“This will enable the staff to finish their work addressing some of the questions and concerns that commission raised with regards to a citywide cap,” said Dayton City Manager Shelley Dickstein.
Dayton has far more foster care group homes than any other community in the state of Ohio, a Dayton Daily News investigation in 2024 found.
Local officials have said that the heavy concentration of foster care group homes in Dayton and Montgomery County has strained local law enforcement agencies, the courts, the juvenile justice system and social service providers.
The Dayton City commission’s emergency resolution on Wednesday was the fourth time in recent years it has voted to place a moratorium on the acceptance and processing of applications for new group homes. City officials first placed a group home moratorium on the city in August 2024, voting again to extend it in both January and August 2025.
Zoning code changes
Group homes are also called residential facilities. Three state agencies — the Ohio Department of Youth Services, Ohio Mental Health and Addiction Services, and the Ohio Department of Developmental Disabilities — regulate these facilities.
Dayton city commissioners in a split vote last fall moved forward with a proposal to update the city’s zoning code language about group homes. These changes create new restrictions on all types of group home residential facilities, including those for foster care, sober living and supportive care for people with disabilities.
Notably, zoning code amendments would prohibit each of the city’s geographies from having more than a dozen foster care group homes. Existing homes would be allowed to continue to operate, but no new permits would be issued for regions that have met the limit.
Dayton has five land-use areas and 62 total foster care group homes across those areas. Twenty-one are located in west and southwest Dayton and 37 are located in northwest Dayton (also called the north central land use area), according to data shared by the city. Four foster group homes are located in the city’s northeast geography. No foster care group homes are in downtown or southeast Dayton.
Under this portion of the updated zoning code, West and North Central Dayton would already be maxed out if the moratorium were to be lifted by the city. Group homes also wouldn’t be allowed on the same block as nuisance or condemned properties.
Dayton Mayor Shenise Turner-Sloss last year said she wanted to review expanding the 1,000-foot separation requirement between facilities to a greater distance, as well as adding a notification requirement for new homes coming to neighborhoods.
Commissioner Darryl Fairchild last year said he wanted to explore a citywide cap on group foster homes. He was also concerned that, in the event the city lifted the moratorium on group homes, land use areas that do not currently have any could quickly see new homes occupy them.
Dickstein said commissioners will be updated about zoning code language before Aug. 3, when the moratorium is slated to end. Recommendations would need to go before the city’s planning board another time.
Trotwood’s city council in January extended its moratorium on group homes. And group home regulation has been a prominent issue on the state level, with Dayton-area lawmakers playing a role in an Ohio House bill that sets operational standards for these facilities.
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