Climate change and its impact on protected classes is a major topic of research and advocacy in the Cincinnati region. Rather than reinventing the wheel, HOME partnered with organizations like Green Umbrella, the regional climate collaborative for Southwest-Ohio, to better understand and analyze the existing publicly available data about our region’s environmental hazards and their impacts on members of protected classes as defined by the Fair Housing Act. 

Environmental hazards directly impact the quality and availability of housing and thus fall squarely within the scope of the Fair Housing Act. By comparing and analyzing the geography of environmental hazards relative to data on where members of protected classes live, we are able to identify clear overlaps that demonstrate these hazards disproportionately impact members of protected classes.

Following the Roadmap for Increasing Black Homeownership this report seeks to explore the status of the recommendation to “expand lending to Black and low-income homeowners that is fair and non-predatory" two years after HOME’s initial report. 

To do this HOME analyzed home mortgage lending data reported by lending institutions through the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) over a six-year study period in Hamilton County, Ohio. Between 2018 and 2023, the housing market changed dramatically through COVID, rising and falling interest rates, and a tightening of housing supply. This volatile period affected national and local housing trends, including mortgage lending.

A new study co-produced by Housing Opportunities Made Equal of Greater Cincinnati (HOME) and eruka investigates which communities were most effected by the tax changes, the reasons for the changes, and what local and state elected officials can do to create a more equitable tax system.

HOME and eruka have released the results of the study in two reports: (1) Levied: Rectifying Hamilton County’s Racial and Economic Unjust Property Taxes and (2) What Really Happened?: Evaluating The Common Misperceptions about Hamilton County’s Property Tax Increases.

In October 2023, HOME released The Road So Far, a status update on The Roadmap to Increasing Black Homeownership. The Road So Far is a summary of the current landscape of efforts and highlights immediate action items to increase and preserve Black homeownership in the Cincinnati region.