In the days after Akron Mayor Shammas Malik announced his stance against two proposals intended to improve access to housing in the city, a groundswell of opposition from landlords and business leaders has followed.
The board of the Greater Akron Chamber on Friday voted to oppose Issues 11 and 12, with President and CEO Steve Millard saying that the housing issues that Freedom BLOC raised in pushing for the legislation were legitimate, but putting a pair of charter amendments on the ballot was not the right way to solve them.
Two other organizations — the Northern Ohio Apartment Association and the Akron Canton Real Estate Investors Association — both also said this week that the proposals to eliminate application fees, allow security deposits to be paid over three or six months and treat criminal history as a protected class for the sake of housing decisions could lead to unintended consequences. A third real estate organization — the Akron Cleveland Association of Realtors — shared its opposition in a blog post last month.
“I believe we need more accessible, affordable housing, no doubt,” Millard said Friday. “These proposals are very different from what we see in other places.”
Details in ballot measures need more consideration, chamber president says
No one from Freedom BLOC responded to requests for comment Friday afternoon, but leaders have said previously that the proposals stem from the idea that housing is a human right and that application fees, security deposits and discrimination based on criminal history can be barriers to people accessing it.
Millard didn’t disagree with those assessments. But he said that the details of the ballot measures haven’t been fully considered.
For one, he said, a measure in Issue 11 that would criminalize not telling tenants that they can pay their security deposit over a period of months would turn what might be a paperwork failure into a misdemeanor. Issue 12, which would send potential discrimination violations to the city’s Civil Rights Commission, would allow for uncapped damages if someone was denied housing because of their criminal history.
“If you cap the liability, I can price for it,” Millard said of the costs landlords might incur if they rent property in Akron. “I think there’s a path to deal with the most critical of these issues here.”
Instead, he said, if the measures are approved by voters, landlords are likely to raise rents to make up for some of the lost up-front costs. They could be less responsive to applicants with ethnic names; in Minneapolis, Millard said, after a policy change restricted the use of background and other checks, a study showed that discrimination against Black men increased.
And Millard said he expects investment in Akron will pull back if the proposals are approved. Chuck Schulman, the president of the Northern Ohio Apartment Association and Carlyle Management Co., said he would expect local owners to sell to out-of-state investors.
“It cuts down on the quality of the ownership,” Schulman said. “Ultimately, it hurts the tenant more than anyone.”
Donzell Taylor, the chairman and CEO of Welty Enterprises, said Friday that he had paused work on his plan to turn the CitiCenter building downtown into about 115 apartments, despite having a ceremonial start to internal demolition in mid-September. He’ll wait until after he sees what voters decide before choosing whether to move forward on the $37 million project.
Taylor said he thinks the proposals are unconstitutional, and if they are approved, he would expect to challenge them legally. Millard also said he would expect legal action.
Taylor also said he and others could put forward their own ballot measures to repeal Issues 11 and 12 if voters approve them this fall.
“I’m very, very concerned,” Taylor said. “Right now, my total focus is on making sure 11 and 12 don’t pass.”
‘You deserve an opportunity to have a home’
Voters, so far, haven’t gotten the message.
At the Summit County Board of Elections Friday afternoon, Goodyear Heights resident Terry Edwards said a tenant stole and sold the air conditioning unit of a home his mother rents out, but he still voted in favor of both issues.
Gary Hill, who lives in West Akron, said he thought the proposals could help the poor take power from the wealthy while making it easier for people who need a break to find a place to live.
And Ray Lewis, a Kenmore resident, said he’s in favor of anything that helps people who are down and out.
“I’m a firm believer in second and third chances,” Lewis said.
Early voting started Oct. 6. The election is Nov. 3.
Millard said he knows of two political action committees that are funding opposition to Issues 11 and 12. One is the Akron Affordable Housing PAC, started in September by Julie Stoll, the acting president of the Akron Canton Real Estate Investors Association.
Stoll said the PAC has printed information cards that it plans to hand out to voters, and she and others are making phone calls to try to sway voters.
“There are quite a few people who think this is a terrible, terrible thing,” she said. “We want people to understand what they’re voting for so they’re not confused.”
Kevin Moreland hasn’t cast his ballot yet, but the Wallhaven resident said he isn’t confused about what’s on the line.
“No matter who you are, you deserve an opportunity to have a home,” Moreland said. “I’m most likely going to vote in favor of people and not the chamber of commerce.”
He praised Freedom BLOC for getting the measures on the ballot, saying their work shows other people how to get their issues addressed by voters.
Dispute leads to adversarial relationship, though housing is a priority for all
It’s that process, Millard said, that raises concerns for him. He said amending Akron’s City Charter to address housing concerns in this way means that voters would have to approve any future changes that might need to be made, if there are challenges with the legislation, as he suspects there will be.
Instead of going straight to the ballot, Millard said, a deliberative legislative process that allowed people with different opinions to weigh in would create better legislation — just more slowly.
Malik, in his message denouncing the two proposals, said if they do not pass, he is “committed to introducing legislation to City Council on both topics before the end of 2026, as we have done on a number of other housing issues this year, and to make sure we have robust public engagement about these issues.”
But what Malik plans to propose isn’t clear. And the tension between what’s on the ballot and how Malik and others feel about it underscores that the city could have done more to involve outside groups in the housing-related work Unify Akron was doing earlier this year, Millard said. He said now, the process has become adversarial instead of collaborative — even as multiple parties want to find the best solutions to what even the opponents agree are real issues.
Perhaps, he said, the levels of support for Freedom BLOC’s proposals will lead the city to focus the amount of attention needed on the issue to compel action.
If the proposals pass, he said, “We will see people walk away from projects.” Instead of investing in Akron, they’ll look at Cuyahoga Falls, Green or Stow. Availability of housing will fall.
But if they fail, the issues that brought the measures before voters don’t go away.
“More investment and more affordable housing here will help us all,” he said. “It’s prohibitive fees and discrimination we should address. But don’t take away the rights of the owner.”
