91.7 WVXU: New research fellow at UC will work to find policy solutions for workforce housing in Cincinnati

WVXU spoke with UC College of Law Dean Verna Williams about a new research fellow focused on workforce housing. The Ian Bruce Eichner Research Fellowship in Workforce Housing Policy Fund was made possible by a $500,000 gift from Bruce Eichner, JD ’69.

Williams told WVXU the fellow will look for policy solutions to increase housing affordable to teachers, law enforcement, nurses, and other middle-class professionals.

“And I hope that it’s the beginning of more work in this regard, because it's just vitally important,” she said in the interview. “We can’t let our cities become the preserve of the ultra-wealthy.”

This visiting legal scholar should be in place by fall semester and will be based in the Nathaniel R. Jones Center for Race, Gender, and Social Justice at UC Law.

Eichner is chairman of the Continuum Company, a privately held real estate development firm based in New York City he founded in 1981. He has been involved with workforce housing issues for the last few years. He said the COVID-19 pandemic magnified this issue for health care and frontline workers in New York. The individuals working in hospitals could not afford to live where they worked and stayed in hotels during the height of the crisis.

Read the WVXU story.