This techical paper presents the Ohio Opportunity Indices, developed in partnership with the Ohio Housing Finance Agency (OHFA). The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC) program is a federal incentive used to finance the construction and rehabilitation of affordable rental housing. Ohio Housing Finance Agency’s 9 Percent LIHTC Qualified Allocation Plan (QAP) sets forth the selection criteria used to determine housing priorities and direct credits to developments across the state. In partnership with OHFA, the research team developed the Ohio Opportunity Indices to support the QAP’s goal of prioritizing projects in high-opportunity areas while addressing housing need and ensuring efficient use of tax credits. Together, the indices help OHFA identify where affordable housing investment can connect low-income residents to economic and social opportunity, and where the need for additional affordable supply is greatest. The indices will be updated on an annual basis to ensure the latest available data is used. The 2026 Ohio Opportunity Indices technical documentation includes detailed methodology, data sources, and measure definitions.

Why This Matters

The LIHTC is the primary source of federal assistance for financing affordable rental housing, supporting the construction and rehabilitation of affordable units across the country. By grounding funding allocation decisions in rigorous, regularly updated data, the index supports more equitable and effective allocation of one of the most powerful tools available for expanding housing opportunity and economic mobility.

Key Takeaways

The Ohio Opportunity Indices comprise four distinct but related indices covering all eligible census tracts in Ohio:

• The Neighborhood Opportunity–General Occupancy Index measures opportunity across four dimensions: opportunity-rich and inclusive neighborhoods, high-quality education, rewarding work, and healthy environment and access to good health care.
• The Neighborhood Opportunity–Senior Index adapts the general index for older adults, focusing on opportunity-rich and inclusive neighborhoods, rewarding work, and healthy environment and access to good health care that are most relevant to seniors, including age-specific employment measures.
• The Housing Needs Index measures housing supply, affordable housing stock, and affordability.
• The Neighborhood Change Index captures recent trends across five dimensions: opportunity change, growth, housing value, economic base, and early signs of change to identify areas where opportunity and housing need are shifting.

How We Did It

We identified dimensions and measures for each index through a review of the research literature, drawing loosely on the Urban Institute’s Upward Mobility Framework, and we refined them after OHFA’s stakeholder engagement sessions that gathered input on the measures most relevant and important to their communities. For each index, we collected and cleaned data from publicly available data sources at the census tract level; converted all measures to z-scores to enable fair comparison; averaged z-scores into dimension subindices; equally weighted subindices to calculate the overall index z-score, and rescaled the final index to 0–100. We normalized distance-based measures within urban, suburban, and rural peer groups using RUCA codes to avoid penalizing rural tracts for naturally longer distances to amenities. We excluded tracts with zero population or more than 90 percent group quarters population from the analysis.

Additional Materials

An interactive map of the 2026 Ohio Opportunity Indices is available on the OHFA mapping portal. The 2025 Ohio Opportunity Indices technical documentation, including detailed methodology, data sources, and measure definitions, is available here. An interactive map of the 2025 Ohio Opportunity Indices is also available on the OHFA mapping portal.