City Revamp: More Affordable Homes!

According to an article from the Huffington Post, The average factory worker in the US makes about $23.32 an hour, making the average yearly salary wage about $48,000 yearly. Introducing an employment market that even offers an hourly salary of just $15.000 an hour would still pull many of the city’s residents out of the poverty level. As shown in the tables above, only a slight few households qualify to be considered middle class, while a majority are in the upper middle/upper class with jobs that are in the local company headquarters, requiring an education level of a bachelors or higher professional degree (Huffington post, average cost of a factory worker, 2012).

Based on the diverse Culture capital of the city and continued economic growth of the city over the past five years, the need of the city is not support of the upper middle and upper class, it’s the lower class. Having one of the largest poverty rates in the nation, the city continues to neglect the needs of the residents at the lower end of its socio-economic class.

After speaking with Stacy Hoffman, director of the Department of City Planning, the need of the city is redevelopment of the public transportation system, increased manufacturing companies, and refurbishment of current affordable housing and increased affordable housing units (Telephone interview, 10 December 2018).

After assessing the published Cincinnati plan of 2012 (still current), many businesses overlook Cincinnati due to its lack of public transportation and efficiency. Ms. Hoffman stated that it takes an average of one hour to travel across the city and at times it can take up to two.

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Many of the poverty residents live over two miles from the nearest bus or street car pick up points, causing extreme difficulty in commutes. During our conversation she stated that it has become one of the limiting factor/discriminating factor for potential businesses looking for a new place to expand.

As the city has a notably large population in the poverty level, the needs exceed the availability of subsidized housing. According to the city’s analysis of the affordable housing, many of the residents experience racial discrimination by HUD and based on the 2010 lawsuit, many of the women residents were sexually assaulted and harassed by the landlords, settling in a federal case of over $2 million (Cincinnati analysis of impediments to fair housing, pg 2). Over the past ten years, the Cincinnati HUD and HOME have had over 10,000 complaints and several lawsuits for racial discrimination, substandard living conditions, and health code violations. For the City to move forward, the affordable housing situation needs to be addressed. (City of Cincinnati & Hamilton County: Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing, 2014)