still more than six-hundred homeless veterans in Ohio, according to federal data.
Advocates for these veterans say high rental prices and increasing eviction rates statewide could add to that number. Rents prices skyrocketed a year into the pandemic, increasing nearly 25-percent in Ohio from 2021 to 2022 with Clevland and Cincinnati alone showing some of the highest rent increases in the country. Roth says the state’s continued lack of affordable housing is driving people into homelessness.
“We hear about tenants that are getting bills with a rent increase of forty to fifty-percent and a lot of people can’t afford that, and then they look around to see, you know, find another place to live and they can’t find anywhere else that’s affordable either.”
Roth says the General Assembly’s creation of a new affordable housing tax credit could offer some relief.
The Senate Select Committee on Housing has been holding a series of hearings to address the affordable housing crisis.
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