05/19/2026
Last weekend DIYD partnered with on his Quail House project, and helped kick off the stabilization efforts. First attendees learned step-by-step how to build a fence and then began to build the fence that will help stabilize the Quail House as one of the very first steps towards full renovation.
"The Quail House" (Camp Washington) is a vision for a more equitable Cincinnati, a community-rooted initiative dedicated to creating and preserving affordable housing. Stagnant wages, rising costs, property taxes, zoning barriers, and deep-rooted societal pressures have fueled a growing affordable housing crisis and a surge in the unhoused population. Long-time residents are being pushed out of the neighborhoods they built and loved, while historic properties fall into abandonment or are lost to demolition entirely. The Quail House is a Civil War-era, balloon-framed house in Camp Washington built in 1864— a building that has been abandoned and neglected for over a decade, passing through the hands of developers who couldn't make the numbers work. Like the empty lots that now dot the neighborhood, it was a property deemed more valuable to tear down than to restore. Led by Skip Cullen, this pilot project explores how artists, reused materials, neighborhood support, and hands-on educational opportunities can come together to create a solution that is both ethically sound and financially viable, trying to state that affordable housing doesn't have to come at the cost of community, history, or creativity.
