Rent prices are climbing in Cleveland and Akron, bucking a national trend, according to new data from online renter guide Zumper.
Zumper's February analysis of more than one million national rental listings found that rent prices increased 16% in the Greater Cleveland market since this time last year. Rent also increased in Akron some 6%.
That made Cleveland and Akron outliers compared to flattening rent prices in other cities. Nationally, rent prices dipped nearly 1% over the last year.
Cleveland's rent price spike ranked fifth among major U.S. cities, just behind Columbus, which saw rent prices increase 17%. Overall, there were increases across Midwest markets, which Zumper attributed to low supply.
Roby Simons, who teaches urban planning at Cleveland State University, echoed Zumper's analysis.
"There's probably not a lot being built right now," Simons said. "That's one of the reasons that there's pressure that's going to increase rent a little bit."
It all comes down to supply and demand. Right now, there may be more interested renters than there are affordable rental units, Simons said.
"As households reform, people are moving out of mom's basement or people are downsizing from owning into apartments. There's more demand for those units than there is new supply coming online," he said.
According to residential real estate brokerage and mortgage company Redfin, renters are flocking to the Midwest to get more "bang for their buck."
However, luxury apartments are popping up around the Greater Cleveland area, including in Shaker Heights. The average cost of a one-bedroom apartment in Shaker Heights increased by 32% over the past year, according to recent Rent.com data.
"All the other building that's going on in town is probably at the luxury or upper end of the market for its long-term housing rentals. Not much is being built in the middle," Simons said.
Increasing rent prices creates barriers
Housing advocates say people living in poverty are also feeling the effects of rising rents.
"It's really a barrier for people," said Michael Sering, vice president of housing and shelter for Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry. "That's probably our number one challenge and discussion with people. We're working on housing plans and say, how much do you have and where can you go? And it just doesn't match up."
Sering said his agency saw an example of rents pricing out lower-income populations recently, when meeting with a mother of four who has used a housing voucher to pay rent over the past two years. In January, the woman's landlord raised her rent above fair market value, meaning her voucher will no longer cover its full cost, he said.
"She ended up in the shelter, and she right now has a voucher that will pay fair market rent and can't find a unit, so I think that's just exactly what the challenge is," Sering said.
Jessie Beck, director of rental assistance at Cleveland's Emerald Development and Economic Network (EDEN), said her agency opened a waitlist for its housing voucher program for three days in November 2023. The agency was able to pull 350 names at random from more than 8,500 applications.
"That spoke volumes to me in terms of the need that's out there," Beck said.
EDEN served 4,522 households in 2020, which was a record-high at the time. Last year, it served 5,732 households.
The influx of luxury apartments in recent years have priced out the population her agency serves and puts limits on the areas where they can live, Beck said.
"What I worry about is just continued marginalization of the community that we serve, that can only go to certain neighborhoods because those are the only neighborhoods that they can afford based on what they either bring in as income and then what we're able to justify and pay for with a housing assistance payment," Beck said.
While many people are still feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations that provide rental assistance are also missing the federal aid and resources they received a few years ago.
"During the pandemic, the homeless numbers really plummeted. We've been running the shelter since 2005 and those were our lowest numbers in history, during the pandemic," Sering said.
Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry operates the men's shelter on Lakeside Avenue in Cleveland as well as area overflow shelters. The number of people served at the Lakeside Avenue shelter held steady in 2022 and 2023, but spiked after hitting record lows during the COVID-19 pandemic, Sering said.
The moratorium on evictions and extra rental assistance during the pandemic made a difference in keeping people housed, he said.
Recent steps toward solutions
The pandemic did present opportunities to explore solutions that remain in use now, Sering said.
For example, Lutheran Metropolitan Ministry piloted a direct cash transfer program during the pandemic. People were given a one-time $600 payment if they could verify they had a place to stay and would try to stay out of the shelter for two months.
A year later, some 67% of recipients were still housed, Sering said.
"I think that says you can trust people with money to make decisions in their own best interest," Sering said. "That $600 made that big of a difference in someone's life, that they could reunite with a family member and bring money to the table to get groceries and help with utility bills or whatever they needed to do with it."
The program's success has led to additional funding from Cuyahoga County and other area organizations. It is now called the Flex Fund. Under the program, people now receive a one-time $600 cash allotment and money for their first month's rent payment and deposit, Sering said.
"What started as a shelter de-concentration effort evolved to the most cost-effective solution to homelessness that we have seen, locally or nationally," he said.
Cleveland Mayor Justin Bibb and Cuyahoga County Executive Chris Ronayne announced another new initiative called A Home For Every Neighbor on Feb. 23. The program "aims to decrease transition time between unsheltered status and a successful permanent housing placement to 30-60 days," the city said in a news release.
The plans include new affordable housing units that meet the needs of those exiting unsheltered status and a new Navigation Center with on-site health services for short-term crisis response.
"We've seen an increase in our city of those that are unhoused and there are a lot of key factors to that — inflation, the cost of housing, the rise of mental health issues in our city — and we recognized that in order for us to address this in the city of Cleveland, our city needed to have a more focused strategy," Bibb said during a Feb. 23 news conference.
The city is seeking bids from organizations that may be interested in implementing the program. The deadline to submit a Request for Proposal is March 25.
