For Dayton’s County Corp, creating generational wealth is the foundation
Dayton and Montgomery County, like so many other places in the U.S., continue to face a shortage of low-income housing. For nearly fifty years the private nonprofit development corporation County Corp, has been creating generational wealth by adding new housing and working to revitalize neighborhoods. How is the organization doing it and can it be replicated?
What do the latest housing numbers show?
The need for affordable housing is increasing. The 2026 Gap Report finds 73-percent of Ohio’s 422,000 extremely low-income renters spend over half their income on rent. That’s up from 66 percent five years ago, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition (NLHC) and the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio (COHHIO).
Findings:
- Only 37 rental homes are affordable and available for every 100 extremely low-income households in Ohio.
- The state has a shortage of 266,000 homes and needs to expand access to rental assistance and build deeply affordable rental homes.
- Only one in four households who qualify for housing assistance receive it.
- Cincinnati has a deficit of 55,000 units.
- Shortage for Montgomery County is 15,275 housing units.
Gap Highlights for Montgomery County:
** ”Cost burdened” means spending over 30 percent of household income on rent and utilities. “Severely cost-burdened” means spending over 50 percent of household income on rent and utilities. ELI (Extremely Low Income) means households that earn 30 percent or less than area median income or the Federal Poverty Level.
COHHIO Executive Director Amy Riegel says, “Policymakers must focus on the most vulnerable – the hundreds of thousands of hard-working Ohioans who are living on the edge, where a sudden illness or car repair can lead to eviction and potentially homelessness.” According to Riegel, “The time for complacency is over. We need action, and we look forward to working with elected officials to find a path out of the housing crisis.”
How County Corp created more than 1,000 housing units
Forty-six years ago, when the private nonprofit development corporation County Corp was created, Dayton had lost half its population and needed to get federal money to buy and rehab homes.
According to the organization’s VP of Housing Adam Blake, “It’s too cumbersome to go through your city council or city commissioner or county commission, so they set up these private nonprofits to contract with that unit of government to get those housing dollars and deploy them in neighborhoods.”
County Corp has done that with the goal of “enriching the lives of residents of Montgomery County by providing safe and affordable housing.”
The nonprofit developer uses a combination of public, state and federal funds alongside philanthropic dollars to act as a catalyst at all economic levels.
For example, County Corp partners with others like Omega CDC to turn around entire neighborhoods.
Adam Blake says, “It doesn’t make sense for us to take a dollar and invest where nothing else is going on. What we try to do is leverage any funding that we have with other successful positive existing programs.”
There’s no shortage of work, especially with Dayton’s Demolition Strategy. A recent survey rated the exterior of every single home, showing more than 1,000 homes needed to be torn down and another 5,000 were on the brink.
Funding Sources for Dayton Recovery Plan Demolition Strategy
Brick by Brick covered Dayton’s demolition efforts in this podcast and TV show.
County Corp’s work is spread out over the entire county and beyond. It also serves as a developer in places like Akron and Athens, Ohio.
Wolf Creek
One local example is Wolf Creek, where the West Dayton neighborhood has one of the highest rates of homes in poor condition, as Emiko Moore reports in this podcast.
She tells the story of how Pastor Chris Voltz and his family of six were able to become homeowners with the help of County Corp.
Welcome Home Ohio
Through Ohio’s Welcome Home Ohio, the Montgomery County Land Bank is spending $7 million to buy, rehabilitate or build housing for income-eligible residents. The plan is to build and sell 40 residential properties and renovate and sell another two dozen.
County Corp, along with the Port Authority, Habitat for Humanity and CityWide Development, are the developers, as reported by Brick by Brick in July, 2024.
Trotwood
Seven years after a series of tornadoes blew through Trotwood, there’s a home ownership program underway and dozens of much needed apartments are preparing to open.
The new 63-unit apartment complex under construction is called “At Main.”
County Corp’s Blake says, “They’re going to be beautiful. All of the modern amenities that you would expect in any apartment will be featured in these. And it’s exciting for us to be involved in a project where we are bringing people back to Trotwood that had to leave because they lost their housing. And those are households so that’s children that were in the schools, but those households had to move out of the city because there wasn’t an apartment for them to live in. So, this will help bring all of that back.”
Nearby there are two other multifamily developments, as well as a 50-unit complex for seniors built 5 years ago. And that’s not all.
“We began working with the disaster lists that FEMA had and we identified all of the tenants who were displaced by the tornadoes, realizing that those apartments were not going to get immediately rebuilt, if at all. We needed to create a home ownership program for some of those residents that would be able to obtain a mortgage.”
County Corp built 19 homes in phase one and so far, five in phase two.
Blake says, “We’re helping people create generational wealth through home ownership. Very often the people that are purchasing these homes are the first person in their family to ever own a home. A lot of people like myself have benefited from the equity that home ownership provides. And that’s exactly what we’re trying to transfer here.”
This homeownership program is so successful that County Corp has expanded it to Fairview and is eyeing other neighborhoods.
The Dayton Daily News reports the “Pathway to Homeownership” program plans to invest millions of dollars over three years to build 30 new homes for first-time homebuyers who meet income eligibility requirements.
Putting “Opportunity Youth” to work to build housing
For more than a decade, County Corp has received a government grant to help young people. With the money it supports YouthBuild, an organization which recruits low-income young adults, ages 16-24, who aren’t in school or don’t have a job. In some cases, they have a diagnosed disability and are justice involved.
Brick by Brick went to West Dayton to see them build a house on a Habitat for Humanity site.
Executive Director Jerry Farley uses the government term “Opportunity Youth” to describe program participants.
He says, “Never met a young person that didn’t hope for a better future. And YouthBuild provides them the opportunity and the resources to be able to achieve that future. So, for us, these are our YouthBuild participants in our construction program.”
The students take classes and learn on site. The goal is to be certified in a year after graduating from Liberty High School. (Cincinnati and many other cities around the globe have YouthBuild programs)
Farley says, “One of the best examples of a success story is right here. Mackenzie Johns, who was a student of ours a couple of years ago. After she graduated Liberty High School, we brought her back for one year to work as an assistant on site, kind of like a graduate assistant program. After her first year was up, she went and got a job with Danis Construction, making about 21 dollars or more an hour. After her first year with Danis, we had an opportunity because we were growing so much to hire a full-time teacher’s aide for our construction instructor. We opened up the position and one of the people that applied was Mackenzie.”
Johns got the job and is making a difference.
“I grew up on the east side of Dayton, so in a lot of the same neighborhoods that our students come from and I started at Liberty because I couldn’t really learn at a traditional school. And then I got introduced to the CTE programs in YouthBuild and they saw my determination and my drive.”
Also helping are county employees who work with YouthBuild students to provide housing and food. The program also supports participants financially for an entire year after they graduate.
Farley says the organization is a good steward of government dollars with a 90 percent retention rate. This is important because the National Center for Education Statistics says a high school dropout will cost a community more than $270,000 over the course of their lifetime.
According to Farley, “It takes a village to really raise a child, and it takes a full team that supports these young people holistically.”
County Corp’s Adam Blake says this is a program and others are really making a big difference.
The organization’s success
According to the County Corp 2025 Annual Report, it has:
- Invested more than $2.6 million to repair 112 homes.
- Started, completed and/or sold 11 affordable homes.
- Invested $152 million to acquire, preserve and build 574 affordable rental units.
Looking ahead
Blake says organizations like his feel threatened financially by what’s happening at the national level. However, County Corp has thrived by diversifying its focus not only with the development of affordable housing but with the preservation of affordable housing. Through preservation, it has attracted grants and philanthropic dollars. Blake says the preservation part has opened doors to a lot of different funds.
County Corp continues to be creative as it develops more low-income housing. Is there more that can be done? We want to build community around context and solutions in our cities. Your feedback is very important to the effort, as we continue to dig deeper into the responses to some of our most pressing social issues, including the housing crisis. Click on the green button below to take a short survey to help reinforce and refine our work. Thank you.
Ann Thompson – Host, Producer
Over the last thirty years in Cincinnati, Ann Thompson has brought a wealth of knowledge and expertise to her reporting. She has reported and anchored for WVXU, WKRC, WCKY, WHIO-TV and Metro Networks and freelanced for NPR, CBS and ABC Radio. Her work has been recognized by the Associated Press and she has won awards from the Association of Women in Communications and the Alliance for Women in Media. She is a former News Director and Operations Manager. Ann has reported from India, Japan, South Korea, Germany and Belgium as part of fellowships. Ann thinks of the Brick by Brick project as “journalism for good.” She serves as host and producer. Ann lives in Anderson Township with her husband Scott. They have two boys. Jake graduated from the Air Force Academy in 2022 and Kurt attends West Point.
