Butler County Today

The Oxford City Council has made affordable housing its number one priority. This was adopted as a Council Goal in 2021 and reaffirmed in 2022.

How is the City taking action to address these goals?

Annually, the City provides $48,000 from General Fund to the Family Resource Center to assist with their programming, including housing efforts.

With the onset of the pandemic, the City was awarded CARES Funds and later American Rescue Plan funds to help with issues that covid exposed. These were one-time federal programs. 

CARES Funds:

• In 2020. City Council provided an additional $74,160 of CARES Funds toward a cold shelter, for the Family Resource Center.
• In 2021, the City provided an additional $177,000 of CARES Funds towards the Family Resource Center for the following programs:
  • Cold Shelter
  • Transitional Housing
  • Housing Case management
  • Child Care Assistance
  • Transportation Assistance

The Family Resource Staff was able to help numerous clients stay housed and also find permanent housing for 13 families with this assistance. 

The Family Resource Center worked with the Butler County Rental Assistance Program through SELF and helped many individuals and families receive rental assistance. 

In 2022, with the CARES Funds gone, the City used our American Rescue Plans Funds to further assist with housing by providing $73,000 to Family Resource Center to assist with their programs and housing. 

City Council has indicated that they want to dedicate $1M of the American Rescue Plan Funds that the City received towards long-term solutions for housing. To date, the City has done the following:

• Utilized $150K to acquire land for the cottage home community to assist with housing for low-income individuals.
• Released an RFQ to find a nonprofit housing partner. We have had two responses and plan to review both candidates in mid-October. This new nonprofit partner will manage low-income housing for the City of Oxford and provide reasonable rents and housing education. 
• Ongoing research on where properties can be purchased to be used to renovate or build new affordable units in the City of Oxford. 
  • Note: the non-profit partner will then manage these units.
• Ongoing research on how to establish a community land trust and invite housing developers to build affordable and workforce housing for Oxford residents.

The goal is to use the remaining ARPA Funds for long-term solutions that are sustainable for our community. The acquisition of properties to be used for affordable housing and the establishment of the community land trust are the solutions we are actively pursuing because they have the potential to be self-sustaining. There will be no additional source of federal funding coming to the City, so we need to establish sustainable programs. To do this, the City has done the following:

• Established a tax on short-term rentals (AirBnB) to have funding to go toward a housing trust fund to help with these programs for when ARPA is gone.
• Committed to utilizing Butler County CDBG Funds toward housing programs. This is an annual grant program through the Butler County Community Development Office. 

We are committed to finding sustainable housing solutions in our community and have committed over $1M in our efforts to do this. 

We hope the community will continue to support these efforts and contribute to either Oxford Community Foundation or the Family Resource Center to expand the success of their programming. It will take all of us, working together, to address this systemic issue.

Original source can be found here.