(upbeat music) - [Narrator] "Brick by Brick" is made possible thanks to leading support from Greater Cincinnati Foundation, AES Ohio Foundation, and George and Margaret McLane Foundation.

Additional support provided by Laurie Johnston, the Robert and Adele Schiff Family Foundation, Murray and Agnes Seasongood Good Government Foundation, and many more.

We couldn't do this work without you.

Thank you.

- Trees breathe life into communities.

Neighborhoods recognize that and are planting more of them.

- When you have nothing planted and then you get finished planting, it feels so good at that moment.

But then to actually watch them grow and thrive and become those big beauties that you see around the city and just cherish.

- [Host] Come along on a tree canopy tour to see how new saplings are replacing one's lost to storms, development, and invasive species.

Cincinnati isn't alone in having an urban forestry plan.

Dayton is creating one too.

- Plus.

I mean, they just outperform anything that I've seen.

- The number of 3D printed homes in Ohio is slowly increasing.

Builders see lots of benefits, including weather resistance, but they face some more red tape for now.

That story coming up.

- [Host] But first, in less than a decade, more people will be age 65 and up than under 18.

Will we have enough housing for older adults?

- According to experts, senior housing isn't catching up with demand.

Today, we'll see the importance of having options for our seniors as we feature two older adults, one who wants to age in place and another who moved into affordable housing.

- I just love my home and, you know, and I don't want to live in a place else.

- Knowing what the housing and rental prices are today, Were am I going to find a place that I can afford?

- Let's get into it.

This is "Brick by Brick: Solutions for a Thriving Community."

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to "Brick by Brick" where we're highlighting solutions for a thriving community in Southwest Ohio.

I'm your host, Ann Thompson.

Every day more than 10,000 Americans turn 65.

We're in the peak 65 era.

And by 2040, the number of households headed by a person 80 and over will have more than doubled.

That's a problem because not all housing works for those who want to stay in their home and senior housing developers are not building enough housing to keep up.

We've heard about the need in a few of our past episodes.

Linda Deering moved into a new apartment and says it's kind of a catch-22.

- [Linda] You need more senior housing like this, but then we don't need a whole, a lot of massive apartment buildings all over Cincinnati either.

- [Ann] Kym Terrell disagrees and says based on need, a lot more senior housing does need to be built.

- We have another building called Marlowe Court and I believe it's four stories.

It's rather big and it's... In 2017, I believe it was, for it, they had people sign up.

Well, they only had about 50 to 60 apartments and over a thousand people applied.

- [Ann] Senior housing development is falling so far behind demand that the industry would need to increase construction roughly tenfold over the next decade to maintain national occupancy at 90%.

So obviously increased demand.

That's according to media company Globe Street that provides news and analysis to the commercial real estate industry.

It blames elevated interest rates, higher construction costs, labor constraints, and operating margins that are below pre-pandemic levels.

And there's another problem.

More than two-fifths of senior housing units are more than 25 years old and may need to be rehabbed.

74-year-old TJ Helman knows that firsthand.

She had to move and wanted to live at the downtown Cincinnati YMCA, but it was being renovated and would be more than a year before it was finished.

An apartment in Walnut Hills bought her time since both are run by the same people.

- I said, "Well, does that mean I can rent this place for a year and then move over there?"

She goes, "Yep."

I said, "Then let's make that a plan."

And I signed a lease there, stayed there for a year, drove them crazy with... Are they open yet?

Are they open yet?

Are they open yet?

- [Ann] TJ is on a fixed income.

As you age, your income drops.

In 2022, the median household income for older adults was 50,000.

And with rent rising nearly 30% in 10 years and increasingly higher property taxes, housing can be hard to afford.

In Southwest Ohio, 11% of older adults spend over half their income on housing costs.

This income inequality is greatest among Blacks and Hispanics.

The Pew Research Center finds most older adults want to grow old in their own home but are not sure they can.

A smaller percentage see themselves moving into assisted living or moving in with a family member or to a nursing home.

Some experts say our housing system just isn't set up to accommodate longer lifespans.

So what are the solutions?

Brick by Brick's Hernz Laguerre Jr.

reports there are options and area agencies and developers are stepping in to help.

- [Hernz] Let me introduce you to Connie Pflanz and Catherine Elizabeth Bachelor, two seniors who are looking for two different types of housing.

- I just love my home and I don't want to live no place else.

- If it costs more, I wouldn't be able to live here.

- [Hernz] Let's start with Ms.

Connie.

The retired P&G employee is in her 80s.

She's lived in her house for nearly 30 years, but her Northside home is 165 years old.

Moving around isn't getting easier.

- [Connie] After you had the knee surgery, you can't just go up a step.

You have to hold onto something to do those steps.

- [Hernz] And it wasn't just the steps that were giving her issues.

It was hard to lift her leg over the bathtub wall.

- [Connie] How am I going to get in there and take a shower?

So I put the walker... (laughs) Put the walker halfway in the bathtub and the other half on the floor, held onto it, got in (laughs) and got in.

You have to improvise, you know.

- [Hernz] Renovating the bathtub was outside of Ms.

Connie's budget.

So in an aging home that was better suited for her younger self, why did Ms.

Connie want to stay there in the first place?

- [Connie] I wouldn't want to live someplace else.

Like you know, there's so many flyers and they want to buy your home and stuff like that.

And I've even been offered over $200,000, you know.

Now this goes to my daughter and my two grandsons and you know, they want to sell afterwards, you know, and make money and that, that's fine, but this is for them.

- [Hernz] Ms.

Connie's story isn't new.

Stephanie Seyfried, senior leader at the Council of Aging, says she encounters a lot of individuals just like her.

- Our older adults, people are aging and want to remain at home and dependent in their own home.

We did a community needs assessment in 2025 and then earlier in this year in 2026.

And the huge need that we were seeing is around housing affordability, being able to remain at home, the cost of housing, cost increasing, utilities, rent, mortgage, property tax.

It's a huge need and gap in our community.

- Luckily, the social service organization was able to step in and help.

Jenny Federle, care coordination specialist, details what they did to Ms.

Connie's home.

- [Jenny] So she applied to our Steps to Stability home modification program.

We had a provider go out there and look at her home and we were able to determine that a walk-in shower would be that modification that would be able to keep her in her home and we were able to get that modification installed for her.

Something that we all take for granted is just being able to get in and out of the shower safely.

And for her, that was a really big concern that she wasn't going to be able to stay in her home because of that.

So she was just absolutely overjoyed and we were so thankful that we were able to provide that safety for her.

- [Hernz] Now let's switch gears to Ms.

Catherine.

The retired federal employee is in her 90s.

For almost 25 years, she's lived at the Alexandra Apartments, making her the longest tenant at the 120-year-old apartment complex.

In 2020, the building was at risk of losing its affordable housing status.

I asked Ms.

Catherine her thoughts about that time.

- It was pure anxiety.

Did a lot of praying.

- [Hernz] I also asked Ms.

Catherine if she had another place to live if Alexandra Apartments was converted to market rate.

- [Catherine] I was bewildered.

There may have been, but I didn't know about them.

It's just hard to find a nice place to live.

I don't think there's enough of affordable housing.

I really don't.

- [Hernz] Luckily in 2024, Columbus-based nonprofit National Church Residences stepped in to purchase Alexandra, keeping it affordable.

- We're fortunate to have such a wonderful place at affordable living, nice clean building.

Need I say more.

- [Hernz] Not only were National Church Residences able to keep it affordable, they were also able to renovate the building.

Tim Westrich, senior project leader at a development company, gave Brick by Brick a tour of the renovations.

- [Tim] What we're hearing from residents is our renovation, we have great just finishes in the units.

This being a historic building, the windows are big and the ceilings are high, so there's just a lot of light that gets in the units and it just really looks a lot more beautiful, a lot more comfortable than when tenants were in the building before.

- [Hernz] According to the Local Initiative Support Corporation or LISC, we need tens of thousands of affordable units in Hamilton County for our seniors in addition to other income aligned housing.

Reasons like that are why National Church Residences are building an apartment out in Pendleton called St.

Catherine Point.

So this is where you guys will be building your new development, right?

- Right.

So this building will be demolished and we'll start on our new construction building.

We'll build 60 units of senior affordable housing.

You know, it's difficult to find a site that will accommodate that number of units, and this is a site that we're able to find in as close as we could to downtown and the neighborhoods that are really growing.

- [Hernz] How many more developments like this are needed in our area?

If we could do 50 of these at a time, we certainly would, and that would really take care of the need for senior affordable housing in Hamilton County.

It's just hard to put these together.

There's just a lack of resources to be able to build, you know, buildings like we're planning for.

- [Hernz] And with a growing number of older adults in our area, there needs to be more resources to create affordable housing and enable home modifications for the elders in our community.

For "Brick by Brick," I'm Hernz Laguerre Jr.

- One thing to recognize is that not all counties are experiencing the same growth.

Warren and Cleremont County's older adult populations are projected to see an increase by 2030, while Hamilton and Montgomery Counties are expected to decrease.

Regardless, there's a need for more senior housing.

By the end of last year, overall occupancy nationally reached 89%.

In the last couple of years, Cincinnati developers have added more than 200 units, including Logan Commons and the Alexandra.

The new owner of Quality Inn & Suites in Queensgate tells the business courier he will convert the hotel to senior assisted living, so adapting will need to be part of the strategy too.

In Dayton, when it comes to notable senior housing developments, more than a hundred units have been added between Omega Senior Lofts and Trotwood Senior Lofts.

Meanwhile, still in development are projects like Longfellow Commons and a senior living community in Washington Township among others.

Some of this is low-cost income-aligned housing, but not all.

As we mentioned, affordability is an issue for many older adults.

That's one of the limitations.

Other shortfalls include hiring a caregiver to age in place.

There's a shortage of them.

Experts say the 63 million paid and unpaid caregivers are under an increasing strain.

And how do you pay for one?

The Council on Aging lobbied for, and in 2024, lawmakers gave Ohio families a choice to use Medicaid dollars for in-home workers or at a nursing home.

Another consideration is that sometimes seniors have trouble affording food.

As we've told you in a past episode, Meals on Wheels is a great resource for eligible older adults aging in place.

In Dayton, a Columbus nonprofit is taking over that service after the previous provider closed.

Here's something else.

Remember the 1980s TV sitcom, "The Golden Girls," where four older adults lived together in a Florida home sharing expenses and each other's company?

Could we ramp up this strategy?

Realtor.com reports state lawmakers across the US have seen the benefit of relaxing zoning and housing codes to allow for more single room occupancy housing.

Laws are on the books in Colorado, Iowa, Oregon, and Washington allowing unrelated adults to live together by renting individual rooms.

Connecticut and Pennsylvania are also considering it.

Coming up on "Brick by Brick," disturbingly, we're losing trees in the neighborhoods that need them most.

What a difference planting new trees can make.

(upbeat music) We need trees for a lot of reasons.

An obvious one is oxygen.

Trees and land-based plants provide 28% of the air we breathe.

The rest comes from plants in the ocean.

In fact, an acre of trees produces enough oxygen for 18 people to breathe a year.

Trees also combat heat islands or urban areas where there isn't enough shade.

This can come from replacing the natural landscape with huge amounts of blacktop and concrete, which can heat up quickly.

The latest census numbers find one in four people vulnerable to extreme heat exposure, and they don't necessarily live in the hottest places, but suffer because of a variety of things like overcrowded housing or lack of transportation, which could force them to walk places.

Cincinnati's community vision is underway.

It calls for trees to cover 40% of nearly all 52 neighborhoods.

Little by little, the city is making progress.

Here's one way.

Cincinnati Parks, its foundation, the zoo, MadTree Brewing, and others, plus hundreds of volunteers are planting trees in the neighborhoods that need the most.

Driving through the West End, we get a glimpse of what the Cincinnati neighborhood is becoming, more green.

- I mean, look how awesome these tree lawns are.

They're like six feet wide, and there was little to no trees planted, so all of these here went in for that planting as well.

- Crystal Courtney, who points out these newly planted trees and others in and around Ezzard Charles Park oversees Cincinnati's urban forestry program for the Park Board.

- So this is like a swamp white oak here.

This is a Linden up here, so that perfect little shape.

But you can see this one here.

This is a lilac tree.

- [Ann] The West End is one of 20 Cincinnati neighborhoods where trees cover less than 40% of the ground.

Not enough trees can lead to hotter temperatures, more flooding, and bad air.

- You know, when you're looking around the country, you hear more about like redlined districts where you have the haves and the have-nots.

You have high canopy and more affluent white communities than you do in minority, low-income communities.

It's not necessarily that division in Cincinnati.

It's more... I guess it's more income-based.

- MadTree Brewing recognized the need for more trees and partnered with Cincinnati to create Let's Grow Local.

It, along with its partners, have planted more than 600 trees in six neighborhoods since 2019, including Avondale.

- [Crystal] This is Rockdale, and we're looking at the trees that we planted for Let's Grow Local in 2024.

And so we did a site visit.

I was like, I pretty much want to plant out just the perimeter.

I see that you guys probably use this open field for soccer or other events and ordered the trees, planted the trees, and now they're being watered and cared for by Groundwork Ohio River Valley, because there's sort of a hierarchy in urban forestry.

You want to take care of what you have because it takes 50 years for a tree to get this big.

So if you don't take care of what you have, you'll lose it.

And if your first focus is to put a tree in the ground, then you'll not see the forest for the trees.

- Planning is already underway for the next neighborhood tree planting.

It's in Madisonville, October 27th.

This is in addition to 1,500 trees the city plants street site every year and the annual tree giveaway.

There used to be a lot more trees in Southwest Ohio than there are now.

Commercial development and weather events have played a role, but so have invasive insects.

In greater Cincinnati, the Emerald ash borer beetle killed tens of thousands of ash trees.

Earlier this year, "Brick by Brick" traveled with entomologist Joe Boggs to see the devastation.

- We're in a park in southwest Ohio, but it could be any park in Southern Ohio, all of Ohio, or any park in Albany or Indiana or any park in Kentucky.

And what we're noticing is the impact of the non-native beetle known as Emerald ash borer that took out the ash here.

Now, that's also created an opportunity.

We started seeing first, you know, open canopy, open areas, but then the opportunity is that we see the parks replanting, this park, other parks, to provide greater diversity.

- [Ann] One place that's undergoing a massive tree replanting is French Park in Amberley Village.

Why?

Because non-native plants wreaked havoc here, but thanks to a donor, native trees will be replanted.

The largest such effort in nearly 100 years in Cincinnati, it's the most since Mount Airy Forest.

French Park will serve as a laboratory, and what is learned here could be scaled down to restore smaller parks like McEvoy and College Hill and others.

Meanwhile, Dayton is creating an urban forest master plan of its own.

This year, the city is working with a firm to take inventory of all of its trees along rights of way in public spaces and is now calling on residents, organizations, and community partners to be part of an advisory group.

71 people have agreed to be on it.

Goals include making sure there's a good plan for maintenance, growing the urban tree canopy, and bouncing back from bug infestation.

A $2 million federal grant is paying for the inventory, the master plan, buying the trees, planting them, and maintaining them.

The forest master plan will be finished next year, so we'll keep you up to date as it progresses.

(upbeat music) We want to give you an update on 3D-printed houses in Ohio.

Are they catching on and will they be accessible for all incomes?

Brick by Brick's Emiko Moore reported on Ohio's first 3D-printed home and is following the technology.

Emiko?

- You may remember the first 3D-printed home in Ohio, which we covered in 2025.

We interviewed John Smoll with Sustainable Concrete Innovations who printed the first home in Wapakoneta, birthplace of Neil Armstrong.

Well, he's part of another first for this Buckeye State.

Already listed on Zillow, Smoll and his team printed the first 3D-printed home for sale in Ohio for Keith Thomas, CEO of 3D Vision Builders.

The 2,000 square foot home is located in Englewood, the northern Dayton suburb, and we caught up with Thomas who says the construction timeline is a lot faster and could potentially pave the way to build more affordable housing.

- We'll have maybe 90 days, 100 days to build as opposed to six, eight months.

- [Emiko] So the build out can be quicker, but in this case, the permit for the construction took a lot more time, six months versus the typical three to four weeks.

- Really, the challenge is we're educating everyone on this, so this was something they had never seen, and so we had to bring our engineer with it, with us in there to have a conversation with all the inspectors, the zoning department and everybody, and basically showed them what we were doing.

- Thomas believes the permit process will be streamlined soon as more cities build them.

Home insurance might even decrease.

- I've had a couple brokers already that said, "Yeah, this will be no problem."

I was concerned about that.

I wanted to make sure they could get financing and insurance.

And yeah, we've been paving the way for someone to come in and that's interested and there should be no problem there.

There should actually be a bit of an insurance decrease because these are fire-resistant walls.

- This two-story home is priced at 359,000.

Thomas is excited to see how the market responds.

- It's comparable to any other traditional built home, but we think the value way is going to exceed a traditional built home with efficiency, the moisture resistant, the mold resistant, the weather resistancy, just the durability of the home itself we think is going to far exceed in value and just be more efficient in the long run.

- Columbus, Lima, and a suburb of Athens, Chauncey, have 3D printed housing in the works as well.

John Smoll with Sustainable Concrete Innovations is also working to develop a new concrete mixture that doesn't need to be ordered overseas, which would help lower costs.

Of course, since 3D printing is still a growing piece of the housing puzzle here regionally, we'll be keeping an eye on how the process gets easier and whether it's having an impact.

Ann, back to you.

- Thanks for that update, Emiko.

As always, if you're curious about the solutions we're exploring like 3D printed or a senior housing and want to go deeper, you're in the right place.

Just head to our show page on thinktv.org and cetconnect.org.

You'll be able to find our solution stories, videos, and extra resources so you can dig into the topics you're most passionate about.

And while you're there, drop us some feedback.

We want to know what you think, so hit the big green button to touch base.

We've got a number of topics to discuss.

Let's take them one by one for the takeaways, and we say hi to Emiko and Hernz.. - Hello.

- Hello.

For Senior Housing Hernz, this has been a topic that you've been advocating for.

- For sure, yeah, because a lot of our seniors are facing barriers in regards to getting housing.

And as we saw in our reporting, a lot of seniors want to stay in their home.

They want to age gracefully that way.

And Jenny Federie from the Council of Aging, she shared a whole bunch of stories with me, some of the stories that I wish we were able to share on the broadcast.

One really resonated with me though.

It was a story about a woman who applied for the Steps to Stability Program because she had a washer and dryer that was in her basement.

So they sent a contractor out to her home, and out of curiosity, the contractor said, "Hey, how do you normally get down the stairs?"

And she showed them.

She grabbed a carpet runner, she sat on it, and she scooted herself down the stairs.

That's how she normally would get her down the stairs.

And she would have to do this on a weekly, sometimes on a daily.

Her tailbone was bruised and it affected the way she walked.

And luckily, Council of Aging was able to install a stair lift, right?

But that renovation reminds me that these renovations not only help keep seniors in their home, but it helps keep them safe and also helps them keep their dignity as well.

- Yeah, most definitely.

Emiko?

- Yeah.

Stories like this are really heartbreaking to hear, and we want to help seniors stay in their home because that's where they want to be, that there's a house full of memories.

And you'd mentioned this 1980 sitcom, "The Golden Girls," where there's this possible movement towards having single room occupancies that you can rent out.

I think this is an interesting idea.

It's something that is not new.

Historically, we've had this.

We used to have boarding houses and rooms.

You know, it's similar to when we did the segment on accessory dwelling units.

We used to have these carriage homes or garage homes where you'd have someone else that you could make a living renting out another piece of property, but you also have the community there of having someone else kind of watch out for you, which I think is really important, especially as you age.

- Yeah.

And keeping seniors in their homes is good for them.

It's good for the community.

And one way that I see that we can do that is finding funds someplace to have more adaptations, like you were talking about, Hernz, or more money for Medicaid home aids that this would reimburse, or also using money to pay for property taxes, which is another barrier to people staying in their homes.

In terms of trees, trees are not the only thing that's growing, but the momentum around them and to plant them certainly is.

Let's Grow Local has another event to plant trees in Madisonville, and we certainly saw the benefit of trees this summer when it was so hot.

- And honestly, I think we sometimes take trees for granted, right?

They don't only provide air quality and shade, but according to Dr.

Aruni Bhatnagar, he runs the Green Heart Project in Louisville, Kentucky.

That's another tree building initiative.

He said that, you know, trees can help reduce inflammation, it can help with your mental health.

And he even said there are studies that show areas that have more trees see a reduction in crime.

So it's incredible to see all the solutions that can come out of the seed.

- Yeah.

- Emiko?

- Yeah, absolutely.

Trees and nature reduces a lot of stress, and you can't underestimate how much that impacts you just daily as you're walking by trees.

And the trees really are workhorses in urban environments and in neighborhoods.

You know, they cool the spaces that they're around, the sidewalks, the streets.

We all know asphalt, that's really gets hot, but you can lower some of your heating and cooling bills around the trees.

They also help manage storm water, reduce flooding in areas.

They also reduce pollution because they're taking out and filtering the air for us, so they really help us breathe better.

And they also increase property values by up to 15% when you have more trees on your property.

So they really are a powerhouse.

- I like your update, Emiko, on the 3D-printed houses, and I'm encouraged to see that they don't require as many workers, and if the weather's right, they can be built faster.

Also, I liked hearing that John Smoll is possibly developing a different concrete mixture that could be cheaper and also more environmentally friendly.

And I wonder about other materials because we interviewed Sandy Kurth in season number one for the podcast where he was building some of these 3D-printed homes from the dirt that these homes were going to sit on.

And he points out that they can hold up.

In Yemen, a mud-built home lasted like 1,200 years.

- Oh, wow.

And honestly, to build off of that, like, you know - - To build off of that.

(all laugh) - When I went to Wapakoneta with you, I though it was incredible how one of the workers said that it didn't take him long to learn how to do 3D-printed homes.

It took about two to six weeks.

So I'm thinking, oh shoot, that might help with the development, the speed of development for these types of homes.

- And that's right.

He did not have any construction background, so for him to come in and learn that was really rapid.

You could build a bigger pool from your workforce housing.

And you know, this kind of housing, Keith Thomas, the builder who's building the house in Englewood, he really wants to build more affordable housing and that's really why he's wanting to get into this.

He sees this as a potential opportunity to do that.

For this house, it's a market rate home because there there were certain zoning requirements as far as the size and some other things that they have to work through with permitting that took longer.

But he sees this once they get all of that underway, that he could really, you know, crank them out much faster and cheaper.

- Well, thanks, Emiko and Hernz for discovering and updating your stories.

- No problem.

- That's our show.

We hope you have your own takeaways from today's solutions.

And if you did, please share it with us online and talk about it with your friends and family.

It keeps the conversation going so we can build more awareness around the issues.

Until next time, for Hernz Laguerre Jr and Emiko Moore, I'm Ann Thompson.

We'll be back soon with more solutions.

Take care.

(upbeat music)