2021 Winter Quarterly Meeting

Dear OCCD Members and Friends,

2021 is finally upon us! I hope you all had a wonderful Holiday Season and a Happy New Year! While the context of our work will not have magically improved with the dropping of the ball, we can hopefully look forward to an eventual return to normalcy. Unfortunately, normal includes families still living in poverty, unstable housing and with limited access to economic opportunities. It is essential that, as professionals in community development, we learn from each other in order to find the most effective and creative ways to address poverty in our communities.

Our Winter Quarterly Meeting will be taking place online on January 27^th and 28^th. Just as we did in July and October, we will be conducting two half-day meetings. It is likely that we will have a similar structure for our meetings at least through the Summer Annual.

Our first quarterly of 2021 will see some variety in the topics we address. We lead off the meeting with a  panel discussion on Emergency Business Assistance during the Pandemic. Several practitioners from around the State will describe the programs they have developed and implemented in order to assist small businesses.

The next presentation focuses on Identifying and Overcoming Barriers to Disability Inclusion. Beth Glas from Maximum Accessible Housing of Ohio will share her deep knowledge of accessibility in order to help us ensure that people living with mobility disabilities have the same access to our community that those without disabilities have.

Our third presentation will feature Dr. Kerstin Carr of MORPC. Dr. Carr will be sharing MORPC’s Regional Housing Plan. This presentation will be of interest to those inside and outside of MORPC’s service area as we can all benefit from the insights and tools that MORPC used or is using to develop and implement their plan.

MORPC will be followed by a 30-minute peer-to-peer session where members will be encouraged to discuss with each other current issues that they are facing in their work. This is not only an opportunity for colleagues to share their experiences, problems and solutions, but also for networking, in a time when it has proven difficult to network as we conduct these events online.

Closing out the day will be our usual OCCD business meeting.

Thursday will start with a panel discussion on new housing construction utilizing CHIP and Habitat for Humanity. Barbara Richards of ODSA, Ken Oehlers of Habitat for Humanity of Southeast Ohio and Ryan Miller of Habitat for Humanity of Ohio will discuss how this partnership works. While entitlements are not able to utilize CHIP, this session will also explore other ways that Habitat for Humanity can assist all Ohio communities develop affordable housing.

The second Thursday session will explore a potential piece of Federal Legislation that has bipartisan support and could be very helpful to urban and rural communities across the state. The Neighborhood Homes Investment Act, co-sponsored by both Senator Brown and Senator Portman, potentially provides a Federal incentive for new housing construction and substantial rehabilitation for households up 140% AMI. Matt Josephs of LISC, Kim Cutcher of LISC Toledo, and Tiffanie Shaver of the Great Lakes Community Action Partnership will discuss the legislation and the need in both urban and rural communities.

Tony Core of Squire Patton Boggs will close out the quarterly with the always popular Legislative Update. Followed by the ODSA and HUD breakout sessions.

I sincerely hope that you find these topics of interest. If you have any suggestions for future sessions, please contact myself or Pat Richards, or even consider joining the Sessions and Training Committee.

All the best,