Justice-involved individuals who can show they have successfully re-entered society would have a better chance to find stable housing under legislation passed by the House on Wednesday.

Under HB50 (Humphrey-Seitz), individuals who are subject to collateral sanctions for housing would be able to file a petition with a court to obtain a certificate of qualification for housing (CQH). If a landlord chooses to accept a CQH, they would receive liability protections for providing housing to the rehabilitated individual.

The bill passed by a vote of 81-8, with Reps. Jena Powell (R-Arcanum), Darrell Kick (R-Loudonville), Beth Lear (R-Galena), Roy Klopfenstein (R-Haviland), Jennifer Gross (R-West Chester), Brian Lorenz (R-Powell), Riordan McClain (R-Nevada) and Scott Wiggam (R-Wooster) voting against it.

House Majority Floor Leader Bill Seitz (R-Cincinnati) said the bill -- which he is co-sponsoring with Rep. Latyna Humphrey (D-Columbus) -- builds on the law he sponsored with former Sen. Shirley Smith (D-Cleveland), which created the certificate of qualification for employment (CQE).

“Today, there are about 1,000 of these CQEs that are being awarded each year. This is the next natural evolution of our journey towards helping the ex-con get back acclimated to society,” Seitz said.

“Some people apparently do not understand the link between the lack of employment and the lack of housing for ex-offenders and the rate of recidivism,” Seitz continued. “Certificates of qualification for housing reduce recidivism. When people released from incarceration are unstably housed, homeless, or live in a high-crime neighborhood, they are more likely to recidivate.”

Humphrey said she knows how difficult it can be for ex-offenders to find housing.

“I am the daughter of a returning citizen. I know exactly how hard my mother struggled trying to find employment and trying to find housing for my sister and I. More than finding employment, it was really hard for her to find housing for us,” Humphrey said.

“When she came home from incarceration … we had to live with my aunt while she would look for housing for us, and denial after denial after denial, at some point she figured it out,” she continued. “And now my mother owns her own home. She’s a thoroughly educated woman at this point. She spreads the gospel all across our city. But one of the things that we learned is that not every person who returns home from incarceration is as lucky and as supported as my mother was.”

In other action, the House voted 89-0 to pass HB57 (Hall-Demetriou), which indexes the homestead exemption amounts to inflation. The homestead exemption applies to homeowners who are elderly, disabled, a disabled veteran or the surviving spouse of a public service officer killed in the line of duty.

Rep. Dan Troy (D-Willowick) said while the bill is a step in the right direction and he supports it, it’s an “extremely small” improvement.

“The price tag was somewhere in the neighborhood of $11 million to $18 million statewide, which is a pretty thin coat of peanut butter spread around the state for our senior citizens,” Troy said. “What I worry about is -- having been here before -- we have a tendency sometimes to deal with these issues, and when someone says, ‘We need to do some more here,’ we’ll say, ‘Oh no, we addressed the homestead exemption back in 2023. We’ve already done that.’ That’s what I fear, is that we’re going to stop our efforts here. … We need to do a lot more.”

The House also passed the following bills:

- HB27 (Mathews-J. Thomas), which requires state institutions of higher education to provide financial cost and aid disclosure forms. The bill passed 87-1.

- HB105 (J. Thomas), which limits the penalty that may be imposed on a taxpayer for failing to file municipal income tax returns on time. The bill passed 87-0.

- HB61 (Troy-Callender), which designates Nov. 19 as “James A. Garfield Day.” The bill passed 88-0.

- HB66 (Hall-Stoltzfus), which allows a wholesaler to obtain a refund of excise taxes on cigarettes, other tobacco products and nicotine vapor products remitted on bad debts arising from the sale of those products. The bill passed 84-2.

- HCR5 (J. Miller-Holmes), which supports the work of the Ohio Commission for the United States Semiquincentennial. The resolution was adopted by a vote of 89-0.

- HB28 (Humphrey), which designates March as “Triple Negative Breast Cancer Awareness Month.”

The House informally passed HB47 (Brown-Bird), which would require the placement of automated external defibrillators (AEDs) in schools and public recreational facilities.

After session, House Speaker Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill) told reporters that there were minor issues with some of the language in HB47, so they decided to fix them before bringing the bill back to the floor in the near future.

In response to another question, Stephens said the House will likely vote on legislation banning transgender girls and women from girls’ and women’s sports before the end of June. The House Higher Education Committee reported HB6 (Powell) out of committee earlier this month. (See The Hannah Report, 5/10/23.)

Stephens said the House will not be in session next week in observance of Memorial Day. He said he will be walking in the Ironton-Lawrence County Memorial Day Parade.

“It is the longest-running Memorial Day parade in the United States,” Stephens said. “There is no politicking. It has been going on since 1867, and there will be about 30,000 people in a town of about 10,000.”