Anyone who has tried to piece together financing for a neighborhood project in Cincinnati knows the drill: one program for buying the site, another for stabilizing the building, another for the housing itself, each with its own application and timeline. The city says that's over.
Cincinnati has rolled several of its development programs into a single Neighborhood Development Fund with one application, WVXU reported. The fund can offer grants, forgivable loans or repayable loans.
"Developers should be able to bring us a project and its financing needs without first having to determine which of several different programs or applications they need to navigate," City Manager Sheryl Long said in a statement.
Twice the money, one front door
The fund has about $13.5 million available this fiscal year. Brandon Rudd, the city's deputy director for strategic growth, told WVXU that's more than twice what the city has spent on neighborhood development in the past. The money comes from this year's capital budget. It absorbs older programs, including the Neighborhood Business District Improvement Program and Quick Strike, that together added up to about $5 million or $6 million a year and will no longer exist.
"There might have been one program for acquisition, one program for stabilization or pre-development work, one program for housing development ... it became what I call an alphabet soup of different programs," Rudd said.
Eligible projects include rental housing and homeownership, transit access, reducing vacancy and blight, and strengthening neighborhood business districts. The fund is open to private developers, community development corporations and community-based organizations. Private developers need a fully worked-out development plan. CDCs can also get money to acquire or stabilize a property while they plan what to do with it. Rudd used his own neighborhood, Northside, for examples. He named larger tax credit housing projects like John Arthur Flats and Vandalia Point, smaller jobs like the Hamilton Avenue building renovation where Dean's Mediterranean opened, and the local CDC's purchase of the former White Castle site at Knowlton's Corner.
Awards will be made at least quarterly, with the first round by the end of this calendar year and more through June 2027. Applicants can submit an intake form any time.
"We're going to try to get that money out the door as fast as we possibly can — faster than ever before," Rudd said.
One pipeline
Two partners will help run the program. The Cincinnati Development Fund, a community development financial institution, already manages the city's Affordable Housing Trust Fund and the Affordable Housing Leverage Fund. HomeBase Cincinnati supports the city's community development corporations.
The Neighborhood Development Fund is now part of what the city calls its "one pipeline." Applicants fill out one intake form, and the city, CDF and HomeBase match the project to the right mix of sources: the new fund, the Affordable Housing Trust Fund, tax increment financing dollars or tax abatements. For projects with income-restricted affordable housing, awards won't have to go to City Council, because council already authorized administrative approval for those developments.
Rudd pointed to research behind the change. He cited a 2025 UC Berkeley study that found each public funding source added to an affordable housing deal raised costs by about $20,000 per unit and could add about four months to the timeline.
"That means construction costs go up," Rudd said. "It means that projects could be put at risk because the macroeconomic environment changes."
Smaller neighborhood projects, like gateway signs and façade improvements, may be steered to a separate program that's coming soon, so they don't compete with larger developments. The fund is part of a broader reorganization this year that created a new Office of Strategic Growth focused on real estate and job creation.
Why it matters for Contractors
The fewer stops a project has to make for financing, the sooner it gets to a groundbreaking. When a deal stalls for months while a developer chases one more funding source, the contractor's number on that job keeps changing. Cincinnati's new fund puts more money into neighborhood projects and promises faster decisions, which should mean more small and midsize jobs reaching construction: affordable and market-rate housing, storefront rehabs, building stabilizations and infill. Contractors who work with Cincinnati's CDCs and neighborhood developers should let those clients know about the new process. With quarterly awards starting by year's end, some of these projects could be ready to bid in 2027.