As Franklin County faces a rise in unhoused people living outdoors, Columbus is advancing its annual grant for the region’s shelter system.
Both Columbus City Council and Mayor Andrew Ginther are taking credit for the funding, which Ginther previously proposed reducing. For the second year in a row, City Council amended the city budget to restore funding to the shelters, but it is still below what the Community Shelter Board sought.
Ginther’s office announced in a press release on the morning of May 18 before the council meeting that he introduced legislation authorizing this year’s $13 million grant for the shelter board.
“Columbus is growing, and our responsibility is to make sure that growth works for everyone,” Ginther said in the release. “This work is about meeting people where they are and making sure more families have a safe, stable place to call home.”
Ginther’s original operating budget proposal for 2026 allocated about $5.7 million. When he released the proposal in November, Ginther cited a tight budget and said he would like to fund the shelters more if additional revenue came through.
City Council added over $7 million for the CSB when the council passed a budget in March that reversed some of Ginther’s cuts.
City Council has to vote on individual grants, even if they are in the passed city budget. The council voted 7-0 on May 18 to approve the CSB grant. Council members Melissa Green and Nancy Day-Achauer were absent from the meeting.
Speaking ahead of the council’s meeting, Columbus City Council President Shannon Hardin said he’s proud of the work the council did on the budget for the CSB.
“It’s our collective responsibility, both the mayor and the council and the entire city, to make ending homelessness our priority,” Hardin said. “You do that by funding it fully. That was not the case, but now it is.”
The CSB funds and coordinates many of the nonprofits addressing homelessness in Franklin County. This grant will go to five initiatives, including emergency shelters, permanent supportive housing, and outreach to people living outside.
“Each year, addressing immediate needs and stabilizing the system takes an extraordinary amount of resources, both in direct support and program coordination,” Shannon Isom, president and CEO of the Community Shelter Board, said in a statement included in Ginther’s press release. “The City of Columbus’ continued investment makes that coordinated response possible.”
More than a year ago, the shelter board lobbied the city and county to increase their funding. Isom said at that time that the shelters need about $13 million from the city annually or they could be forced to close shelter beds.
To improve the system to better serve residents, CSB asked the city for nearly $19 million annually and a similar figure from Franklin County.
Earlier this month, the CSB released a report on its annual “Point-In-Time Count” that found 2,556 unhoused people in Franklin County in January, a 1.2% increase compared with last year. Unsheltered homelessness, meaning people living outside, went up by 43% since the 2025 count.
The annual investment in CSB is part of a broader housing strategy of post-pandemic-era housing assistance, Ginther’s office said in the release. Last year, Ginther announced the creation of the Division of Housing Stability.
Since then, the City Council has approved more than $8 million in rental assistance and other homelessness prevention measures through the Resilient Housing Initiative.
The city is also preparing to launch the Columbus Outreach and Response Engagement (CORE) Team in the coming weeks to work with residents experiencing prolonged or repeated homelessness.
“This is hard work, and no one organization can do it alone,” Ginther said. “Residents expect us to work with urgency, with purpose, and to bring the right partners to the table. We are going to keep investing in prevention, outreach, shelter and long-term housing because every neighbor deserves a chance to be safe, stable and connected to opportunity.”
Government and politics reporter Jordan Laird can be reached at jlaird@dispatch.com. Follow her on X, Instagram and Bluesky at @LairdWrites.
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus OKs shelter funding as City Council, Ginther both claim credit
Reporting by Jordan Laird, Columbus Dispatch / The Columbus Dispatch
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
