Cincy Hat Foundation plans affordable housing for developmentally disabled individuals

Notes

Madisonville Community Council (MCC) President Kate Botos called the meeting to order at 6:37 p.m. on Thursday, Nov. 20, 2025, with about 30 people in attendance at the Madisonville Recreation Center (Madisonville CRC). There was no verbal attendance taken, so it is uncertain whether all officers were present. The officers of MCC are:

• Kate Botos, president
• Monica Hill, vice president
• Jeff Hart, treasurer
• Angela Pearson, corresponding secretary

The recording secretary position remains open. Botos said that the usual notetaker was not present and later expressed interest in reading Documenters’ notes.

Cincinnati Police Department report

Officer Monique Martin, the Madisonville community liaison for the Cincinnati Police Department (CPD), presented briefly. Martin said Madisonville is “actually looking really good as far as crime is concerned,” but there has been an increase in scam phone calls.

“If someone is calling you and telling you that you’re going to jail because you didn’t go to jury duty and you need to give me $500, and I need your credit card number, and your Social Security number, and your date of birth, it’s a scam,” he said.

In other scams, callers have pretended to be family members of victims and say they have been arrested. He emphasized legitimate callers will never ask for personal information over the phone.

Martin encouraged residents to call police to report “individuals walking slowly in your neighborhood, looking around like they don’t belong,” because “more than likely those are the people that are breaking into cars.”

He also congratulated Captain Joe Richardson on beginning his new position in District 2. 

Recreation Center updates: Toy drive and pool closure

Bryan Servizzi, center manager of the Madisonville CRC, said that this year’s annual toy drive will be different from years past. The Madisonville CRC will host the Holiday Extravaganza Finale for the entire city on Dec. 20 from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Servizzi said that over $50,000 has been raised so far.

Servizzi said the Madisonville pool will remain closed for the summer of 2026 for the construction of a new “state-of-the-art” pool facility that will open the following year.

The agenda allotted time for presentations from nearby schools and the Madisonville branch of the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library, but no one was present to speak.

Cincinnati Preservation Society presents on historic preservation (audio: 8:20)

Executive Director Beth Johnson and Raina Regan of the Cincinnati Preservation Society gave a presentation that explained the difference between national and local historic designations. They gave an overview of the process to win the designation for a neighborhood, individual site or landmark as historic. Regan said a historic designation at either level does not prevent renovation and can actually grant more flexibility when renovating a building to bring it up to fire and ADA codes.

Last month, the community council unanimously approved a motion to use Tax Increment Financing (TIF) to purchase the century-old Madisonville Library building for $585,000, according to the meeting minutes included in this month’s agenda. The Madisonville Branch of the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library now operates in the newly constructed Madisonville Next Generation Library. 

The community council plans to use the old Madisonville Library building for community meeting space, pop-up incubator space, event space, history/museum space and other uses and intends to seek historic designation for the property, according to the October meeting minutes.

President’s report: Madisonville Neighborhood Plan (audio: 35:08)

The next working group meeting for the Madisonville Neighborhood Plan will take place Dec. 10 at 6 p.m. at the Madisonville CRC. Botos said there would be a link for an online survey posted to social media.

Agency announcements (audio: 35:55)

State Rep. Ashley Bailey hosted a dinner on Nov. 22 at Artsville. There were 100 seats available.

Donations to the Freestore Foodbank, which has been “inundated with new families” recently, will be matched with state funding to effectively double the impact of donations, said an attendee who did not introduce himself by name.

Cost of Flowerpot Program increases (audio: 40:32)

The council voted to approve (15 for, 1 against, 2 abstaining) acceptance of the 2026 Flower Pot Program, an initiative in which the city plants and maintains seasonal planters in the neighborhood, Botos said. The council had already approved Neighborhood Voluntary Tax Incentive Contribution Agreement (VTICA) funding for the program, but the cost per flower pot has increased from $330 to $360. Botos said next year’s community council will need to fundraise to cover the cumulative $600 cost increase.

Cincy Hat Foundation on Housing Opportunities for the Intellectual to Developmental Disability Community (audio: 44:32)

Matt Renie, executive director of the Cincy Hat Foundation, presented the organization’s vision for becoming a nonprofit landlord to develop and manage affordable housing for members of the Intellectual to Developmental Disability (IDD) community. The foundation selected Madisonville as the site of their first development and hopes to break ground in early March.

Renie said that he and his best friend, Ted Karras, starting center for the Cincinnati Bengals, founded the Cincy Hat Foundation when Karras realized the fundraising potential of a hat that he had initially made as a gift for his teammates in 2022. The organization began selling hats to raise funds for the Village of Merici, a nonprofit residential community for adults with developmental disabilities that Renie’s mother had founded in Indianapolis.

“All of a sudden, after about two years, we had sold about $2 million in hats,” Renie said. “And all that money had gone back to Indianapolis, which we started to kind of feel weird about, because the city of Cincinnati really carried the project. We really started to feel this debt to Cincinnati.”

Through conversation and research, the foundation found there is a “critical shortage” of affordable housing in Cincinnati where people with intellectual and developmental disabilities “can live independently in a safe, supportive environment.”

“We really want to build a real estate portfolio dedicated to people with developmental disabilities, so think of us as kind of a nonprofit landlord,” Renie said, as it is “not a good investment” for commercial developers to build low-income housing.

The Cincy Hat Foundation purchased a site at 4819 Whetsal Ave. from the Port of Cincinnati’s landbank and hopes to break ground in early March for a five-unit building, the foundation’s first development. The building will house up to six residents from the IDD community and one community manager. The foundation will not provide direct services to residents because there are laws that prevent service providers from acting as landlords, Renie said, but the community manager will serve a part-time role to “be a safety net for the building, making sure that everything is OK, first point of contact and what-not.”

Monthly rent in the new building will be $900 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,400 for a two-bedroom, Renie said. Two members of the community council asked questions about the cost, both suggesting that this rent may still be too high to be truly affordable.

Renie said The Cincy Hat Foundation is exploring two to three more plots of land in Madisonville and will pursue further development after breaking ground on the first building. He also said they will not take a waitlist for residents until after ground is broken out of caution for potential construction delays.

Election results (audio: 1:00:00)

Botos read the results of the election and said that they would also be posted on social media. As of submitting these notes, there has not been a new post on either Facebook or Instagram.

(In an informal conversation after the meeting, Botos and Community Council President-Elect Monica Hill told me this was the first Madisonville Community Council election in a long time without at least one contested position. Botos said contested elections are usually important fundraising moments for the community council, as many people pay their membership dues for the sole purpose of voting. This year, since no positions were contested, fewer people paid membership dues and attended the election meeting.)

If you believe anything in these notes is inaccurate, please email us at documenters@signalcincinnati.org with “Correction Request” in the subject line.

Find more Documenters’ notes on Cincinnati City Council here.