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Community Updates, News Stories, Best Practices, Resources, and other data supporting the development of affordable housing for the citizens of Wisconsin in every city and region in the State. Please consider partnering with us and sharing your story

Home affordability is at record lows in Wisconsin, and home sales in the state have taken a hit.  

That’s according to an August report from the Wisconsin Realtors Association, which began tracking home affordability in 2009. Those numbers show home sales dropped more than 8 percent compared to the same month last year. But prices still went up due to low inventory.

Home affordability is based on two factors: the price and what an average household can afford, which takes interest rates into account. Kurt Paulsen, professor of urban planning in the Department of Planning and Landscape Architecture at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, told WPR’s “Wisconsin Today” that both home prices and interest rates are up right now...

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Leo’s notes: Wisconsin home affordability has fallen to its lowest level since tracking began in 2009, driven by the combination of high prices, elevated mortgage rates and persistently low inventory.The problem looks less like a temporary market cycle and more like a structural mismatch between the homes we're building and what working households can afford. The next phase of housing policy needs to focus on producing smaller, attainable homes at scale—through smaller lots, missing-middle housing, streamlined approvals and targeted infrastructure assistance. As we’ve stated time and time again, the state's new residential TIF legislature could be particularly important if communities use it to make entry-level ownership financially feasible rather than simply subsidizing development that the market would have produced anyway.

Ken Notes: We need to bring communities, developers, builders, manufacturers, lenders and more to the table to discuss NOT the problem but real solutions. The new housing TIF law is interesting and could create some affordable housing. Newer manufactured homes could lower costs. Missing middle homes for sale not rent could help. Rethinking Condos and ownership rather than apartments and rent would make a difference. There are solutions -- we just need to put the right team together to build and sell them.

VERNON COUNTY, Wis. — Vernon County’s Housing Task Force spent much of its Sept. 17 meeting considering how the county can address housing costs, attract workers and support residents who struggle to find a home they can afford.

The Vernon County Housing Task Force was established in 2024 by Community Development Director Amy Oliver as a specialized working subcommittee under the Vernon County Economic Development Committee. The group was created to bring together a broad coalition of local leaders, housing authorities, real estate professionals, lenders, school leaders, and municipal officials to examine Vernon County’s housing challenges and craft actionable solutions.

After being formed the Task Force worked in partnership with UW-Madison Extension to conduct a comprehensive, countywide housing assessment. The process involved holding community engagement listening sessions in municipalities across the county, including La Farge, Readstown, Westby, and Hillsboro, to hear directly from rural residents, employers, and village officials.

The team compiled extensive demographic and real estate data, publishing the Vernon County Housing Study Report in 2025.

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Leo's notes: Vernon County’s Housing Task Force is exploring a broad mix of strategies to address its workforce housing shortage, including zoning reform, a trades academy, revolving home-buyer loans, land trusts and strategic use of county-owned property. Rural Wisconsin cannot rely on the conventional development market to solve its housing shortage. Smaller projects, infrastructure costs and limited developer capacity often leave otherwise needed housing financially infeasible. Counties like Vernon will need to become active partners—using public land, infrastructure investment and targeted financing to close those gaps. The goal should not be another housing study or program, but creating the conditions where the homes rural workers need can actually get built.

EAU CLAIRE, Wis. (WEAU) - Conversations about affordable housing often focus on building new homes. But local housing experts say another solution is hiding in plain sight: empty and underused buildings that could become someone’s next home.

A panel of housing leaders will dig into that idea at “Repurposing Spaces to Create Affordable Housing,” a free public event from 5:30 to 7 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 8, in the Riverview Room at L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library, 400 Eau Claire St. No registration is required.

The discussion is the final installment of “Keys to Unlocking Affordable Housing,” a three-part series examining different approaches to the region’s housing shortage. It’s sponsored by the JONAH Affordable Housing Task Force, L.E. Phillips Memorial Public Library, the Chippewa Valley Home Builders Association, and the Eau Claire Tenant-Landlord Resource Center.

A growing conversation

Efforts to convert existing buildings into affordable housing are already underway across the Chippewa Valley. Leaders at Grace Lutheran Church, 202 W. Grand Ave. in Eau Claire, have proposed building affordable housing on the church’s site...

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Leo's notes: Eau Claire housing leaders are exploring converting vacant and underused buildings into affordable housing, including a proposed project at Grace Lutheran Church. Aside from new construction, adaptive reuse can help fill that gap by creating homes at price points the conventional market increasingly struggles to deliver. Communities should actively identify viable schools, churches and commercial buildings and pair them with targeted financing—not because every vacant building should become housing, but because every feasible site represents an opportunity to add attainable homes without waiting for new land and infrastructure.

ENABLING BETTER PLACES: A USER’S GUIDE TO WISCONSIN NEIGHBORHOOD AFFORDABILITY	WHEDA’s Rural Affordable Workforce Housing Initiative	WWHNews Think Paper on New Housing TIF
WISCAP Affordable Housing Network	Division of Energy, Housing and Community Resources	Housing Authority City of Milwaukee (HACM)
Wisconsin Housing Preservation Corp	WEDA Legislative Tracker
Wisconsin Housing Alliance	Office of Rural Prosperity Wisconsin Economic Development	Tiny Timbers Neighborhood

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Notes: to be included as a Workforce Housing resource email us a link and a brief note to: wwhnews.com@gmail.com...

Whether you’re searching for a new home or planning to refinance, understanding mortgage and refinance rates is essential to navigating Wisconsin’s housing market. That said, interest rates aren’t set in stone, and they fluctuate based on economic factors, like 10-year Treasury yields, market conditions, inflation and Federal Reserve policy.

We summarized the current Wisconsin mortgage and refinance rates to help you understand these fluctuations and choose the right time to lock in a mortgage rate. Our team also compared Wisconsin’s rate trends to nationwide rates to help you choose the right time to buy or refinance a home. Even a small change in rates can impact the overall cost of borrowing, and understanding Wisconsin mortgage and refinance rates may help you save.

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Leo’s notes: The recent interest rates increase adds another affordability hurdle for buyers already confronting elevated home prices and limited inventory. Interest rates may be largely outside the control of Wisconsin policymakers, but the price of the homes we build is not. When borrowing costs rise, producing smaller homes, smaller lots and more missing-middle ownership options becomes even more important. We cannot build housing policy around waiting for cheaper mortgages to return; communities need to reduce the other costs they can control so working households have attainable choices in any interest-rate environment.

MADISON, Wis. (WMTV) - The average Madison homeowner could pay about $20.67 more in county property taxes next year under a nearly $947 million budget proposed by Dane County Executive Melissa Agard on Thursday.

The proposal also includes $3 million to expand body cameras for sheriff’s deputies, $20 million for affordable housing and $2.1 million for a new shelter for women and families experiencing homelessness.

Agard says the county has reduced its projected budget shortfall while continuing to fund services and new projects.

“This continues to be a challenging time for local governments to be able to budget. But this budget shows real progress,” Agard said...

...Housing and homelessness

The proposed budget includes $20 million for the county’s Affordable Housing Development Fund.

“These dollars allow us to partner with communities and housing developers and leverage additional funding to build and preserve affordable homes all across Dane County,” Agard said.

Another $2.1 million would support the Salvation Army’s new shelter for women and families experiencing homelessness.

“This budget supports a new, purpose-built shelter for women and families ... to help replace the aging Salvation Army facility,” Agard said. “It will be designed better to serve our families and kids who are experiencing homelessness.”

The county also plans to use money from opioid settlements to help people in recovery access housing and support services.

“Recovery is so much harder if you do not have that stable housing,” Agard said.

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Leo's notes: Dane County’s proposed 2027 budget includes $20 million for its Affordable Housing Development Fund, continuing county investment intended to leverage additional public and private dollars for affordable housing development and preservation. Local governments increasingly need to treat housing as essential infrastructure rather than a standalone social program, particularly when public dollars can close financing gaps and unlock projects that otherwise would not happen. The challenge is ensuring investments like Dane County’s produce additional housing supply—across a range of incomes and housing types—rather than simply making increasingly expensive projects possible.

WAUKESHA, Wis. - Twenty new homes are set to be built on the former University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee at Waukesha campus thanks to a partnership between a Wisconsin Habitat for Humanity affiliate and a Milwaukee-based real estate company.

The Brief

• • A Milwaukee-based real estate company, F Street, is set to build 20 new homes at the former University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee at Waukesha campus.
    
    
  • The company is partnering with Habitat for Humanity to kickstart the redevelopment of the area.
    
    
  • Marks the first time a Wisconsin Habitat for Humanity affiliate has partnered with a for-profit developer on a project of this scale.

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Leo's notes: This is a model worth replicating. Wisconsin has an opportunity to turn surplus public land into attainable homeownership while pairing mission-driven affordability with the capacity of private developers to build at scale. As more public properties become available, housing should be among the first uses communities consider.

Across Wisconsin many employees can simply not afford to live where they work.

This is true in big cities and small rural communities. Both the availability and price of housing is not in line with the needs of those working in jobs that are vital to the success of our communities. Imagine a firefighter, teacher, city employee, service, or retail worker not able to afford a home in the community they serve.

We believe Wisconsin employers will support these efforts so they can successfully recruit workers to fill the thousands of job openings now hampered by a shortage of affordable housing.

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WWHNEWS Notes: To add a resource or correct above send data and link to wwhnews.com[at]gmail.com...