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An Op-Ed in the Enquirer published November 30th, 2025 touched a nerve with some native Cincinnati residents.
I can understand how a truncated article with a restricted word count and a headline I did not choose can leave much to be desired. For clarity, I have decided to elaborate on some themes connected to Cincinnati community accountability.
I became passionate about Cincinnati community accountability and engagement after my first West Price Hill community meeting in August of 2025, after numerous emails went unanswered by city officials. At the meeting, I met my neighbors. I listened to residents voice their concerns about the local parole station being closed and the police redistricting. A school nurse pled for funds to be sent to the public schools to keep their one nurse, whose contract was ending in October 2025. Another neighbor was at her wits’ end with addicts overdosing in her front yard. I listened to twenty residents or more plead with Anna Albi, who attended that meeting, and the police force to send resources to Price Hill. After the summer of violence all over the city, it seemed pretty clear basic law enforcement was an uphill climb.
We had an extremely violent summer, and we have had many promises and new policies allegedly put in place to combat this. The Cincinnati Enquirer published a piece on November 13th, 2025 written by Cameron Knight regarding Tyrekis Mitchem. He was pulled over and released without having to post a cash bond despite an outstanding warrant for two felony strangulation cases. He is joined by Anthony Horton, who was pulled over in possession of crack cocaine; traffic violations, drug possession and obstruction of local police business. Since when did two strangulation warrants mean someone is eligible to be released without consequences when there were already outstanding arrests? It seems absurd.
We made international news when the BBC highlighted the brawl over the summer. The comments on the Facebook posts are emotionally charged and politicized. The most glaring takeaway from the Facebook comments is that no one is stating Cincinnati is safe. That omission alone speaks volumes. This overly emotional response is almost as if I told the entire city their baby is ugly. I never once said the City of Cincinnati is ugly; in fact, I chose to purchase a home here. The “baby” does, however, have a fever and is in need of medical attention. No amount of essential oils or passive treatment will save its life.
An uncomfortable truth for many locals (based on the hundreds of Facebook comments my piece is currently calculating) is that people ARE moving here. According to reporting from Business Insider (Relman 2025), B17 News (Abbot 2025), and many others, the trend of leaving the Sun Belt for the Midwest is still very much alive. Hence the reason for my article: this is bigger than gentrification; there is a migration happening across the United States. My reasons for migrating to the Midwest are simple and not for public consumption. This disruption of incoming residents is clearly causing distress. I read about it every day in local news outlets, with residents voicing concerns about new developments they did not endorse. I can understand. Orlando received thousands of new residents almost every year for many years. The suffocation of traffic and enthusiastic new neighbors from all over the globe led my family to seek a calmer way of life.
A prior post of mine in the Enquirer was written after months of attempts at meaningful contact with the elected Democrats in this city, only to be met with no response — not even an email. I am used to Maxwell Frost, a wonderful politician in Orlando who is so transparent he offers his tax returns and full financial disclosures whenever asked. He is always available to meet with his constituents — something I have found lacking in Ohio.
Rep. Maxwell Frost is the first member of Generation Z to serve in Congress.
He has released his first financial disclosure as a Congressman.
It showed that he owns no assets.
His largest source of income in the past year was $3,039 from working as an Uber driver. pic.twitter.com/SBBIaOkmi1
— Quiver Quantitative (@QuiverQuant) July 17, 2023
What has not been lacking in Cincinnati is how hard my neighbors try to maintain their dignity, happiness, and quality of life. That’s why I chose Cincinnati instead of over the river. It felt (and still feels) like Cincinnati cares deeply about its children, as I do. I do not mind higher property taxes if it means schools are properly funded. Neighborhood children are a barometer for community health, and they deserve funding. My children may be grown and in college, but my obligation to my neighborhood is still important. My prior Op-Ed discussed Cincinnati community accountability regarding school truancy because truancy laws mean children are safe.
I am neither red nor blue. I am a registered Independent and have been for at least a decade. My political affiliation is irrelevant when I can see things are broken. Anyone with eyes can see that other major cities do not have neighborhoods filled with garbage that are simply ignored. I travel often, and my exposure to other cities, countries, and ways of life offers perspective. I met another new resident who moved from Tulsa, and they were shocked as well by the poor sanitation, crime, and neglect.
I am now a proud Cincinnatian. I spent my Thanksgiving morning volunteering for traffic control for the Price Hill Parade. I am invested. There are things we can do collectively to improve Cincinnati community accountability. Accountability for companies that abuse patients who are dumped in neighborhoods. Accountability for parents who allow chronic truancy. Accountability for owners of unsafe vehicles or those who do not follow traffic laws. We need to enforce zoning and residential property management without the 311 public record neighborhood tattle-tale policy that can pose safety risks to those who report issues.
I stand by my statements. We are lost in a sea of empathy with no personal accountability. This does not come from a place of privilege or generational wealth. My personal story is not for public consumption, but I will share that I joined the service after 9/11 to pay for my college. Discrediting voices different from our own gets nothing done. Collaboration and problem-solving do. Being a keyboard warrior and Facebook fighting has no honor. Showing up to local safety meetings, community meetings, healthy neighborhoods events, community involvement and voicing your concerns while meeting your civic duty does. A healthy government is for the people, by the people, and of the people.
I hope to see an increased number of attendees at the next few meetings. Together, all our voices will be heard. Just like Horton Hears a Who… “We are here!”
Sources Mentioned:
- “Forget the Sunbelt. More people are moving to the Snowbelt.” – B17 News
- “The Midwestern ‘Snowbelt’ Is Becoming the New Sunbelt.” – Business Insider
- Highway patrol partnership with Cincinnati has netted 23 arrests
- Reuters / BBC reporting linked in original commentary
- Quiver Quantitative: Maxwell Frost disclosure
Read More
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1 dead in Thanksgiving-morning crash in Price Hill; suspect remains at large
2 Comments
Xena
(My updated response)- I appreciate that you “feel invested in Cincinnati”, but let’s be very clear, we don’t care nothin about your lil word count situation, that don’t have nothing to do with the stank context you tryin to frame us in. The issue is also that you moved here, stayed long enough to attend a few meetings, and immediately inserted yourself as a commentator about a a city with generations deep struggles, a rich culture, and resilience you haven’t even given yourself time to sort out or experience. And people took offense because you spoke with an overconfidence and volume level your experience doesn’t yet justify. Even in your response to that, you repeatedly center yourself, your meetings, your emails, your personal story, your comparisons to Orlando, Tulsa, and conditions in the Sun Belt, but still avoiding engaging deeply with our history and current culture. You self deputized yourself to diagnose Cincinnati without the context we’ve been dealing with for decades (redlining, displacement, targeted disinvestment, neighborhoods torn apart by decisions made far above our pay grade ,etc.). That’s the root of today’s housing issues, not newcomers, but the systems newcomers rarely acknowledge. I’m not gon hold you, but when you said there’s no displacement, because of vacant homes, that told us everything we needed to know, and told me how I needed to respond. Vacant does not mean accessible, affordable, safe, or available to long-term residents (duh). Declaring that gentrification isn’t real in a city where entire Black neighborhoods were bulldozed for highways isn’t insight, it’s intentional erasure.
So what you heard about violence, addiction, and community frustrations (through a specific lens at that). But you inserted yourself as an analyst of the city’s failures while ignoring our history of survival, mutual aid, and community led initiatives (which existed well before you ever Googled “Cincinnati neighborhoods.” You compared us to other cities you’ve traveled through as if your outsider lens gives you more clarity than our lived reality. Well I’m here to let you know, It doesn’t.
Cincinnati asking for accountability is not a new concept. We’ve been demanding our needs be met long before your inbox went unanswered. So it’s unlikely we need you and those like you to come in here and reframing our issues with oversimplified narratives and calling it objectivity, oof.
You say you’re now a proud Cincinnatian. Well youre doubling down is definitely not giving that you hear us or even a tiny bit of humility. You need to start by listenin to understand. That you’re unfounded “shock” at our city through your inexperience eyes, don’t outweigh the decades of knowledge from people who have weathered every cycle of investment, disinvestment, migration, and redevelopment. We don’t need our experiences translated back to us, we lived/live it.We welcome people who join the work. But we definitely want all the smoke for people that spit out misrepresentations of us by people who show up and try to overwrite our reality.
And if you really want to be a part of the solution, that’s cool. But don’t speak on Cincinnati like your short time here outranks generations of community memory, struggle, and advocacy. You need to correct that just as loudly as when you rolled into the Nati trying to play like a cincinnati expert. Don’t do that, that’s not it at all, and we don’t deserve that.
Nichole Carminati
Thank you for your thoughtful and insightful response. I want to clarify the “we” you mention frequently. Your response posits you and I in an “us vs. them” light and I am not comfortable with that framework. I have no animosity for my neighbors, only the policies in place that allow for abnormal conditions to continue. My critical observations are on the abnormal balance of downstream funding in the form of social services, and very little in the form of upstream funding. Upstream funding would allow for opportunities for marginalized populations to thrive, instead of just survive. I have no problem with my tax dollars being spent on that.
I have spoken publicly on non-profit rehab housing voucher holders being preyed upon and left in neighborhoods without any case manager or long-term care. I spoke directly to the company issuing the voucher holders on the harm to the patient and the neighborhood and their accountability.
This post (and the Enquirer) are written from a first-person point of view for a reason. I experience Cincinnati through my own embodied experience just like you do. My academic writing and professional correspondence are not. I did not feel the need to discuss the historical inequalities of a variety of populations in Cincinnati in my post for several reasons. Anyone can find a wealth of information at public libraries, historical centers, the Black Music Walk downtown, the Holocaust museum, and the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center. Succinctly summarizing hundreds of years of history intelligently and briefly, is an impossible feat.
The last meeting I attended with the Urban League in West Price Hill I requested they look into the high population of young adults who are seeking assistance with job placement and educational opportunities. The point of this article is where do we go from here? Affordable housing, crime prevention, opportunities for growth in every demographic population is a goal for this city. How can we get this done? I am well versed in structural violence; and the impact it has generationally. I did not realize that was something I had to declare, however perhaps I should have. I am an anthropologist. That is where the expert lens comes in. My family is generationally, from this area as German immigrants.I too, have generational loyalties to this area. My lived experience has greater exposure to how other major cities run.
My goal is to add to the voices of those that have been calling for change as you reiterated. It appears safety, affordable housing and supporting the existing population in the form of upstream funding is a good place to start. I appreciate you taking the time to share your perspective.