OCCD 2023 Winter Meeting

2023 is finally upon us!  I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season.  With winter’s arrival, we have two choices when it snows: shovel or make snow angels.  My inner child prefers to make snow angels, however the adult in me takes over and I shovel to get to work on time.  We are excited to have our Winter meeting virtually.  Even though we will miss seeing everyone in person, virtually is the safest way to have a Winter meeting in Ohio. 

The Virtual Winter meeting will be held on January 25, 2023 and January 26, 2023 from 9:00 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.  Each half day will contain three sessions.

Our first session on Day 1 of the meeting, will be a presentation regarding the 614 for Linden project in Columbus.  Aaron Murphy, Vice President of Community Development Lending from Ohio Capital Finance Corporation, Carla Fountain, Community Relations Project Manager from Nationwide Children’s Hospital and Douglas Crave, Vice President for Strategic Partnership and Business Incubation and Innovation Center at ECDI will be presenting.   During this session you will learn about how several partnerships transformed this community starting in 2019.

AARP’s Government Affairs Director, Samar Jha will be presenting on Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs).  Samar is going to discuss the history, definitions, examples, status throughout the country and the statistical need for ADUs.   

Next, Katie Phillips and Shannon Fergus from MS Consultants will be discussing ADUs from a planning perspective – Planning for Aging Communities: Walkability and Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs).  They will also discuss the need for planning in order to implement “livable’ and inclusive communities. We are looking forward to their insight.

The first day will conclude with the OCCD Business Meeting.

The HOME-ARP deadline is March 31, 2023.  Have you submitted you plan?  Will you meet the deadline requirements?  This session will provide guidance from Matthew LaMantia, Director of the Office of Community and Development Columbus Field Office at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Tony Core, from Squire Patton Boggs, will give us his, always insightful, legislative update.

Immediately following Tony’s presentation, Gerard Diaz, Director of Community Revitalization Training Center LLC will present an overview of its new RehabSpec project and program management cloud software application to be released in early 2023.

Finally, the last session will be inspiring.  This session will focus on community land trusts. This includes local community control and stewardship of land and housing, sustained affordable homeownership in weak, emerging, and hot markets and increased preparation and support for homeownership.  Emily Seibel, Executive Director of Yellow Home, Inc. will discuss how the community land trust model works, the typical governance structure of community land trust and the flexibility of community land trusts that allows them to both stem gentrification and displacement in hot markets and also spur development in weak housing markets.

Dawn Fish, OCCD Vice President