New Resource Center Opens Doors to Mitigate Affordable Housing Struggles

Amidst a community growing its capacity for creativity, collaboration, and advancement, there is also a growing need to ensure its residents have homes.

Affordable housing has been a significant concern in the Chippewa Valley for more than a decade, and the issue has only been heightened by the rise of luxury apartments, increasing rent, and a vacancy rate that shrinks every day. (At just 3%, the City of Eau Claire’s rental vacancy rate currently sits at half the healthy rate set by the state). A 2017 Wisconsin Poverty Report charting the Eau Claire area’s poverty rate as second-worst in the state (behind only Milwaukee) and with 42% of Eau Claire households paying more than 50% of their income on rent according to United Way’s ALICE Report, mediation is needed now more than ever...