A New Housing Strategy for Akron, Ohio

The city of Akron has lost 93,000 residents since 1960, so it has room to grow. Now it has a draft housing plan that uses a tax abatement program modeled on examples in Cleveland and Cuyahoga Falls.

1 minute read

February 6, 2017, 8:00 AM PST

By James Brasuell @CasualBrasuell


Akron, Ohio

Ken Lund / Flickr

Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan and the city's planners today will "present a comprehensive housing strategy to revive a once vibrant, All-American city," reports Doug Livingston.

"Planning to Grow Akron," as the newly released housing strategy is called, relies in part on a tax abatement program that Livingston previewed in an article from late January 2017.

In the current article, Horrigan reports on some of the additional changes that will support the tax abatement program, including "converting one-way streets into two-ways and encouraging community groups to engage entrepreneurs and businesses. And [the city will] need state approval to declare all of Akron a 'community reinvestment area,' as Cleveland did before rolling out its tax abatement program decades ago."

The article also details the work of the city's planners in researching the plan.

Sunday, February 5, 2017 in Akron Beacon Journal

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