‘Magic carpet ride’ might end without affordable housing
Community ponders whether all residents can afford to live here
TSIDNEY CHILDS here was a time when far more people saw “affordable housing” as solely a social issue. ● Those days are long over in Columbus, a community projected to grow to 3 million people by 2050. ● Greater Columbus’ affordable housing crisis is a subject Brian E. Higgins, the principal at Arch City Development, says should concern anyone who cares about the community’s future. ● “This will eventually impact economic growth in central Ohio,” Higgins said as part of the Dispatch Columbus Conversation: “Can People Afford to Live Here?” ● “If the city and the business community doesn’t address this,” Higgins said, “then they can ensure that this wonderful magic carpet ride we’ve been on as a community is not going to last in perpetuity. You won’t have businesses that want to either expand or relocate to central Ohio if their employees can’t find reasonable housing.”video of the hour-long discussion can be found on the Dispatch.com at bit.ly/columbusconversationhousing as well as the Dispatch Facebook
page and Youtube channels. ● The virtual event was hosted by Dispatch Opinion and Community Engagement
Editor Amelia Robinson and presented in partnership with The Columbus Foundation. ● Topics discussed ranged from the impact of gentrification, impact on seniors, available services and the role builders might play in finding solutions. ● Excerpts from the discussion can be found below. ●
mph) or EF5 (more than 200 mph winds).
Ohioans know the wrath of tornadoes. More than 1,000 of them have touched down in Ohio since 1950, including 38 that rated at least F4 on the Fujita scale, meaning major damage with winds reaching above 207 mph. (Weather service officials say the EF Scale, which came into use in 2007, takes into account more variables than the original F Scale did when assigning a wind speed rating to a tornado.)
Just four Ohio tornadoes since 1950 have received the most severe F5 designation. The last time was May 31, 1985, when an F5 tornado tore through Portage and Trumbull counties, claiming 10 lives. There were 10 other tornadoes in Ohio that day.
The “Palm Sunday tornadoes,” so named by the National Severe Storms Laboratory, brought the deadliest single day for Ohio tornadoes since 1950 on April 11, 1965, when 60 people died. Eleven tornadoes spun up that day. The deadliest, in northeastern Ohio, started between Oberlin and Wellington and stretched 22 miles into Cuyahoga County, claiming 18 lives.
The most destructive date for tornadoes in Ohio was on April 3, 1974, when 16 tornadoes touched down, including
F5-strength storms in Greene, Clark and Hamilton counties, west of Columbus, that led to 39 deaths and 1,340 injuries. The storms caused more than $250 million in property damage. Heaviest hit, as many will remember, was Xenia, where an F5 tornado with winds between 261 and 318 mph decimated nearly half of the city. One hospital was left standing, and it was packed with nearly 2,000 people.
As the people of Xenia showed us then, and the people of Dayton showed us when tornadoes hit there on Memorial Day weekend 2019, this is a nation of resilient, persevering people.
The people of Arkansas, Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Mississippi and Tennessee will prevail – with help from their friends from across the United States who realize in moments like this how much we need each other.
Ohio is responding, and yet, as we settle into our comfortable homes for the holidays, it’s important to remember that recovery from such a monumental disaster is a marathon across many months and years. They’ll need our help for a long time to come.
Here’s how you can help: Go to redcross.org, call 1-800-RED-CROSS or text REDCROSS to 90999. And see more local options in Kentucky by going to this page: https://bit.ly/31x22ec.
And if you can’t send money, send prayers.
Alan D. Miller is editor of The Dispatch. amiller@dispatch.com @dispatcheditor