COHHIO is a coalition of organizations and individuals committed to ending homelessness and to promoting decent, safe, fair, affordable housing for all, with a focus on assisting low-income and special needs populations.
Our Vision
Our goal is to make homelessness and housing loss a brief, rare, one-time event for vulnerable individuals and families across the state of Ohio.
Who We Are
COHHIO is a coalition of housing organizations, homeless service providers, advocates, and people with lived experience working together to secure the policies, resources, and services necessary to expand access to housing to end homelessness in Ohio.
Who We Serve
COHHIO works closely with agencies directly serving vulnerable Ohioans every day. Coalition building is key to our success in advocacy, training, and service coordination. Together, we serve:
Advocacy and Research – promoting sound policy among members of the Statehouse and Ohio’s Congressional Delegation;
Training and Technical Assistance – ensuring that service providers are using the most effective, evidence-based practices to help people overcome housing instability and underlying issues;
Service Coordination – helping coordinate homeless and housing services and resources among the many nonprofits and local governments in Ohio’s rural and suburban counties, and;
Housing Information – providing knowledge to tenants, housing and service providers to help them resolve problems maintaining their housing.
COHHIO’s board includes community leaders, agency directors and advocates with decades of experience working both on the front lines and behind the scenes to house the most vulnerable Ohioans.
COHHIO’s roots stretch back to the Ohio Housing Coalition, formed in 1974, and the Ohio Coalition for the Homeless, organized in 1984. The two groups merged in 1994 to create the Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio, which was led by Bill Faith until his retirement in 2022, when Amy Riegel became COHHIO’s executive director. COHHIO was instrumental in the creation and maintenance of the Ohio Housing Trust Fund, the advancement of housing first policies at the state and federal levels, protecting consumers from predatory lending practices, and highlighting the power of housing to improve healthcare, education, justice and other public policy issues facing our state.
