TOLEDO, Ohio — Toledo homeowners can already add a backyard cottage or an in-law suite on a single-family lot, and builders no longer have to provide parking, under housing reforms already in effect while a much larger overhaul of the city’s zoning code takes shape. The changes sit inside the city’s PRO Housing initiative, a $6.25 million effort that combines a $4 million federal grant with local matching funds and runs through September 2030, according to a detailed Realtor.com report published Wednesday, November 4.
The initiative targets three things, the Plan Commission and the city’s Department of Housing and Community Development say in the Realtor.com report: a full rewrite of Toledo’s zoning code, a library of pre-approved infill home designs, and direct gap financing for new homes in specific neighborhoods. The City of Toledo confirmed the same three initiatives in its own announcement of the $4 million HUD award, made in partnership with the Lucas County Land Bank and the Plan Commissions.
The city says the work cannot wait. Toledo is short an estimated 12,705 affordable homes for its lowest-income residents, nearly half of all households rent, and the average Toledo home is 102 years old, with more than 30 percent built before 1940, according to the Realtor.com report. Much of that stock, the report notes, needs major repair or outright replacement…