Low-Income Columbus Households Struggle to Find Housing

The Ohio city has a more severe affordable housing crisis than more traditionally expensive cities like New York and San Francisco.

1 minute read

March 17, 2025, 8:00 AM PDT

By Diana Ionescu @aworkoffiction


Columbus, Ohio skyline on a sunny day.

espiegle / Adobe Stock

Columbus, Ohio’s housing crisis is worse than that of cities like San Francisco and New York, according to a new report. As Danae King explains in Dispatch, the city has fewer affordable housing units per low-income household than some other U.S. cities and has a more severe housing crisis than other Ohio cities such as Cleveland and Cincinnati.

“The report shows that Columbus has 25 affordable housing units per 100 extremely low-income households available compared to 31 in San Francisco and 34 in New York, according to the 2025 Gap Report by the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLIHC) and the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (COHHIO).” In the state, there are 40 affordable housing units for every 100 extremely low-income households.

“There are 438,108 extremely low-income households in Ohio in need of affordable units, the report found,” and the state is short roughly 264,000 housing units. A coalition of housing advocates is pushing a proposal called Home Matters to Ohio which, if passed by the state legislature, could improve the state’s housing programs and bolster tenant protections.

Thursday, March 13, 2025 in Columbus Dispatch

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