By Gregory Korte and Ken Alltucker
The Cincinnati Enquirer

An unprecedented agreement to limit new subsidized housing vouchers in Cincinnati could end the standoff over the English Woods apartment complex and help shape the region's low-income housing policies.

Councilman John Cranley has reached an agreement with the Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority to halt the rapid growth of Section 8 housing vouchers in the city. The authority will also delay the demolition of English Woods until at least April 2004.

In exchange, the city agrees to support the authority's application for tax credits to finish an owner-occupied housing development in the West End, and to pass through $450,000 in federal funding.

Cranley called the agreement "historic." It will go to a vote at City Council today. The Cincinnati Metropolitan Housing Authority Board approved the pact Tuesday night.

"This is the result we can get for neighborhoods - places like Westwood, Price Hill and Bond Hill - when City Council keeps its word," he said.

CMHA Executive Director Donald Troendle said the deal reinforces his group's effort to spread low-income housing throughout the region and "still give people a choice to live where they want to live."

The crisis over city housing policy came with CMHA's plans to demolish the English Woods complex, displacing low-income residents there. Many residents didn't want to leave, and some west-side neighborhoods worried that those residents, with Section 8 vouchers, would disrupt their communities.

It's the culmination of federal changes in low-income housing policies, favoring issuing vouchers to low-income renters instead of placing them in large apartment buildings reserved exclusively for the poor.

But some - including an unusual coalition of advocates for the poor and suburban leaders - say the agreement is wrong-headed.

If CMHA places a cap on vouchers, advocates for the poor say that would eliminate another option for people searching for affordable housing in Cincinnati.

"The theory behind the vouchers is that it is supposed to be mobile and people can use it wherever they want," said Mary Burke of the Over-the-Rhine Housing Network, a nonprofit affordable housing group. "There are so many barriers that it is just ridiculous to put up another one."

The changes have created a vast shift of low-income housing units from near-downtown neighborhoods such as West End and Over-the-Rhine to outer city neighborhoods and even suburbs.

CMHA's City West development is a mix of new owner-occupied homes and apartments at the site of the former barracks-style Lincoln Court and Laurel Homes public housing complexes. Also, Over-the-Rhine's largest low-income housing landlord, Tom Denhart, has sold dozens of buildings and opened up others for renters of all income levels.

"We're not addressing the affordable housing needs of the community," Burke said. "This is bad for communities."

Delhi Township Trustee Ann E. Langdon said the city is trying to move poor people into suburbs ill-equipped to handle their needs.

"Mr. Cranley is doing this because he sees the poor as a burden on the city of Cincinnati. And that's why he wants to ship them out. I find that just appalling," she said.

The deal won't eliminate or even reduce rent subsidies for the 7,300 Cincinnati families that now hold vouchers, but CMHA agrees to hold off on new Section 8 commitments. The agreement permits CMHA to issue future vouchers "only to assure that the level of families served does not fall substantially below 7,300."

It also calls on CMHA to encourage residents to consider suburban dwellings by providing transportation and counseling for low-income people who want to leave the city.

The agreement, however, doesn't address Hamilton County's low-income housing program. The county also issues vouchers for the poor, and more than 1,700 Cincinnati families were living in apartments subsidized by the county-issued vouchers as of November 2002. The largest concentration of the county's vouchers were in Avondale (210), Westwood (171) and East Price Hill (155).

E-mail gkorte@enquirer.com and kalltucker@enquirer.com