Helping Hands: Homeport CEO Leah Evans Advocates a Team Approach to Affordable Housing

Leah Evans grew up in the 1970s and 1980s in Cleveland Heights, an inner-ring suburb that sits just up the hill from University Circle. She lived near museums, colleges, world-renowned medical facilities, a bevy of amenities and a diverse variety of homes. As a child, she marveled at the freedom she had to walk to different places—school, church, the mall, the grocery store and even Girl Scouts meetings. When she visited her grandmother in nearby Shaker Heights, her mode of transportation was her bicycle.

Evans had friends in different areas of the city, including the Hough neighborhood. When she visited there, she noticed a stark contrast. The predominantly African American community had experienced historic disinvestment following the Hough Riots of 1966. As documented by Case Western Reserve University, observers believed the neighborhood was vulnerable to such an outbreak because of substandard and overcrowded housing, stores that charged inflated prices and instances of police harassment.

“That neighborhood was so different from mine,” Evans says. “What did that mean and why was that so? That early exposure to different geographies led me to have an interest in the built environment. Why can I walk to so many different places but my friends don’t walk anywhere in [their neighborhood]? Seeing the differences made me think, ‘Why are some places better than others? Why are some more valued?’ ”

Those questions led her to pursue a bachelor’s degree in urban geography and a master’s in city and regional planning from Ohio State University. That education would serve as the foundation for a long career in planning and economic development. In 2021, Evans was named president and CEO of Homeport, the largest affordable housing provider in Central Ohio and a resource for homebuyer education, financial fitness and down-payment assistance. She leads the nonprofit as it and others in the affordable housing space grapple with the fact that 54,000 low- and moderate-income households in Franklin County pay more than half of their income for housing, according to the Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio.

On top of that, a February report from Bank of America revealed that Columbus leads the nation’s big cities in population growth with a 1.1 percent year-over-year gain in the third and fourth quarters of 2023. In other words, the affordable housing crisis time bomb is ticking.

Evans Moves Into Urban Development

Evans, 47, began her career in 2002 as a business development representative at the Ohio Department of Development. She spent nearly six years there, including as a credit analyst, before joining the city of Gahanna in 2009 as its first economic development manager. There, she worked with Sadicka White, a Black woman who then was the director of planning and development. White had spoken to one of Evans’ graduate classes and made a lasting impression.

“I wanted to emulate her and be a public servant out here working to have a positive impact on the community,” Evans says. “That exposure really helped boost my confidence walking into these types of jobs that didn’t always have diverse candidates.”

Evans was involved in several significant projects during her tenure with Gahanna, which included serving as deputy director of planning and development. These included the Hamilton Road corridor improvement plan, building a high school annex and office and retail space on a former Kroger site, and attracting tenants to the Creekside District. She felt connected to the “real-life impact” the projects had on residents and what it was like to deliver services they wanted.

In September 2013, she left Gahanna to join Homeport as its director of home ownership. “I wanted to get into more central city, urban development and see how housing can change and impact a neighborhood on a block-by-block level,” she says. “How can we advance an individual through housing?”

Evans spent five years in that role and was promoted to senior vice president of real estate development in 2018 before she was named to the top post. As Homeport’s CEO, she oversees 37 employees and an annual operating budget of $5.96 million.

Emmett Kelly, Homeport’s board chair and a board member since 2014, helped select Evans following a national search. Her real estate development experience, knowledge, passion and leadership skills made her the right person for the position. “She’s a tremendously positive human being and has tremendous energy and passion for what she does,” says Kelly, a partner at the Frost Brown Todd law firm. “Her knowledge is beyond compare. She understands the financing, development and programs. She has the full package with respect to that. I’ve always been impressed with her absolute grasp of what we do, the operations of the industry and the solutions needed. I really like Leah Evans. I’m a huge champion of hers. … When she steps into a room, she impresses people.”

The History of Homeport

Evans plans to use her experience in business development, project management, community building and data gathering “to set a larger table to get more people engaged in the housing conversation.”

“We need to make affordable housing urgent,” she says. “Let’s help more people know what’s happening with the market dynamics and get more people involved to course correct. There’s an opportunity to bring more people into affordable housing. We can show why it matters and the positive impact it has on other community issues. We often hear about how we want people to have more access to transportation so they can access jobs. We want better schools, and we want better health outcomes. Housing is foundational to all of that.”

As Evans goes about her work, she has an organization behind her with a storied history in local real estate development circles. The seeds for Homeport were sown in the mid-1980s when a study conducted by Columbus City Council, the Franklin County commissioners and the mayor’s office recommended the creation of a special nonprofit to develop housing for low-income families.

The idea drew immediate interest from Central Ohio’s most prominent real estate players, notably Irving and Mel Schottenstein of M/I Homes, developers Donald W. Kelley and Bob Weiler, and commercial broker-developer Max Holzer.

How would this new nonprofit be structured? Kelley took a trip to Reston, Virginia, to find out. There, he met with James Rouse, an accomplished mortgage banking firm owner, developer and early proponent of urban renewal who created what’s now called Enterprise Community Partners Inc. with his wife, Patricia. Their goal: to make sure every American has a decent, affordable home.

Kelley noticed that Rouse tapped the expertise of his top retired mortgage professionals, product buyers, architects, lawyers and land planners so the foundation could bring projects to life in an affordable way. Rouse visited Columbus and, according to Homeport, was “attracted by the strong sense of community” and believed an affordable housing initiative could be supported.

Soon, a campaign was launched by developers, prominent philanthropic families and government officials to raise several million dollars to get the venture off the ground. With seed money raised by the city, the Columbus Foundation, the faith community and business leaders, an organized shelter system (Community Shelter Board) and Columbus Neighborhood Partnership (later the Columbus Housing Partnership, then Homeport) were incorporated in 1986 and 1987, respectively.

At Homeport, Don Kelley says an initial board of 12 people got the work started. It included himself, Weiler and Holzer and other well-known real estate professionals including HER founder Harley Rouda Sr. and Dan Galbreath, then chairman and CEO of the Galbreath Co. They began by improving neighborhoods on a house-by-house basis on the city’s South Side, one of the poorer areas of town. That’s where Kelley grew up during the Great Depression in a three-bedroom, one-bathroom home that cost $6,500 to build.

“We realized, with the knowledge of the people we brought together, that if you have a house that’s a sore in the middle of a neighborhood, it makes all the other good properties near it sores, too. The bad tends to bring down the good,” says Kelley, who is now 94. “We bought some of those houses for $25,000 and fixed them up, and that improved the neighborhood and created an affordable home for someone to move into. That was the initial thrust. Homeport has done a terrific job of providing affordable housing ever since then.”

Maggie Parks and Michael Roebuck can attest to that.

In fall 2023, Parks celebrated five years of owning her home in Milo-Grogan. She purchased it after completing Homeport’s Home Readiness course and receiving down-payment assistance. The 45-year-old had rented her whole life and wanted better living conditions for herself and her son, Bryan, who now attends Columbus State Community College. The $460 monthly mortgage payment for her 1,500-square-foot home is less expensive than the $495 she paid to rent a 700-square-foot house. “As a parent, you want to be able to leave something and do something for your child,” she says. “To me, it means everything. Being a single parent, sometimes it’s hard to do all the things you want to do for your child, but this is something I can pass on to him and tell him, ‘This is your stake in the world, son.’ ”

Roebuck, meanwhile, had a long career in Columbus radio starting in the 1980s but fell on hard times when the smooth jazz radio station where he did voice work went defunct in 2010. He lived in several mold-infested environments and lost his voice as a result. In October 2020, Roebuck moved into Homeport’s Hamilton Crossing apartment community in Whitehall, which has 64 affordable units for seniors 55 and older.

Living in a mold-free, smoke-free environment allowed his deep baritone to come back, and he has started emceeing events. “Within seven months of living here, my voice started coming back stronger and stronger. When I was away from the mold, my lungs healed,” Roebuck says. “For years it was a thin, raspy whisper. People would call to ask me to emcee or do commercials and when they heard me answer the phone they would say, ‘Oh, wow.’ That took a lot of money streams out of my pocket.”

Housing and Economic Development

Housing is considered affordable when the occupant pays no more than 30 percent of their gross income for housing costs, including utilities. Those who spend more are considered to be cost-burdened. The Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission’s Regional Housing Strategy report cites five core housing issues:

• Increased market competition, driven by population growth, insufficient housing construction and continuing impacts from the Great Recession
• Barriers such as disparities in lending practices, creditworthiness, housing instability and discrimination
• A limited supply of homes priced for low-income households
• Demand for homes that serve a range of ages, abilities and household sizes
• Housing instability, shown in factors such as local rates for cost burden, evictions, homelessness and homes needing repair

The top barriers to affordable housing, according to MORPC, are: not-in-my-backyard attitudes and negative impressions of density and affordability; lack of centralized information and varied local land use policies and standards; higher development costs; insufficient capacity to meet demand for help with rental assistance and repairs; and overreliance on Low-Income Housing Tax Credits due to a lack of gap financing.

The housing crisis is having a direct impact on Central Ohio’s economy and workforce availability, says Bill LaFayette, owner of economic consulting firm Regionomics, who shared insights from his 2024 economic outlook report at the Columbus Metropolitan Club’s annual Blue Chip Economic Forecast, held Jan. 3. LaFayette predicts Central Ohio, for the third consecutive year, will fall well short of the national average for employment growth.

The Columbus metropolitan statistical area saw robust population growth between 2010 and 2020, but between 2020 and 2022, the region lost about 1,400 more people than it gained. “We can hope that the slowdown in population growth is a temporary impact of the pandemic,” LaFayette told the audience. “But our region’s shift from a big net importer of population from domestic origins to a net exporter to domestic destinations is really troubling. We don’t know anything about these folks and where they are moving to. But one very likely cause was the impact of the housing market.”

According to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s quarterly House Price Index for the Columbus metropolitan area, he said, prices nationwide are up 79 percent since 2016 compared with 93 percent locally. And since 2012, rents in Franklin County have increased 20 percent after inflation—5 percent higher than the national average.

In December, the median home listing in Columbus was $275,000, up 8.6 percent year-over-year, according to Realtor.com. Apartments.com shows average rent in the city at $1,068 per month. “It is quite possible that people have been leaving the area and others haven’t moved in because they can’t afford to live here,” LaFayette told the audience. “The problem is one that has been discussed on this stage before: a lack of housing development.”

Like LaFayette, Amy Klaben sees a connection between housing and economic development. Klaben was the president and CEO of Homeport from 2000 to 2015, helped establish the Affordable Housing Alliance of Central Ohio and now is the president and CEO of Families Flourish (formerly known as Move to Prosper). The nonprofit aims to help families through programming and support related to housing, education and wellness.

“As jobs are created, housing is needed at all price points to serve the needs of the labor pool. Our region must connect these two activities, and I believe that whenever incentives are provided to attract companies to our region, incentives need to be provided to build housing. This is part of our communities’ infrastructure,” Klaben says.

There are several recent developments that could help:

• In November, the Affordable Housing Trust for Columbus and Franklin County and 11 government and corporate investors unveiled a $60 million AHT Regional Impact Fund to create more housing units.
• In December, Columbus City Council voted to create a citywide Community Reinvestment Area in an effort to generate more affordable housing. Qualifying new residential developments get a 100 percent, 15-year tax break.
• A new $100 million, state-specific LIHTC is dedicated to the construction or rehabilitation of affordable rental housing.
• The CONVERGENCE Columbus initiative aims to increase Black and minority homeownership through a vast network of coalition members from government, banking, nonprofits and corporations.

Gauging Homeport’s Impact

Homeport’s mission is to “create strong communities by developing quality, affordable homes on a cornerstone of dignity, security and opportunity.” The nonprofit’s latest Impact Report shows it provided housing for 275 new residents in 2023 and had projects in the works to accommodate 650 more. Throughout the year, 7,209 residents were served through food assistance, financial assistance, and homebuyer education and counseling programs.

“We’re going to stay laser-focused on residents, that’s not going to change, and meeting our mission of closing the housing gap is not going to change,” board chair Emmett Kelly says. “Developing more properties is something we want to expand upon, and part of that is taking advantage of the state and federal [LIHTC] programs and looking at other alternatives in the marketplace, including partnering with market-rate folks and pursuing all avenues so we can develop more space to meet that mission of closing the gap.”

For example, Homeport recently partnered with developer CASTO to build the Killarney Woods apartment community in Blacklick.

Homeport isn’t tackling the crisis alone. The United Methodist Church’s Community Development for All People ministry works with an array of partners on affordable housing and other community issues. This includes a venture with Nationwide Children’s Hospital to rehabilitate and repair homes near the hospital’s main campus.

“The South Side has a history of valuing diversity across backgrounds, race and class; this is a multiclass, multiracial neighborhood,” says Katelin Hansen, CD4AP’s chief financial officer. “People here value that legacy. A lot of what we have been trying to cultivate is the continuation of a diverse, mixed-income, opportunity-rich neighborhood where all people can belong and thrive. We see a collective value in radical hospitality for all people.”

Challenges persist. This includes making sure existing affordable housing stays that way, in part by ensuring landlords continue to accept Section 8 renters. Additionally, as homes are repaired, it reduces the number of blighted properties where homeless people seek refuge, so establishing more warming centers and smaller, place-based shelters is critical, Hansen says.

The Columbus Urban League has acted as a HUD-approved homebuyer-education and down-payment assistance provider for 13 years—efforts that have created 321 new homeowners and $38 million in mortgages, according to Stephanie Hightower, the organization’s president and CEO. She received Homeport’s highest honor last year—the Voice & Vision award—in recognition of her fierce advocacy for the housing and economic needs of Central Ohioans, including championing fair housing and taking an active role to prevent housing discrimination.

“We know housing is foundational and essential for our families,” Hightower says. “It’s a factor for everyone who walks through our doors, whether they seek us out for financial literacy or career mobility. We can never underestimate the irreversible link between housing and security, stability and economic success.”

Hightower also points to numerous ongoing challenges, such as a surging number of people who are homeless and the eviction crisis that disproportionately affects communities of color, especially Black women.

Meanwhile, the Kelley and Weiler families have created the Columbus Housing Enterprise to preserve affordable housing through the philanthropic commitment of private sector leaders. The nonprofit organization is led by the Rev. John Edgar, who formerly led CD4AP, and Evans is a board member. CHE partners with the Columbus Metropolitan Housing Authority to buy apartment complexes to keep them affordable. “The apartment business has been good to us, and we want to give something back to the community,” Kelley says. “It’s that simple.”

Evans and others who work in the affordable housing space stress the importance of a regional approach to solving the crisis. That’s why Homeport, with funding from the Ohio Housing Finance Agency, is redeveloping the Delaware County Engineer’s property. The 44 LIHTC units will include a mix of apartments for households earning between 30 percent and 70 percent of the area’s median income.

“I love the energy of our team, our board members and partners, and we’ll continue to seek out ways to stay relevant,” Evans says. “We’ll continue to ask, ‘What do we need to do to continue to serve the market in a robust fashion?’ That will include looking for more opportunities to serve housing needs as we continue to support the growth of the entire region.”

About Leah Evans

President and CEO, Homeport

Age: 47

Previous: Senior vice president of real estate development, Homeport; deputy director of planning and development and manager of economic development, city of Gahanna; business development representative and credit analyst, Ohio Department of Development

Education: Bachelor of Arts in urban geography and master’s degree in city and regional planning, Ohio State University

Community involvement: Serves on the Columbus Women’s Commission, the board of the Neighborhood Design Center and the NeighborWorks America Real Estate Advisory Committee

Resides: Columbus

Family: Married with one daughter

Laura Newpoff is a freelance writer.

This story is from the April 2024 issue of Columbus Monthly and the Spring 2024 issue of Columbus CEO.