Housing Preservation, Health, & Sustainability

Cities across the United States have vast landscapes of housing, comprising the spaces of daily life for millions of city-dwellers. Residential structures are a core part of the older and historic built environment. Houses are a defining element of neighborhood character regardless of whether they have historic designation. Older housing also presents contemporary challenges such as ongoing maintenance, repair or replacement of aging materials and fulfilling modern living demands. Population decline, common in the rust-belt, results in an over-supply of buildings, making preserving older housing particularly difficult in this context.Ohio’s three major cities, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus, offer insight into housing rehabilitation and preservation within the context of recent citywide sustainability and climate action planning, with a particular focus on public and nongovernmental policies, programs, and planning. Cleveland, Cincinnati, and Columbus all have an aging housing stock that exists within differing economic and population conditions. Cleveland is a shrinking city with a high poverty rate and an older housing stock that suffers from decades of disinvestment. Cincinnati had less severe population decline than Cleveland, resulting in a stronger market, some newer housing, and lower vacancy rates. Columbus has older neighborhoods, but is growing, giving it a newer and more diverse housing stock.  Three key research questions guide this exploratory analysis: What is the range of housing rehabilitation initiatives at the local level? How do housing programs from the preservation sector and those focused on lead abatement relate to the broader spectrum of housing strategies? And, how do sustainability and climate action planning address housing rehabilitation?