This letter is a response to a letter to the editor from Eris Miller.
Dear Eris,
Thanks for your letter to the editor about housing in Athens County. I’m glad that our reporting on your house fire was helpful, and I hope you and your housemates are recovering from it.
You’re absolutely right: Athens County has a housing problem. We’ve all heard stories about outrageous house prices and the myriad of issues with rentals, but the Athens County Foundation put facts behind the stories in its 2024 report on Housing Athens County. Here’s what they found about local housing.
- It’s expensive. Between 2018 and 2022, rental units below $1,000 per month decreased by 28% while rental units costing $1,000+ per month increased by 59%. Homes priced less than $200,000 decreased by 14%, while homes priced at $200,000+ increased by 81%.
- There’s less of it. Construction permits for single-family homes plummeted from 71 in 2007 to just four in 2023. Multiple low-income housing project proposals have been shot down in the city of Athens. Overall, Athens County has fewer housing units than it did in 2018.
- A lot of it is old and has problems. Athens County’s homes and rentals tend to be older than elsewhere in Ohio; more than 50% of our housing stock was built before 1980. We also have a higher percentage of mobile homes. On average, 31% of the county’s housing units have a problem, from lack of plumbing or kitchen fixtures to overcrowding and expense. Rentals are far more likely to have such issues.
Although we’ve reported on aspects of these issues, we’ve long wanted to be able to focus on the county’s housing problems as well as what’s being done to address them. We successfully applied to Report for America for a corps member to cover housing — the only newsroom in Ohio to be chosen for the 2026–27 cohort.
The thing is, Report for America pays for only part of the position, and the proportion of their support goes down each year. The local share for just the first year is almost $36,000; at current pay rates, our cost will hit over $48,000 in 2028–29. We hoped for grant funding to cover those costs, but that didn’t work out.
That leaves us with a tough choice: Eat the cost, which will prevent us from expanding other coverage, or turn down this opportunity — and likely lose any chance of getting selected again.
Just as the community came together to help you and your housemates after your fire, we need our community to pitch in so we can hire this corps member and be able to really explore the housing crisis and its solutions. You’re a student, and you’re likely strapped for cash, too. I’m hoping that other folks reading this letter will be inspired by your plea for continuing and increased coverage of housing, and give to our Report for America fund.
Thanks again for your letter, and for your advocacy of housing for all.
Cheers,
Corinne Colbert
Editor in Chief
