Dayton City Commission Work Session: Dayton Home Repair Network Update - August 20, 2026
Dayton City Commission Work Session: Dayton Home Repair Network Update - August 20, 2026
On August 20, 2026, the Dayton City Commission received a presentation from the Dayton Home Repair Network (DHRN) highlighting completed work in 2025 and 2026, data on service demand, and a strategic plan to address the urgent home repair needs of city residents. Presenters Eileen Hall (Executive Director, Dayton Energy Collaborative) and Amanda Harrelson (Neighbor Care Director, Rebuilding Together Dayton) emphasized the collaborative nature of the network and the critical partnership with the City of Dayton.
Discussion Items
- Presentation Overview: Hall and Harrelson explained that DHRN is a coalition of organizations providing critical home repairs, weatherization, and energy efficiency to income-qualifying residents in the Dayton region. The network operates through a clearinghouse at Dayton Energy Collaborative, which received City funding to staff an intake team. From 2025 to 2026, monthly clients served increased from 40 to 147, which the presenters characterized as an 11% increase (noting potential transcription discrepancy).
- Service and Funding Statistics: In 2025, the network helped 368 households with over $7 million invested; through July 2026, about $3.7 million has been spent on repairs. Approximately 95% of households served are within Dayton city limits. Funding comes from 34 different sources (federal, state, local, philanthropic, corporate).
- Waitlist and Urgent Needs Strategy: The network consolidated partner waitlists, identifying approximately 2,000 households across the region and 1,200 within Dayton’s qualified census tracts. Using an urgent needs policy (six criteria including lack of functional plumbing, electricity, etc.), partners prioritized households with the longest wait times and urgent needs. Fifty-seven households have already been committed for repairs, with a projected total of 184 urgent needs out of the 1,200. The goal is to address all urgent needs by the end of 2028 with current funding.
- Project Examples: Presenters showed before-and-after photos of three homes. One home with four children and a history of lead hazards received extensive exterior and interior repairs totaling $90,000 through coordinated funding. A second home underwent a total cleanup and restoration of bathroom, kitchen, and electrical/plumbing, costing over $50,000. A third project involved Liberty High School construction pathway students building an accessibility ramp and replacing a roof for safe access.
- Commissioner Feedback and Questions:
- Commissioner Beckham praised the network and requested annual progress updates, and noted the valuable partnership with Liberty High School.
- Commissioner Justin commended the collaborative effort and suggested exploring data integration between DHRN and City data to map overlapping needs. Hall and Harrelson agreed that a mapping exercise could be useful, noting that such sharing is already underway.
- The Mayor (or another commissioner) asked about homeowner insurance challenges; Hall described insurance denials based on property condition and efforts to connect residents with high-risk insurance or the Ohio Fair Plan. A question about sustainability of repairs led to discussion of limited case management funding and the reliance on established relationships. The average cost per house was reported as $15,000 per partner. The commissioner also requested pamphlets for distribution; the presenters provided the Dayton Energy Collaborative phone number (937-369-0610) and noted high call volume with returned calls within three business days.
Key Outcomes
- The City Commission expressed strong support for the network and its strategic approach.
- The City and DHRN will continue exploring data sharing and mapping to align priorities.
- The presenters invited commissioners to attend the second annual DHRN event on September 11, 2026, at the Dayton Metro Library.
- No formal votes were taken; the session was informational.
Note: The transcript contains a potential inconsistency when stating the monthly client increase as an "11% increase" while the actual numbers (40 to 147) suggest a much larger rise; this discrepancy is recorded as stated in the meeting.
Meeting Transcript
All right. Well, I have a very uh a very brief introduction to make mainly um so we can get to all this exciting update that uh uh Aileen and Amanda are going to share with us uh and Adam. But the one thing that I'm really excited about this because the Dayton Home Repair Network was an innovation that came out of us coming together around COVID and the ARPA funding. And you know, we all sat around the table afterwards and said, why didn't we think about this a long time ago? Um, but at least we thought about it when we did. And so I think that this is um just uh an amazing collaboration and really does show off our superpower really well. You know, we are collaborative, uh, the most collaborative region that uh I know of. And so this collaboration is a perfect example of that and of the innovation work we do when we come together to solve problems. So I will leave it at that, and I will turn it over for all the exciting updates. Thank you, Shelley. Good evening, Commissioners and Mayor. Um, thank you for your time today. My name is Eileen Hall. I am the executive director of Dayton Energy Collaborative, and I chair the Dayton Home Republic. I'm the neighbor care director at rebuilding together Dayton, and I am the co-chair of the direct mine. Just to push the button. Now you guys start on lower. Okay. So do you want to start over? And I am the chair of the dating program network. My name is Amanda Harrelson, and I am the neighbor care director at Rebuilding Together Data, and I am the co-chair of the Data Homecare Network. I also want to acknowledge that we have some other third executive committee members behind this. Thank you all. Um so today we're going to provide you an update on the work that we have completed in 2025, and that's our 2026, especially highlighting the dollars that have come from the city of Dayton. And then also going into our collective strategy to address the high level of need that um is in the community for home repair work. Um, and express the the importance of this partnership with the city of Dayton. So, first, as a reminder of who we are, you know, the Dayton Home Repair Network is a coalition of organizations uh collaborating to provide critical home repairs, weatherization, energy efficiency measures to underresource, typically income qualifying residents of the Dayton region. Um we are not a separate nonprofit, but rather a collective of nonprofits found by an MOU and an admission. So our goal is to leverage our shared resources to ensure that we leave no vital projects incomplete. Um here are a breakdown of all the network partners in late 2025 to open the new partner, which is Yellow Springs Company, after their leadership made a commitment to complete more home repair work in the Dayton area. So we have a five total home repair programs, one weatherization program, two workforce development partners, one facilitator organization, which is the Dayton Energy Collaborative, and one capacity sponsored partner, which is the City of Dayton. So I wanted to talk about kind of the entry point for the Dayton Home Repair Network, which uh we operate and cost at Dayton Energy Collaborative. So we serve as the clearing off the residents. So anyone in the Dayton area can call us and we take them through the screening process to see which uh dating home repair network programs that they need to be eligible for. And if they're eligible, we help those individuals um brought them to the universal application for the Durham, and then we offer application support. This past year, like we find the city granted Dayton Energy Fibonacci funding to staff our entity team so that we could handle the capacity or have the capacity to handle the ID in the community. I'm also successfully operate as the clearinghouse for the six programs that are in the Dayton Home Repair Network. So I included numbers here from 2025 and 2026 to see the increased capacity that we have and um the increase in clients that we're serving. So you see that in 2025, we had an average of 40 clients that have existed per month, and now we serve an average of 147 clients a month, which is an 11% increase. Um that is due to the increase in staff, which are the very thing before. It also reflects one, the high need in the community, but it also reflects, which is a really good thing, the higher awareness of the home repair network and data and energy private is at entry point. It's streamlined processes. People don't have to call several different organizations. And so I think that it's shown a lot of success with that. And it also shows that moving forward, we have a really good partnership and people in the community that trust us and are willing to work with us as we have strategies to address the high need in the community. So the next few slides will take you through the numbers of houses that we actually completed home repairs on in 2025 and 2026 and a leverage funding of the network. So in 2025 and 2026, we helped over 600 households with in 2026, we are almost at the total number that we assisted in 2025, which really demonstrates the increased capacity of our partners. I also want to highlight that about 95% of the households we serve across all the partners are within the city of Dayton limits, even though most of the programs do serve county and beyond Hong Kong County. And this really reflects the highest level calls are from the city of Dayton. We know with some of the oldest housing stack and under maintained.
openpublica.com