The Columbus Redevelopment Commission will soon be asked to conduct a housing study using tax increment financing (TIF) dollars. It’s always good to have fresh data, and the city hasn’t conducted a study like this in 10 years, so there probably is some value in a new one.
But let’s face it — we know without a study that the elephant in the room is housing affordability. This is the refrain we hear loudest and most in this community and many others: We lack affordable housing.
Home costs and rents have risen far faster than incomes, and too many people are being priced out of the basic essential of having a roof over their heads. Further, for a distressingly increasing number of people, the American Dream of homeownership looks more and more like a fantasy.
And we can’t say that our local leaders aren’t aware of these problems. For instance, when the grassroots organization Hoosier Action held a town hall on housing affordability in Columbus in September, City Council members Tom Dell, Grace Kestler and Jerone Wood attended.
Likewise, Senator Todd Young just last month visited Columbus and numerous other Indiana cities to meet with Realtors and advocate for legislation he’s sponsoring that aims to incentivize affordable housing construction and rehabilitation.
So our leaders know the problem. Finding solutions is the hard part. But finding solutions to the affordable housing crisis, in our view, is where any study funded with public tax dollars ought to focus.
A quick Google study of the Columbus housing market will tell you this:
- In May, the median sale price for a home in Columbus was $283,000, according to Redfin.com — nearly twice as high as just three years ago in January 2020, when the median sale price was $147,00.
- The S&P/Case Shiller U.S. Home Price Index shows home prices nationally increased roughly 140% from 2013 to 2022.
- According to rent.com, the average monthly rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Columbus is $1,317. The median rent was $935 just four years ago, according to the Census Bureau. Today, rent.com says just 8% of all apartment units in Columbus rent for less than $1,000 a month.
- Median annual household income for Columbus in 2021 was about $73,000, according to the Census Bureau. The increase from about $53,000 in 2011 is sizable, but nowhere near enough to keep up with soaring housing costs.
- The Federal Reserve estimates that household formations in the last decade outpaced housing inventory growth, resulting in a shortage of nearly 3.7 million housing units nationwide.
As mentioned, this is a difficult problem without readily apparent solutions. However, Columbus has the resources — especially in its TIF districts — to find ways to make affordable housing, and homeownership, a reality.
We urge the city to study affordable housing first and foremost and marshal every resource to identify ways the city can help bring about more housing units for people of median or modest means. Plenty of public, private and nonprofit partners would join this effort, and we can think of no initiatives the city could undertake at this moment that would better benefit the entire community. People should be able to afford to call Columbus home.
