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New Cincinnati youth and human services committee hears scope of city funding and nonprofit partnerships
Summary
Chair Albee and Deanna White outlined the committee’s jurisdiction and heard from the Office of Human Services about program scale: 117 contracts across multiple funding buckets, 36,875 people served in FY25 and work to speed eviction-prevention assistance and launch a daytime one‑stop center.
Chair Albee convened the first meeting of the Cincinnati City Council’s Youth and Human Services Committee and invited Deanna White, director of the Office of Human Services, to brief members on the office’s responsibilities and partnerships.
White said the office — created in 2021 — manages human services contracting and monitoring and will oversee 74 contracts in fiscal years 2026–27 aligned to council priorities including youth gun-violence prevention, workforce development and housing stability. "We served 36,875 Cincinnatians," White said, adding that the FY25 data show roughly $142 spent per person and that about 90% of people served live at or below 200% of the federal poverty level.
The presentation described four main funding buckets the office manages (human services funding, leveraged support, boots-on-the-ground and Safe and Clean), oversight by the Human Services Advisory Committee (HSAC), and monitoring of a total portfolio involving contracts with about 117 local nonprofits. White said the office contracts with outside evaluators, including a firm called Stout, to monitor benchmarks and program outcomes.
Council members pressed for fuller dollar totals across buckets. Chair Albee said the city’s human services funding is "about $10,000,000," while White said she did not have a consolidated figure for all buckets at the meeting and would follow up. White also described the city’s eviction-prevention "access to counsel" ecosystem — naming United Way, Legal Aid, the Hamilton County Clerk of Courts Help Center and HOME as contract partners — and said the office is working to speed rent-assistance disbursement and is planning a public data dashboard to track eviction-prevention metrics.
White outlined the children’s college-savings-account pilot, which aims to enroll 150 preschoolers in Ohio’s 529 plan in partnership with Fifth Third Bank, United Way and Preschool Promise. She also noted a new set of grants focused on trans youth mental health and safety, which the office will monitor as those grants complete their first year.
On homelessness services, White said the administration is exploring a daytime one-stop center to provide basic needs and wraparound services for people experiencing homelessness. "We hired Neil Tillo as a consultant; he’s met with more than 100 stakeholders," White said. She told the committee the consultant’s scope and a potential RFP would return to the office before Jan. 31.
Procedurally, Chair Albee moved to "file items 1 and 2 without objection," and members did not object. The meeting concluded after a brief round of announcements.
The committee did not adopt new policy or vote on legislation at this meeting; members asked for follow-up data on consolidated funding totals and for future briefings on specific programs, including access to counsel and the daytime one-stop center.
