The present disclosure provides substantially homogeneously dispersed multimetal oxy-hydroxide catalyst comprising at least two metals, at least one metal being a transition metal, and at least a second metal which is structurally dissimilar to at least one metal, such that the multimetal oxy-hydroxide is characterized by being substantially homogeneously dispersed and generally not crystalline. A key feature of the present materials is that the presence of the structurally dissimilar metal results in sufficient strain produced in the final multimetal oxy-hydroxide material to prevent crystallization from occurring. The resulting materials are specifically not annealed at temperatures that would induce crystallization in order to avoid the expected phase segregation that would occur during crystallization.