Columbus panel hears calls for more housing funding, shifts from shelter to upstream prevention

City and nonprofit housing leaders told the Funding Review Advisory Committee of the Columbus City Council at a committee briefing that Franklin County’s housing market has become significantly less affordable and that the local homelessness response must shift from shelter capacity toward housing creation and prevention.

Erin Prosser, deputy director of housing strategies at the City of Columbus Department of Development, said construction costs, higher interest rates and a shortage of new units have pushed rents and home prices well beyond income gains for many families. "Housing stability also impacts our workforce stability, our educational outcomes, and our upward economic mobility," Prosser said, summarizing the stakes for families and the local economy.

The presentations, delivered by Prosser, Shannon Isom, president and CEO of the Community Shelter Board (CSB), and Ian Labatou, president and CEO of the Affordable Housing Trust (AHT), combined data and funding proposals. Prosser described long-term trends — including a reported 61% rise in median rent and a 71% rise in home prices since 2010 alongside incomes that rose more slowly — and illustrated how higher hard costs and elevated borrowing rates make new affordable construction harder to finance. Using a 68‑unit example building from 2010, Prosser showed debt-service costs that rose from an estimated $628 per unit per month in 2010 to roughly $1,287 under 2024 cost and interest assumptions, driving higher rents.

Why it matters: presenters said that without continued or new…