THE BARRISTER APARTMENTS

The Barrister Apartments in Cincinnati, Ohio won a 2024 Charles L. Edson Tax Credit Excellence Award in the Historic Preservation Property category.

Co-developers Over-the-Rhine Community Housing (OTRCH) and Urban Sites transformed two vacant, historic office buildings in downtown Cincinnati into the Barrister, which offers 44 homes of dedicated, high-quality affordable housing and 2,000 square feet of commercial space on the ground floor. While the buildings converted through this historic rehabilitation are each nearly 150 years old, the Barrister breaks new ground as the first Housing Credit project in Cincinnati’s Central Business District in over three decades. The project provides critical affordable units as downtown and the adjacent Over-the-Rhine neighborhood continue their rapid growth in market-rate apartment development.

The adaptive reuse of the Barrister buildings provides 44 homes, with seven homes affordable to households earning 30 percent of the area median income (AMI), 13 for households earning 50 percent AMI, and 24 homes for households earning 60 percent AMI. Many of the homes have two or three bedrooms, which are intended to serve families. Because the historic structures were preserved, the affordable units appear indistinguishable from the many market-rate apartment buildings in downtown Cincinnati. OTRCH has a 25-year history of providing supportive services to residents of their projects, and is coordinating supportive services for all the residents of the Barrister through a Resident Service Coordinator on staff with OTRCH.

The development represents the efforts of co-developers Over-the-Rhine Community Housing and Urban Sites to preserve, improve, and increase affordable housing opportunities in Cincinnati, Ohio and was made possible through financing from the National Equity Fund.