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OPENPUBLICA · PUBLIC MEETING RECORD

Record of Proceedings

Toledo Housing Committee Meeting - April 23, 2026: Accessibility Study & Homeownership Fair

City Council — Thursday, April 23, 2026

BodyToledo, Ohio

SessionCity Council

DateThursday, April 23, 2026

StatusFILED

Video Record

0:00 / 1:20:45

Transcript — VerbatimClick a timed line to jump · ⧉ to share it

0:22

Thank you.

0:38

No one else.

0:51

I call to order the Toledo City Council Housing and Community Development Committee of Thursday, April 23rd at 3:30 PM.

1:02

The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the accessibility study.

1:06

Clerk, please call the role.

1:08

Jones.

1:09

Gaddis.

1:10

Here.

1:11

Kramer here.

1:12

Martinez.

1:14

McPherson.

1:16

Meldon.

1:17

Williams here.

1:18

Three present.

1:20

Thank you.

1:22

And I'm going to turn the floor over to Chief Raz and her team.

1:26

Good afternoon, members of the Housing and Community Development Committee.

1:31

My name is Rosalind Clemens.

1:34

I am the chief of the housing and neighborhoods sustainability for the City of Toledo.

1:40

We're here today.

1:41

I'm joined by the Deputy Director Colina Ali and our nonprofit partner, Ability Center.

1:49

We're very pleased to present the first accessible housing study for the City of Toledo that we partnered with the Ability Center to get done.

2:04

If you can recall in September of 2021, this council adopted the city's first comprehensive housing strategy.

2:13

And one of the key elements of that strategy was to develop policies and programs to foster more housing accessibility in the city.

2:24

And in order to do that, the first thing we decided to do and we knew that we needed to do was to get some analysis of the existing conditions that are barriers to accessibility for our housing.

2:39

So we partnered with the Ability Center, and they procured the services of a consultant Mathematica, and they're here today to present uh this wonderful report, which you will see just really um affirms a lot of what we thought would were the challenges.

2:59

But I think it's it's even not just affirmation, but it it even speaks to the urgency of what we need to do to address this issue.

3:07

So I'm gonna um give a shout out for Kalina Ali, the deputy, because she's she she was the worker bee behind this just to shepherd this, and I'd like her to say a few words and then um on the approach to this and how we went about doing this.

3:23

Um I always like to um put a plug-in for how we are strategically using our federal dollars, and this study was funded with home admin fund.

3:34

Uh funds were not just eating up all the admin funds were staffed, we're strategically using the funding to really um inform our decisions and to form inform our work.

3:46

So uh part of the 10% admin that we are allowed to pull off of home dollars, we use to foster and develop and get this study done.

3:55

So Colina, uh I'll take it away with you.

3:58

Yes, thank you.

3:58

Good afternoon, counsel.

4:00

I'm Deputy Director Colleen Ali, Department of Housing and Community Development, and thank you for allowing me to be here to talk about this.

4:07

This was um something different for me at least anyway.

4:12

Um, but as Chief Clemens mentioned, you know, it was part of our 10-year strategic plan.

4:18

We talked about all the different things that we're going to do, and there was no timeline on some of them.

4:23

You probably thought once again, here's a uh a study that was developed and it was put on a shelf.

4:30

It was not.

4:32

We we went back through it, we were looking at it, we look at it continuously, and we try to find areas that we could attack.

4:39

We can't attack them all in year one, but as we're marching through these 10 years, we're looking at each of the different areas that we could um address and how we can address them.

4:48

And one of the things that kind of bubbled up was the issue of accessibility.

5:00

And it also was some conversations that we were having in a community with various partners, in particular the Ability Center with Katie Hunt Thomas here, and conversations with her and some of her staff, including Sally Fish, who was now with the city here, about what's really going on out there.

5:12

There's such a need for accessible housing, and it's always been very anecdotal.

5:19

We know there are individuals that have various you know needs, they have various types of disabilities, and we use accessibility so broadly.

5:27

Even myself personally kind of use it in a very restrictive manner.

5:30

But this really opened our eyes and broadened what it is and what the demand is, and how much housing kind of already exists out there.

5:40

And so this was very important that we take this undertaking and to invest the time and the resources for a study such as this.

5:51

And so at this point, I would like to introduce Katie Catherine Thomas with the Ability Center, so that she can talk about from their perspective and introduce Mathematica.

6:03

Thank you.

6:04

Katie's just fine.

6:07

Thank you.

6:10

My name's Katie Hunt Thomas, and I'm the disability rights attorney and director of advocacy for the Ability Center of Greater Toledo.

6:17

This issue is so important to us and to the people we represent here in Toledo, so it's wonderful to hear Director Clemens and Colina Ali talk about how important it's been for them as well.

6:30

You're going to hear from Mathematica on the details of the housing needs study.

6:35

Um before we hear the details, I'm just going to give a little bit of context.

6:40

So we approached the city of Toledo as they were developing their comprehensive housing plan because we currently have little data on the lack of accessible housing in our community.

6:52

During my 11 years at the ability center, every single disability housing work group I've been in has discussed nothing but the lack of accessible housing.

7:01

Over the years, our advocacy team has been successful in increasing the amount of accessible housing we've influenced the design of OFA's allocation plan, policed housing that doesn't meet existing standards, encourage developers to create more accessibility and other sort of small wins.

Discussion Breakdown — Share of Meeting

Housing and Community Development█████████████████████████████████████████████47%

Disability Rights███████████████████████████████████37%

Affordable Housing████████8%

Economic Development███3%

Zoning and Planning██2%

Engineering And Infrastructure██2%

Community Engagement█1%

Summary of Proceedings

Toledo City Council Housing and Community Development Committee Meeting – April 23, 2026

The Housing and Community Development Committee met on April 23, 2026, beginning at approximately 3:30 PM EDT (though the recorded ISO timestamp indicates 20:30 UTC, suggesting a possible time zone discrepancy). The primary purpose was to discuss the city’s first comprehensive accessible housing study, commissioned in partnership with the Ability Center. The committee also received an update on the upcoming third annual Homeownership Fair scheduled for June 13, 2026. No consent calendar items were presented.

Public Comments & Testimony

Glenn Ryan (3072 Carskadden Ave., Toledo; Chair, Northwest Ohio Passenger Rail Association) expressed concern about regional economic disparities and state funding inequities, citing that Toledo’s median income is 35.6% lower than the state median and that the region receives disproportionately low appropriations relative to its size. He urged the council to pause the I-475 widening project (citing potential loss of 1,200 apartment units) and promote a regional public banking system to generate alternative funding for housing and infrastructure.
Ladon Jones shared a personal success story: after seven years in Section 8 housing, he was able to purchase a home through LMHA’s voucher homeownership program and has now lived in that home for ten years. He strongly endorsed partnering with Section 8 to boost homeownership.

Discussion Items

Presentation of the Accessible Housing Study

Chief Rosalind Clemens (Housing and Neighborhoods Sustainability) introduced the study, noting it was funded with HOME admin dollars and fulfills a key element of the city’s 2021 comprehensive housing strategy. Deputy Director Colina Ali explained that the study was undertaken to move beyond anecdotal evidence. Katie Hunt Thomas (Disability Rights Attorney, Ability Center) highlighted that approximately one-third of Toledo households contain at least one person with a disability—roughly 17,572 renter households and 18,093 homeowner households. She stressed that accessible housing is not a “special population” issue but a community-wide concern.

Sarah Croak (Mathematica) presented the study’s findings, identifying three overarching gaps:

Insufficient supply: an estimated shortage of 7,845 affordable accessible units and roughly 15,000 market-rate accessible units. For affordable housing, 11,000 households with a disability meet income qualifications, but only 3,000 accessible units exist.
Difficult search process: online platforms lack accessibility filters; realtors and landlords are often uninformed; in-person visits are burdensome.
Other barriers: limited knowledge of legal protections, lack of coordination among providers, and emergency preparedness (e.g., elevator outages).

Proposed solutions included:

Creating a single point of contact for accessibility-related permits and modifications.
Establishing a retrofit fund (seed money of ~$1M) to modify existing homes and multifamily buildings.
Revising the zoning code (through an upcoming rewrite) to allow greater density, reduce setbacks, and incentivize accessible features (e.g., density bonuses, expedited permitting).
Developing an accessible housing registry and encouraging virtual tours.
Expanding educational outreach to realtors, landlords, and property managers.

Council Q&A on Accessibility

Council President Williams asked about other property owners beyond Lucas Metropolitan Housing Authority (LMHA). Chief Clemens replied that the city is talking with Lucas County and philanthropic actors to launch a retrofit fund, and noted that under fair housing law, landlords cannot prevent tenants from funding their own modifications.
Councilwoman Kramer shared a personal story about her father’s difficulty retrofitting a 100-year-old home and strongly supported the single-point-of-contact idea. She also asked about any accessibility designations for realtors—Sarah Croak said they had not seen such designations but would research.
Councilman Sarantia suggested formal seminars for the Northwest Ohio Realtors Association and the Toledo Home Remodelers Association to educate them on accessibility needs and available programs. He noted that housing stock is old and most people cannot afford new construction.
Chief Clemens confirmed that the zoning code rewrite RFP will include equity and disability-accessibility criteria, and that the city intends to require more than the minimum OFA-required accessible units in subsidized projects.

Update on the Third Annual Homeownership Fair (June 13, 2026)

Nastasha Pittman and Ronald Wells Jr. presented the update. The fair aims to expand homeownership, especially in the city’s “nursery areas” (where 65% of 250 pre-registrants expressed interest). Key data:

$40,175 in committed sponsorships from 15 partners (including Northwest Ohio Realtors, Lucas County, Fifth Third, PNC).
250 completed surveys; 51% of respondents want to be in a home within six months.
62% have checked their credit; 94% do not have a lender pre-approval.
Top barriers: poor credit (36%), lack of knowledge.
Grand prize: $10,000 down payment assistance. The city’s Down Payment Assistance Program offers up to $12,500 citywide and up to $20,000 in nursery areas.
Workshops on credit counseling, budgeting, home maintenance, fair housing, and LMHA’s housing choice voucher homeownership program.
New this year: a follow-up strategy to track whether attendees ultimately purchase homes.

Councilmembers praised the event’s growth and the pre-event survey. Councilwoman Kramer noted the importance of addressing the pre-approval gap; Ronald Wells replied that lenders will be on-site and financial wellness classes are part of the fair.

Key Outcomes

Accessibility Study: The committee discussed implementing recommendations, with immediate next steps including:
- Standing up a retrofit program (modifications for homeowners and multifamily) with an initial target of $1M in seed funding from city, county, and philanthropic sources, aiming for a fall 2026 launch.
- Incorporating accessibility into the zoning code rewrite (RFP criteria will require equity methodologies).
- Creating a single point of contact for accessibility modifications and permits, and developing an accessible housing registry.
- The presentation slides were requested for distribution to the committee.
Homeownership Fair: The committee received the update with strong support; no formal votes were taken. The fair is scheduled for June 13, 2026, and members expressed enthusiasm for continuing the event.

The meeting was adjourned after the homeownership fair update and public comment.

Meeting Transcript

Thank you. No one else. I call to order the Toledo City Council Housing and Community Development Committee of Thursday, April 23rd at 3:30 PM. The purpose of this meeting is to discuss the accessibility study. Clerk, please call the role. Jones. Gaddis. Here. Kramer here. Martinez. McPherson. Meldon. Williams here. Three present. Thank you. And I'm going to turn the floor over to Chief Raz and her team. Good afternoon, members of the Housing and Community Development Committee. My name is Rosalind Clemens. I am the chief of the housing and neighborhoods sustainability for the City of Toledo. We're here today. I'm joined by the Deputy Director Colina Ali and our nonprofit partner, Ability Center. We're very pleased to present the first accessible housing study for the City of Toledo that we partnered with the Ability Center to get done. If you can recall in September of 2021, this council adopted the city's first comprehensive housing strategy. And one of the key elements of that strategy was to develop policies and programs to foster more housing accessibility in the city. And in order to do that, the first thing we decided to do and we knew that we needed to do was to get some analysis of the existing conditions that are barriers to accessibility for our housing. So we partnered with the Ability Center, and they procured the services of a consultant Mathematica, and they're here today to present uh this wonderful report, which you will see just really um affirms a lot of what we thought would were the challenges. But I think it's it's even not just affirmation, but it it even speaks to the urgency of what we need to do to address this issue. So I'm gonna um give a shout out for Kalina Ali, the deputy, because she's she she was the worker bee behind this just to shepherd this, and I'd like her to say a few words and then um on the approach to this and how we went about doing this. Um I always like to um put a plug-in for how we are strategically using our federal dollars, and this study was funded with home admin fund. Uh funds were not just eating up all the admin funds were staffed, we're strategically using the funding to really um inform our decisions and to form inform our work. So uh part of the 10% admin that we are allowed to pull off of home dollars, we use to foster and develop and get this study done. So Colina, uh I'll take it away with you. Yes, thank you. Good afternoon, counsel. I'm Deputy Director Colleen Ali, Department of Housing and Community Development, and thank you for allowing me to be here to talk about this. This was um something different for me at least anyway. Um, but as Chief Clemens mentioned, you know, it was part of our 10-year strategic plan. We talked about all the different things that we're going to do, and there was no timeline on some of them. You probably thought once again, here's a uh a study that was developed and it was put on a shelf. It was not. We we went back through it, we were looking at it, we look at it continuously, and we try to find areas that we could attack. We can't attack them all in year one, but as we're marching through these 10 years, we're looking at each of the different areas that we could um address and how we can address them. And one of the things that kind of bubbled up was the issue of accessibility. And it also was some conversations that we were having in a community with various partners, in particular the Ability Center with Katie Hunt Thomas here, and conversations with her and some of her staff, including Sally Fish, who was now with the city here, about what's really going on out there. There's such a need for accessible housing, and it's always been very anecdotal. We know there are individuals that have various you know needs, they have various types of disabilities, and we use accessibility so broadly. Even myself personally kind of use it in a very restrictive manner. But this really opened our eyes and broadened what it is and what the demand is, and how much housing kind of already exists out there. And so this was very important that we take this undertaking and to invest the time and the resources for a study such as this. And so at this point, I would like to introduce Katie Catherine Thomas with the Ability Center, so that she can talk about from their perspective and introduce Mathematica.

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