Columbus, OH
The largest city in Ohio, Columbus is also the capital of the state. According to the 2010 Census, Columbus is comprised of 787,000 people with a median age of 31.2 years old, seven years younger than the nation’s median. The city’s demographics are of 61.5 percent white, 28 percent African American, 4.1 percent Asian American, and 5.6 percent having a Latino/Hispanic background.
Columbus has had a number of innovative community wealth building efforts. For example, a community development corporation (CDC) intermediary, the Community Development Collaborative of Greater Columbus (The Collaborative), acts as an important conduit by providing financial support, training, and direct technical assistance to Columbus’s neighborhood-based community development corporations. With a $1.5 million annual budget, the volunteer board assists CDCs such as the Franklinton Development Association (FDA), which received low-income housing tax credits of just over $1.8 million to create 100 housing units in the Franklinton neighborhood of Columbus.
Ohio State University, a land-grant college based in Columbus, has also been a national leader in university-community partnership work. Campus Partners, Ohio State’s affiliate organization, received $35 million in New Markets Tax Credit allocations for the South Campus Gateway, adding to more than $154 million from public and private investments. Ohio State invested $28 million of its own endowment funds to finance the project. This has resulted in improved municipal services, enhanced public safety, and renovated housing for this low-income neighborhood adjacent to the university.
An overview of community wealth building efforts follows: