(Photo by Michelle Dillon) Ohio Coalition on Housing and Homelessness Executive Director Amy Riegel talks about the factors creating an increase in homelessness in Ohio at a COHHIO in Your Community meeting Monday afternoon at the Marietta branch of the Washington County Public Library.

The Coalition on Housing and Homelessness in Ohio, also known as COHHIO, held a meeting Monday afternoon in Marietta to discuss homelessness in Ohio and the challenges facing those without -shelter and the organizations that help them.

COHHIO hosted a COHHIO in Your Community meeting at the Washington County Public Library where a small crowd gathered to listen to COHHIO Executive Director Amy Riegel and Executive Director Douglas Argue talk about homelessness and housing insecurity in the state of Ohio.

Riegel said 444,768 renter households – or 28% – in Ohio have extremely low incomes. Extremely low income is based on the area median income and is defined as people who earn between 0% and 30% of the area median income, according to information provided by COHHIO at the meeting.

In Ohio, the extremely low income for a family of four would be $27,485 or less for a family of four, according to information provided.

There is a shortage of 267,000 affordable rental units available for extremely low-income renters, according to Riegel.

“This is the case in every community, everywhere in the world,” she said.

“For 100 extremely low-income people looking for housing, 40 housing units are available” » said Riegel.

She used an analogy of musical chairs. She said if 10 people are playing musical chairs, that means there are nine chairs, but with the housing shortage “There are 10 people playing and only four chairs.”

She said it creates “a lot of stress and strain in the lives of people on extremely low incomes. »

“Any roof is better than no roof” so people live in unsafe or poor quality housing, but more often than not, they simply can’t afford the housing they live in, Riegel said.

She said 70% of extremely low-income people spend more than 50% of what they earn, not what they bring home, on housing.

“In the state of Ohio, you would need to earn $20.81 an hour to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment,” » said Reigel.

She said this amount is higher in metropolitan areas, in Columbus it is $25 an hour and in Cincinnati it is $22, while in rural areas it is lower, about $17 of the hour.

Looking at the top ten jobs held in Ohio according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2023, only two of them pay enough hours to afford a modest two-bedroom apartment, according to Riegel.

People are also facing rising rents, according to Reigel. She said rent increased 24% between 2021 and 2023 in Ohio, and it continues to rise. She said rent in some states has decreased or stayed the same during the pandemic, but in Ohio it has continued to increase.

Evictions are also on the rise in Ohio, according to Riegel. She said Ohio had some of the highest levels of evictions in the country before the pandemic and Ohio’s evictions are reaching pre-pandemic levels.

Evictions make people harder to house and, later, that can lead to homelessness, according to Riegel.

She said homelessness is also on the rise in Ohio, with an increase of just under 7% in 2023, while nationally it is up about 12%.

Participants shared information about the homeless rate in Washington County.

According to Dawn Rauch, Washington-Morgan Community Action Director for Planning and Community Development, a point-in-time count (PIT) of people experiencing homelessness conducted Jan. 23 showed approximately 39 people experiencing homelessness in Marietta. She said they haven’t done a count in the county.

Washington County Homeless Project President Robin Bozian said the homeless shelter run by the project serves about 120 people in six months and about 60 percent of them meet the federal definition of homelessness.

“They are in cars and sleeping outside” » said Bozian. “I mean, we have people sleeping in front of doors, between buildings and all around.”

Argue shared information about what COHHIO is doing to help the homeless and the challenges facing service providers in Ohio. He said they provide training and technical assistance; they launched housing initiatives for young people; they work for racial equity and much more. To learn more about what COHHIO does, visit

Riegel also shared some good things that are happening to help the homeless, like politicians talking more about the housing issue, the state’s low-income housing tax credit and its Welcome Home program, l expansion of the Ohio Housing Trust Fund and more.

She then asked participants what challenges they were facing.

Rauch said Community Action runs the HUD voucher program in Washington County and they are “Noting a lack of rental housing in general…we have people on the streets with vouchers looking for housing. »

Jessica Gum, Community Action’s finance manager, said it typically takes more than 60 days for people with a voucher to find housing.

She said she believes there will be a decrease in the number of landlords accepting vouchers once Community Action begins conducting National Standards for Physical Inspection of Real Estate inspections next year.

These inspections are conducted primarily by contract inspectors and public housing agencies and focus on deficiencies considered the most important indicators of housing quality and are intended to provide HUD with a high level of confidence in the results of the inspection. inspection, according to the HUD website.

Gum also said Community Action had reached its cap on HUD vouchers and they could no longer issue vouchers. There are about 299 people on the voucher waiting list, but that’s better than before there were 2,000, according to Gum.

Bozian said she helped a few people rent a room and it put them in a place where it was easy to take advantage of them.

The owners charge $450 per room and they still want them to shower at the welcome center and they want to charge them $150 a month in utilities, according to Bozian.

“People take advantage of it” she said.

She also discussed the effect of other issues faced by a homeless person on their ability to rent. She said criminal history, substance use issues and mental health issues exacerbate all other barriers to a person’s rental.

“There are only a handful of owners you can work with who are willing to take a chance” » said Bozian.

Other issues mentioned by participants were people’s ability to pay application fees when applying for rental housing, pets preventing people from being accepted into housing, the difficulty some developers have in apply for and use low-income housing tax credits, criminalization of homelessness through camping bans and other legislation, people who get jobs cause them to lose Medicaid and therefore have to spend money on medication instead of saving for rent, not having a homeless shelter in Washington County and more.