Chair Hoops, Vice Chair Lorenz, Ranking Member Brownlee, and members of the House Development Committee, thank you for allowing me the opportunity to provide Interested Party Testimony regarding House Bill 765.
My name is Jason Warner. I am the Director of Strategic Engagement at the Greater Ohio Policy Center (GOPC). GOPC is Ohio’s leading advocate for urban revitalization and sustainable growth, working to improve the communities of Ohio through smart growth strategies and research.
Housing is the number one concern for the dozens of communities we work with. These places realize that to attract workers and retain residents, they need to offer quality housing products at a range of price points. Local leaders know that homeownership is a critical component to their long-term success.
House Bill 765 outlines practical reforms to the Ohio Single-Family Housing Tax Credit program. The program created a solid foundation to work from, but functionally there have been technical issues which have limited investor participation and made the credits difficult to use at scale.
The changes outlined by Reps. White and Young in House Bill 765 are in direct response to recommendations they have received from the practitioners who are working every day to address Ohio’s attainable housing crisis, and the investors, because without their backing, it would be impossible to develop workforce housing.
Developers will benefit from the removal of the long-term compliance regulations that made underwriting difficult for lenders and investors, while investors will benefit from updates to the delivery and transfer rules, so the credits behave like a marketable asset – just to name two very important updates included in HB765.
Altogether, House Bill 765 provides reasonable, workable, and scalable solutions to improve Ohio’s Single-Family Housing Tax Credit and create one more tool in the toolbox to help address Ohio’s attainable workforce housing crisis. We applaud the work done by Reps. White and Young in working with all of the interested parties impacted by these changes and strongly urge the committee to vote favorably on House Bill 765.
Chair Hoops, thank you for your leadership on this important issue, and for allowing me the opportunity to share our thoughts regarding housing and homeownership in Ohio and on House Bill 765. We strongly encourage support for this important legislation.