Empowering Communities with MORPC

Tim Fulton 00:00Welcome to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. We are a weekly Columbus-centric podcast focusing on the civics, lifestyle, entertainment, and people of our city. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. This week, disparate problems can sometimes be addressed with common solutions — for example, affordable housing and climate change. In this week's episode, Columbus Underground co-founder and editor Walker Evans sat down with Robert Williams, the Senior Director of Residential Services at MORPC. Together, they unpack the organization's grassroots efforts to keep families in their homes, lower energy costs, and reduce environmental impact. From essential home repairs to comprehensive weatherization programs, the conversation reveals how a community-driven approach can make a lasting impact on central Ohio's housing crisis and sustainability goals. You can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theConfluenceCast.com. This episode is sponsored by the Mid-Ohio Regional Planning Commission. MORPC is central Ohio's voice as a regional council. With nearly 90 local governments and community partners, they provide nonpartisan data analysis, community resources, and long-range planning. Together, they drive the future prosperity and sustainability of the central Ohio region. Enjoy the interview.

Walker Evans 01:42I'm sitting down today with Robert Williams, the Senior Director of Residential Services here at MORPC. Robert, nice to meet you. You too. Yeah, thanks for joining us today. I guess, for starters, let's talk about your background and your role here at MORPC. You've been here for several years. Tell us a little bit about what you do.

Robert Williams 02:00Sure. I've been with MORPC — it'll be six years in January — and I'm the director of the residential services department. So in that department, we have two primary programs. We have a weatherization program, and we have a home repair program. For those of you who are not familiar with weatherization, what that means is we generally go into an individual's home, we do a two-hour assessment on their property. We look for health and safety measures on their gas appliances, and if we can do improvements on the weatherization condition of their home, we do things like insulation. We do furnace and hot water tank repair and/or replacement and things of that nature. So that's what our weatherization program is. Our home repair program is a little bit more simple. It's exactly how it sounds. So we go in and evaluate individuals' homes for home repair needs. We generally try to focus on urgent and safety needs on the home repair program. And both of those programs are income-qualified.

Walker Evans 02:57Gotcha. I think a lot of people, when they think of MORPC, they think of, like, the larger-scale, you know, region-wide planning initiatives, the advocacy on such a large scale. Do you think there's a challenge in kind of getting these smaller-scale, almost grassroots, kind of individual types of projects — programs like these — the awareness out in the community as to what they entail?

Robert Williams 03:21Yes, absolutely, I would agree with that. What's funny about that, though, is MORPC is known for those things, but we've been doing weatherization and home repair in central Ohio for over 30 years. So it's in the DNA of MORPC to run these programs. So a lot of our efforts are based on grassroots efforts, reaching out to community members, letting other organizations that do like work or nonprofit work know that we are out here, and have a base of referral for that. And I think what a lot of people don't realize is that just because our programs are free, that doesn't necessarily mean it's easy for us to recruit individuals into our programs. For a large part of the population that we serve, they've traditionally been marginalized and taken advantage of. So you're going out to people's homes and asking them, can you come into their homes and give them something free? So how does that really sound? Does that really sound like it's true, or can actually happen? So, believe it or not, sometimes that's some of the largest obstacles we have to overcome. And then, just like you said, people in general don't associate MORPC with weatherization and home repair. So getting people to see that link and understand that connection is a big piece of what we do when we are trying to get individuals to come in and take advantage of our programs.

Walker Evans 04:40Sure. You know, we talk a lot about the housing crisis in central Ohio, both in terms of affordable housing, lower-income housing, market-rate housing, and a lot of those conversations on how to address that is by building more housing of all types across all communities — rental, for sale, all of the above. Do you see these types of programs that help, especially the income-based programs, being a part of the larger solution set in terms of housing, because it's helping to keep people in their homes with repairs that, if they don't go addressed, can become even more costly and potentially even force people out of their homes?

Robert Williams 05:18Absolutely. And you probably said everything that I was gonna say. You know, that is one of the soapboxes I always get on. Obviously, we need more scale. We need to build more units. But a lot of people do miss out on the opportunities that weatherization and home repair bring, that provide sustainability, that provide affordable housing. You made a key point, and that's kind of one of my spiels that I always say: that, you know, weatherization allows people to keep their costs down so they can pay their rent, and home repair allows individuals to stay in their homes so they don't have to leave. So imagine you're in a home and it goes into disrepair, and you don't have the money to fix it, so you're either going to allow that home to be foreclosed on and you have to leave. So now that affordable unit is offline, and now that person has to go and find another affordable housing unit. So you've actually lost two affordable housing units. And the chances that that unit that they left is going to be purchased by an investor or something like that are extremely high, and they're probably not going to make that an affordable housing unit — it's going to turn into a market-rate unit. So we believe that home repair and weatherization are key pieces to sustaining the existing housing stock in our area that are affordable housing units.

Walker Evans 06:33Yeah. When you talk about the home repair sort of stuff — because that can take a lot of different forms. Is it replacing HVAC systems? Is it repairing porches that are falling in? What are some of the common types of home repairs that the programs address?

Robert Williams 06:48To that, I'll say yes. Like, we have a wide array of things that we do on individuals' homes, and for us, the key pieces are, what are we doing? Is that going to help sustain your home? Are we taking care of something that is a hazard or risk or health risk? So we have multiple layers of a home repair program. We have a lead abatement portion. We have a healthy homes portion that focuses on safety and accessibility and things like radon. We have our general urgent needs home repair program. So whatever we can do to stabilize that home — if it's a window, if it's a roof — up to a certain scale, we'll even get into foundation work. As most things, our restraints are more financial than anything, but what we do, as our goal, is to go into that house and make sure that when we walk out of it, it's a healthy, a safe, and an accessible home. Now, we're not going to go in and, you know, replace your countertops with granite because you want them. That's not the purpose of our program. And we do have people ask for stuff like that, and we have to kind of realign and explain to them what the purpose of the program is. But we have guys who go out and they do a great job in assessing the home. A lot of times, our guys go out and a person may have something on their list that they need fixed or want, and we may find something else in the house that's even more urgent for them, or is going to provide them, you know, greater accessibility or safety in their home. And we have those conversations with the homeowners to make sure that they're getting the best things that they need out of the program when we go in and assess and do our home repair program for them.

Walker Evans 08:23Yeah. Well, similar to the affordable housing component — you mentioned that a lot of these repairs, especially the weatherization side of it, are to help keep bills down so that people can afford to stay in their homes. Can you talk a bit more about how this is a tool in the larger perspective for addressing climate change and environmentalism and some of those bigger-picture planning initiatives that MORPC works on?

Robert Williams 08:48Yes, I would do that to the best of my ability, based on my perspective of what it does. So first, you're talking about two things: energy costs. So, you know, I can go back to a previous job that I had before here. In a previous life, I worked for Nationwide Children's Hospital, their healthy homes home repair program and housing initiative, and one of the things that we did was home repair. And I will never forget one of the first clients we had. We went in and they just wanted windows so bad, because they said in the wintertime, their gas bill was higher than their rent. Your gas bill is higher than your rent — I couldn't even comprehend that. So, you know, those things are very important in reducing those costs. And then a lot of times, we're into replacing, you know, old furnaces. We put in energy-efficient furnaces to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and things of that nature. So we generally save an individual about $400, $450 a year in annual savings for their bills. And we may not think of that as a lot, but when you're dealing with families that are at 200% of the poverty income guidelines, on fixed incomes, things of that nature, that's huge. The other aspect of that too is, you're living in a home like that, and your furnace goes out, and you're at those income levels, you're not going to be able to replace or repair your furnace. So the ability to reduce energy costs, reduce greenhouse gas emissions through our weatherization programs, are huge, along with, obviously, our main goals in reducing their bills and allowing them to stay in those affordable housing units.

Walker Evans 10:32Yeah. Well, I guess the point that I was making as well is that, you know, as a community, we don't want to live in a city full of energy-inefficient homes. If every one of these homes is, you know, burning gas for it to just leak out of the window, then we're contributing to larger environmental problems. And so this, to me, sounds like a program that helps with those bigger-scale initiatives, but at a very individual, house-by-house level.

Robert Williams 10:56Yes, I think it deals with those issues in, like, practical terms. So a lot of times we hear that, and we hear CFMs, we hear all of these figures and things, and pounds of this and that. But what does that really mean to us on a day-to-day basis? So we can apply what that means when we go into these four or 500 houses every year that we go into, and we can say, "oh, that's what that means." So it's a very practical application to, well, yeah, what does that really mean to the average everyday person? And what we do — that's what it means to the average everyday person.

Walker Evans 11:31How can people either find out more about these programs or even be involved if they want to volunteer, just be good community advocates? You know, maybe they have a neighbor or a friend or a relative that would benefit from knowing more about this.

Robert Williams 11:44Sure. You can always visit our website, www.morpc.org, and click on weatherization. If you click there, you can see all our programs, our weatherization and home repair programs. If you're interested in learning more or helping us out, you can feel free to give us a call at 614-621-1171. We don't have a lot of opportunities for you to come in and help us out or volunteer, but if you have groups or associations who may deal a lot with individuals who may be in those income ranges or need help, we're more than happy to come out to speak to your groups, your civic associations, your rec parks, you know, your book club — whoever you have that may be interested, or you may think, "hey, this might be useful to this group or organization that I'm in." We have a staff person dedicated to community outreach. So that's how important it is to us. So we're more than happy to connect groups or organizations with that person so they can come out and teach your group or organization more about the benefits of our home repair and weatherization programs.

Walker Evans 12:50Awesome. Robert, thanks so much.

Robert Williams 12:51Thank you. Appreciate the opportunity.

Tim Fulton 13:00Thank you for listening to the Confluence Cast, presented by Columbus Underground. Again, you can get more information on what we discussed today in the show notes for this episode at theConfluenceCast.com. Please rate, subscribe, share this episode of the Confluence Cast with your friends, family, contacts, enemies, your favorite contractor. If you're interested in sponsoring the Confluence Cast, get in touch with us. We can be reached by email at info@theConfluenceCast.com. Our theme music was composed by Benji Robinson. Our producer is Philip Cogley. I'm your host, Tim Fulton. Have a great week.