What Is the 2024–2025 Ohio Urban-Suburban-Rural Opportunity Index Report?

The 2024–2025 Ohio Urban-Suburban-Rural Opportunity Index Report is a Kirwan Institute publication featured on the institute's homepage. It addresses a familiar national problem—quality affordable housing is increasingly hard to find—and focuses specifically on how federal, state, and local housing agencies can better incentivize affordable housing developers to build in the locations that need housing most. In short, it is a research report aimed at connecting affordable housing investment to measures of community opportunity across Ohio's urban, suburban, and rural areas.

What the report is about

According to the Kirwan Institute's homepage, the report opens from a widely reported concern: quality affordable housing is increasingly difficult to find across the United States. The institute notes that this is especially challenging for federal, state, and local housing agencies trying to incentivize affordable housing developers to build more units in the places where they are needed most.

The report's title signals its geographic and analytical frame: it examines opportunity across three types of Ohio communities—urban, suburban, and rural—rather than treating the state as a single housing market.

Why it matters

The report sits within the Kirwan Institute's broader research approach. The institute describes its work as producing "bold, evidence-based research concepts" that changemakers use to drive prosperity and possibility for every community. Its community-led opportunity mapping approach has been used to explore 48 American states, according to the homepage.

That matters for housing because opportunity mapping links where people live to the resources and conditions around them—such as access to jobs, schools, and services. A report that applies this lens across urban, suburban, and rural Ohio gives housing agencies and developers a shared reference point for deciding where affordable housing investment is most needed and most likely to expand opportunity.

Who it is for

The homepage frames the report's audience around the housing delivery system:

• Federal, state, and local housing agencies seeking ways to steer affordable housing development toward high-need locations.
• Affordable housing developers who need to understand where agencies and communities are prioritizing investment.
• Local decision-makers and community partners in Ohio working on housing and opportunity issues.

The Kirwan Institute also states that it welcomes all Ohioans to use its research to design a prosperous future, which suggests the report is intended as a public resource rather than an internal agency document.

How to use it

The report is available through the Kirwan Institute's website, where it is featured on the homepage with a link to read it. Readers who want to go further can explore the institute's research topics—including poverty alleviation and sustainable future-ready youth employment—or browse its full research catalog. The institute also hosts a public forum series and other events, which can be a way to hear researchers discuss related work.

Key facts at a glance

For anyone working on affordable housing in Ohio, the report is best read as a decision-support tool: it frames the housing shortage as a question of where investment goes, not only how much is invested.