If I were to ask you the percentage of Summit County locals who are currently living in deed-restricted housing, what would you guess? 5%, 10%, 25%?

The number, according to my calculations, is around 15.5%. This housing base is keeping many people here who run our businesses, schools, emergency services, etc. If all the proposed projects move forward, my calculations have our community housing 32% of our locals with government-supported/deed-restricted housing.

Last week I had my assistant Jennifer pull together a list of all the existing, under construction and proposed affordable housing units in Summit County. Here is the list. We will be the first to acknowledge that it might not be complete or 100% accurate, but it is the best we could gather from our research. (If anyone has any edits or suggestions, please let us know). Census data from 2022 says the Summit County community has a full-time population of 30,565 people, 11,329 households, and 2.71 people per household. According to our attainable/affordable housing research, there are 1,766 existing attainable housing units, 590 under-construction units, and 1,289 proposed units.

So let’s translate that into the percentage of local households being housed through subsidized housing programs and/or deed-restricted properties assuming 11,329 households in the county:

The county is working on a housing needs assessment. We will report the results of that study when it gets published. Here is the study from 2020.