By Joel Oliphint
Columbus Alive
Initial results from the pilot program, which relocated 10 single moms into better housing, are promising
In Franklin County, thousands of households put more than half of their paycheck toward housing. It’s now a well-known problem: Central Ohio desperately needs more affordable housing. And Families Flourish hopes to be one part of the solution.
As Alive reported in a cover story last year, Amy Klaben, the former head of Homeport, launched Families Flourish’s pilot program in 2018, relocating 10 female-headed households from low-opportunity neighborhoods to high-opportunity neighborhoods and providing them with rental assistance, life coaching and career service for three years. An initiative of Ohio State and community partners, Families Flourish takes its approach from research by Harvard’s Raj Chetty, which shows that for every year a child under age 13 spends in a low-poverty/high-opportunity area, the child’s chances of life success increase dramatically.
