Cincinnati City Council Update: May 2025

THE HYDE PARK STRUGGLE

Cincinnati City Council’s approval of the Hyde Park Square development, despite overwhelming community opposition, highlights a flawed approach to addressing housing needs. The project, which includes luxury apartments priced at $3,600 per month and a boutique hotel, does little to alleviate the city’s affordability crisis. Instead it caters to high-income residents and ignores the concerns of long-term Hyde Park residents. Critics argue that the rezoning–which allows buildings to reach 85.5 feet, far exceeding the previous 50-foot limit—disregards the neighborhood’s character and exacerbates fears of overcrowding, traffic congestion, and strained infrastructure. Residents and the Hyde Park Neighborhood Council have repeatedly voiced objections, noting that the developer’s concessions, like a minor height reduction, were superficial and failed to address core issues like affordability or community input. The city’s justification—that market-rate housing will indirectly benefit affordability—has been dismissed as speculative, with opponents accusing officials of prioritizing developer profits over genuine housing solutions or democratic engagement. The 7-2 council vote, despite thousands of petition signatures and hours of public dissent, underscores a pattern of sidelining community voices in favor of controversial, high-density project developers.

This development exemplifies how capital prioritizes profit over people, even at the expense of the petty bourgeoisie—the middle and upper-middle-class residents who now find their concerns ignored. While these groups may believe their economic status shields them from exploitation, the relentless drive for urban gentrification reveals their vulnerability to the same forces that displace the working class. As developers and city officials align to maximize returns on luxury housing, even relatively privileged homeowners and renters are reduced to obstacles in capital’s path, their dissent rendered irrelevant in decisions dictated by real estate interests. This dynamic illustrates Marx’s critique of bourgeois democracy where the illusion of civic participation collapses when it conflicts with accumulation, demonstrating that under capitalism, no class outside the elite is truly secure from dispossession in the name of growth. The Hyde Park struggle thus prefigures a broader erosion of stability for the middle strata, as the logic of capital steadily absorbs all dissent into its profit-seeking machinery.

CITY COUNCIL PROTECTS COPS’ DATA

Meanwhile, the city issued a report in response to calls for a more “holistic” strategy to address hate crimes. The city’s current approach remains rooted in traditional policing, with reports funneled through 911 and 311 to the CPD. Hate crimes are investigated under state and municipal codes, and officers are expected to follow internal guidelines (Procedure 12.417), which are currently under review for updates. Despite calls for transparency, there’s still no public dashboard for hate crime data. While CPD acknowledges that it could create one, it hasn’t. The report floats the idea of future collaboration with the Office of Performance and Data Analytics to build a public-facing portal.

The city resists adopting independent, community-driven, non-police systems that could meaningfully and equitably address hate crime and public safety. Instead, they vaguely suggest that if a regional initiative (like Los Angeles’ LA vs Hate) were to emerge locally, 311 could potentially cooperate with it. This amounts to a deflection of responsibility. Their version of community engagement remains tightly coupled to law enforcement, with any submitted report that implies a crime requiring notification of the police, regardless of a victim’s wishes. Officials even admit that hate crime reporting currently “does not warrant dedicated investigators,” revealing a lack of human urgency behind the procedural language.

Ultimately, the report reinforces a top-down, cop-centric model, with vague nods to future cop-managed data dashboards and portals that may never materialize. Community safety remains a community project.