Support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutuel, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at med mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Now with eight locations across the country, Porter Wright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

More at Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online.

At OHEA.org.

an end in sight to the redistricting saga, but for many it's not satisfying.

The Supreme Court takes on two other cases beyond the maps, both dealing with the pandemic and housing costs in Ohio or through the roof.

The state's leading advocate for affordable housing and against homelessness talks about that.

This weekend, the state of Ohio welcome to the state of Ohio.

I'm Karen Kasler.

For the fifth time, a split Ohio Supreme Court has ruled state House and Senate maps passed by Republicans on the Ohio Redistricting Commission are unconstitutionally gerrymandered.

But this weekend could bring an end to the redistricting saga that's dragged on for more than nine months.

The maps were struck down both as a resubmission of maps ruled unconstitutional in March, but also because they'd be in effect for only this year when the Constitution specifies four or ten year maps.

The 43 ruling breaks down as the previous ones did.

Republican Chief Justice Maureen O'Connor joining the court's three Democrats.

The court wants new maps by June 3rd, but a panel of federal judges said these previously submitted maps would be implemented by Saturday if there weren't valid maps in place.

In her opinion, O'Connor was particularly pointed, writing the federal court's decision, quote, provided the Republican Commission members not only a road map of how to avoid discharging their duties, but also a green light to further delay these proceedings.

But she also blasted the commissioners for Partizanship.

And O'Connor said again that an independent commission is needed to draw maps in the future.

Also at the Supreme Court this week, two big cases, both involving the pandemic.

The court will decide at the owners of Ohio's two largest amusement parks, refunds to season pass holders for delaying the 2020 opening of Cedar Point for two months because of COVID Cedar Fair told the justices that season passholders get a conditional right of access to the park.

The dates and hours of operation can change without notice and that it's clear there are no refunds and that the May opening was delayed till July.

But the park still opened and had a season.

But the passholders who filed a class action lawsuit say the word season is unfairly ambiguous, that it doesn't matter whether the park or the state ordered the delay.

They say it was a breach of contract for Cedar Point to keep passholders money when they didn't deliver what was promised and that refunds are the remedy.

A similar lawsuit has been filed in U.S. District Court in Toledo against Cedar Fair which also owns King's Island, involving a plaintiff holding a season pass to Knott's Berry Farm in California.

The other case, whether Governor Mike DeWine had the authority to cut off $300 weekly checks to unemployed Ohioans on June 26th, two months before the federal program that funded them ended last Labor Day.

DeWine's attorney told the justices that businesses that were having trouble hiring asked the wine to stop the checks, which he said were paid for with COVID relief money from the Federal Cares Act.

And the state was not required to accept the decision that the governor made in May.

2021 was to withdraw two months early from just one of three large federal pandemic unemployment insurance programs.

He made that decision after hearing from businesses large and small that they faced a new crisis.

And that was an inability to fill thousands upon thousands of open positions that threatened some of their own existence.

And the people that relied on it, their employees their owners, their customers, even their future employees.

Now, of course, the governor recognized in making that decision it would reduce the amount of the unemployment checks that were going out at the time.

But he thought that overall, on balance, for the macro economy of a state, for those businesses, for the future of those businesses, that was a decision he had to make.

So we took that targeted choice to withdraw from just one of those three programs two months early.

Now, you can debate the policy wisdom of that, but the judicial role in that debate, we think, is an exceedingly narrow one, and that is to decide whether the plain text of one Ohio statute took that decision out of the governor's hands, and we think it plainly did not.

That's why every appellate court in the country that has looked at this question and remember, almost all states have a statute, much like Ohio's, because they all derive from the same Department of Labor publication in the 1970s.

Every appellate court that has looked at this is agreed with the governor's position here and disagreed with BOWLING'S.

We urge you to join all the appellate courts in the country that have looked at this question and said there is not an obligation on State's chief executive officers to do something that federal law explicitly permits them to withdraw from.

But Democratic former attorney general Mark Dan, representing those who were receiving the checks, said this is about separation of powers of the governor and state lawmakers.

I spoke with Dan after the arguments there were some 25 other states that did this.

What's the difference between Ohio and some of those other states?

Well, in Ohio, we're the only state that we're aware of where we raised this issue of the separation of powers, which is, you know, goes back to Schoolhouse Rock on Saturday, on Saturday mornings.

I mean, the governor executes laws.

The legislature makes policy.

And this is particularly true when it comes to workers in Ohio, because the framers of the Constitution thought it was important enough to create a separate clause, Article two, Section 34.

And that that's specifically and directly empowers only the legislature to deal with these kinds of issues.

To make those kind of policy changes.

They had spoken.

The governor's only job was to execute it or to go back to the legislature and say, hey, we got a problem.

I want to change something.

He didn't do either one of those things.

In this case, he ignored their direction.

And, you know, sometimes you got to think about this in context of of the broader picture.

You know, where Intel's going to spend a bunch of money in Ohio.

We're building them a highway exit and giving them land, and then we're plowing it.

Well, we're flattening it out for them and all the other things that we're doing here, almost $900 million of federal money could be flowing into the state of Ohio.

Economic development in a in a period of ten weeks was that was was the window any an economic development boon that would have been incredible for all Ohio businesses.

And right now, with inflation as it is and some of the other challenges that that people who work for a living are facing getting that money now would be a huge opportunity for them to be able to afford gas to go to work.

And so so that would still be a huge boon to Ohio's economy so just because the money is flowing through the hands of working class people, we shouldn't take it.

I mean, the federal government's appropriated I think there was an agreement today that it's still available there.

We should take it in the state, all of the state, including the people that that that are entitled to it and those where they're going to spend money.

They have the right to have that economic development happen.

In Ohio, DeWine's lawyer argued that the decision was made to cut off these funds because businesses asked for they were having trouble hiring people.

Well, so so the data in the legal aid societies of the state, in some other organizations filed an amicus brief which laid out the fact is the unemployment rate actually went went up after the governor revoked the benefits.

So so the data shows that that had no impact whatsoever what they wanted the right to do is to pay people less for the work that they were doing.

And that was not what the unemployment statutes in the legislature intended in 1970 when they enacted that statute so so that that's the difference if the court ruled in his favor Dan said some 300,000 Ohioans who were or are jobless could get a total of 900 million federal dollars which he says is still available.

Speaking of unemployment, the state's jobless rate for last month was at 4% back down to where it was in June 2019 and the lowest rate since June 2001.

That's quite a change from two years ago when it was at 13.7% as most businesses were just starting to reopen under new COVID policies.

But while businesses are claiming they're having a hard time finding workers many people are struggling with low pay inflation, record high gas prices and soaring housing costs.

There is a nationwide housing shortage of an estimated one and a half million homes.

And a report last month from the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio and the National Low Income Housing Coalition showed a big deficit in the number of rental units that are available and the number of low income families who need them.

I talked with the executive director of Ohio about that.

Do you have any idea how many people lost their homes and were evicted because of the pandemic?

Are there any studies or any information that might give you as an idea of what that number would be?

Well, that's kind of hard to tell.

The because of the pandemic and because, frankly, we put up a bunch of money through the state, allocated some federal money they received going back with the CARES Act.

You know, even a couple of years ago.

And then they've been trying to distribute emergency rental assistance money.

So a lot of people that would normally have hit eviction court were able to avoid it because we intervened as a as a state and a country to help slow those evictions down.

So right when COVID first appeared, you know, there was a big, you know, big hit on all the people losing their jobs.

Big hit on people's incomes going down.

A lot of people were very precarious.

And the eviction courts stopped processing evictions temporarily, in part because they just didn't want everybody down at the courthouse and they didn't want to spreader event eviction court.

But then, you know, things things went went more back to normal.

But with the assistance, we're not up to eviction levels that we had pre-pandemic.

So evictions are still a little lower than they were before the pandemic hit.

So because of all those extra interventions that were made.

So it's kind of hard to tell.

I think the long term impacts are harder because some people haven't been able to go back to work like most of us have.

And so that that still has lingering impact Now, that doesn't mean that the problem doesn't still exist.

I mean, Ohio and the National Low Income Housing Coalition put out a report last month showing a huge deficit in the number of rental units available in Ohio and the much larger number of extremely low income households that need those rental units.

Right.

Right.

There's only about 43 units available for every 100 extremely low income people in Ohio.

And that's the big gap.

And so why is that there?

There's a lot of reasons.

Almost every reason you can imagine one community don't necessarily welcome affordable housing developments.

Right.

NIMBY attitudes are are ever pervasive.

So even when communities start to say, wow, we need more affordable housing because our employers don't have a way to attract workers because they can't afford to live in the area, think about Intel.

Think about Delaware County.

Think about Medina County.

I mean, so their traditional are their long standing posture was we want big single family homes.

We want you know, we want to have a minimum of one acre per house or three acres per house.

I mean, they had these development standards and zoning laws that kept people out.

Some of those very communities are scrambling to get more affordable housing in the into their communities because the employers are demanding it.

You know, you can't have employers if you don't have employees.

And so that's that's a factor with the conversation around Intel and a lot of other economic development opportunities that we have in Ohio.

So that that's I want to make sure I raise that because it's not just neglect from government, the lack of active government policy, that's also a factor.

You know, we we as a state have an investment in it and affordable housing very much.

We need to do a lot more.

There And it's true at the federal level, too.

But there's also on the ground biases and prejudices that also prevent affordable housing from moving forward.

As you said, NIMBY, not in my backyard.

I want to put a number on this.

The Ohio Association of Realtors said in April the average sales price across Ohio for a home was $257,486.

That's a 9.3% increase from last year at 235,573.

So this is a huge gap between what people are paying on average and what these extremely low income households can afford.

Right.

And it's like if we can't build more market rate homeownership opportunities, which isn't really our area focus, but if there is it more Single-Family homes getting built and the renters moving into them, then those rental units that they normally would move out of remain occupied.

So that just helps drive concepts as well.

Over the over the last year, rental housing prices have increased in our cities across the state.

Not just Columbus, but all across the state have increased 11%.

I mean, that's rental prices.

So there's a lot of reasons for that.

But that's that makes it just that much harder for people to find affordable places to live When you talk about investment in affordable housing, Housing and Urban Development Secretary Marcia Fudge came to Columbus recently to announce an investment of $35 billion toward closing that housing supply gap.

$25 billion to build up to a half a million new housing units and then that's over ten years and then $10 billion in incentives for communities to alter their zoning codes to allow for more rental properties.

The state, by my calculations, get $278 million from community block grant money and others.

Is that money enough to address the problem that we have now.

Not in our by a long shot I mean the but it's great that they're trying to address the problem they proposals and other legislation they've tried to get through Congress that did make it through.

So I hope this latest announced it actually gets enacted but there's something we could do right now that the governor could do if he so shows you know we have all this our money you know from the recovery act that's that we just got another $2.7 billion as a state.

So far we've invested none of that money into affordable housing.

So we we have a proposal that signed on by 125 different organizations to take 300 million of that to invest in affordable housing development, supportive housing development.

That's something we could start doing right away if if if the governor and the legislature would get their act together on that and that.

And it's funny because, you know, I've been doing this for a long time and we work with a lot of nonprofits, a lot of groups in the human services world.

So obviously that they all signed on, but we had more and more business groups sign on, like the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, and they're not or the Hire Realtors Association, the apartment owners, you know, a lot a lot of people involved in in the in in the business community are saying we need to do more about this.

Columbus Chamber of Commerce is doing a forum on housing urges.

Coming up, we went out to talk to business leaders in Lincoln County about the housing impacts from Intel going in.

So there's more and more awareness from across the spectrum of interest groups that we got to do more about this issue.

You mentioned the Ohio Chamber of Commerce, which invited JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon to come to speak to them recently.

And he specifically said we slow down affordable housing because of regulations.

We slow down mortgage support because of regulations, our regulations.

The big reason why we have this gap and why we're seeing these huge increases in rent I'm not sure what he's talking about.

I would I don't know that I would put regulation on my short list.

I mean, other than the issue I raised around local regulation, which restricts land use, I mean, zoning, building code regulation, that's certainly damp, dampens development.

We need to be realistic about what we could expect from the new developments and be, you know, less stingy about, you know, whether or not we're going to welcome more people into into our communities, whether or not we're going to support, you know, higher density in our communities.

I mean, those kinds of regulations, I do think have a big impact but sure, we need to look at everything because we're really in a crisis here in the state.

And it's not we're not exclusive.

There's problems all over the country.

Is some of the problem with this.

The investors who are buying up homes and pushing out First-Time Homebuyers and lower income homebuyers and keeping them out of those properties.

Oh, yeah.

That that is a more recent phenomenon where we have these, you know, Wall Street firms I was even reading an article the other day about crypto people with cryptocurrency putting their funds into investor pools and buying up rental housing.

Even here in Ohio.

Akron had a big story about that just recently.

So that's a bigger impact than I've ever seen before.

And in some estimates are as much as 20% of the units that are being sold are go into these investor pools out of state at it, you know, national or even international investors that have no connection to the community that are buying up these properties jacking up rents and evicting the current tenants.

What happens to people who are in that low income category you talk about 43 available units per 100 households.

If you're not one of those 43 what happens.

Well you struggle.

I mean a lot of people double up a lot of people.

I mean we have homelessness that still persists in our communities, particularly with families with children.

You know, we're you know, we have a project underway to address the infant mortality issue with pregnant women who end up homeless and have bad birth outcomes because they're not in a stable place to live.

They have sleeping on a couch with a friend or a sister.

So it has a big impact and there's there's no good answer, you know, waiting for rental assistance, which is, you know, I'm talking about ongoing rental assistance like we used to call it, the Section eight program.

And it's called Housing Choice Vouchers now.

But, you know, only about one in four people that are eligible, even get that.

So it's I can't really sugarcoat what happens to those other people because it's just a struggle, you know, and then when you're doubled up, you know, that causes tension in the households.

You have increases in domestic violence.

All kinds of other problems emerge as a result of this.

I want to ask you about another bill that you've expressed some concern about that would change the process for filing property valuation appeals.

You've said it could lead to a surge in homelessness.

Yeah, well, the way we evaluate properties for the purposes of property tax is for affordable housing.

It's based on the income approach because you got to look at how much rent can a can a developer or property manager really achieve if they have use restrictions?

So they've accepted money to build the place that has a 30 year requirement.

They keep the units affordable they can't raise rents, so they can't pay what a market rate property could pay.

So it's instead it's based on, well, what's the realistic amount of income they could achieve and the property taxes should be based on that.

There have been court cases.

This is the constitutional way that we're supposed to do things.

There were some proposals that, you know, basically require affordable housing projects to pay a market rate and property taxes.

That's being studied by a study committee that's going to be wrapping up their work this summer.

But we hope they are realistic about, you know, you can't get blood out of a turnip.

You know, you got to make sure we have a realistic you know, they should pay property tax, but they shouldn't pay an unrealistic amount at the end of this month, Bill Faith retires after 35 years advocating for affordable housing for low income Ohioans and for those who are unhoused.

We wish him the best We also offer our sympathies to the family of Bill Dennison.

He had several state positions, eventually heading up the Ohio Department of Public Safety under Governor Dick Celeste.

He then moved back to Cuyahoga County and worked in several public safety capacities.

And Dunigan was an advocate for mental health and as a person in recovery for those recovering from addiction.

Denison was 85 years old.

And that's it for this week.

My colleagues at the Statehouse News Bureau of Ohio Public Radio and Television.

Thanks for watching.

Please check out our Web site at State News dot org and follow us on the show on Facebook and Twitter.

And please join us again next time for the state of Ohio.

We close this week with images from the Memorial Day annual wreath laying ceremony at the statehouse support for the statewide broadcast of the state of Ohio comes from medical mutuel, providing more than 1.4 million Ohioans peace of mind with a selection of health insurance plans online at med mutual dot com slash Ohio by the law offices of Porter Wright, Morris and Arthur LLP.

Now with eight locations across the country, Porter Wright is a legal partner with a new perspective to the business community.

More at Porter Wright dot com and from the Ohio Education Association representing 124,000 members who work to inspire their students to think creatively and experience the joy of learning online at OHEA,org,