| Wisconsin Workforce Housing News | ||
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 Special Note: Leo and Ken are focused on bringing economic development, regional growth, and workforce housing expertise together at the community level. We hope to help turn new state policy into actual projects - and ultimately into homes for the workers these communities need to sustain their businesses and economy. We are excited to be a part of this conversation. | ||
| Click to Display / Share This Note - Vol: 10 - Wk: 100 Date: 10/5/2026 3:10:49 PM | ||
| Can’t afford a home in Wisconsin? Here’s why. | ||
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. | ||
| Click to Display / Share This Note - Vol: 26 - Wk: 41 Date: 10/5/2026 2:43:30 PM | ||
| Vernon County task force weighs housing solutions, workforce needs | ||
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. | ||
| Click to Display / Share This Note - Vol: 26 - Wk: 41 Date: 10/5/2026 2:52:46 PM | ||
| Panel to explore turning unused buildings into affordable housing in Eau Claire | ||
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. | ||
| Click to Display / Share This Note - Vol: 26 - Wk: 41 Date: 10/5/2026 3:06:47 PM | ||
| Wisconsin Workforce Housing Resources | ||
| Notes: to be included as a Workforce Housing resource email us a link and a brief note to: wwhnews.com@gmail.com... | ||
| Click to Display / Share This Note - Vol: 10 - Wk: 125 Date: 10/5/2026 7:22:06 PM | ||
| Current Wisconsin Mortgage And Refinance Rates | ||
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. | ||
| Click to Display / Share This Note - Vol: 26 - Wk: 41 Date: 10/5/2026 2:56:00 PM | ||
| Dane County proposes nearly $947 million budget, with higher property tax bills, body cameras and housing investments | ||
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. | ||
| Click to Display / Share This Note - Vol: 26 - Wk: 41 Date: 10/5/2026 3:00:37 PM | ||
| UWM Waukesha campus, Habitat plans 20 new homes | ||
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. | ||
| Click to Display / Share This Note - Vol: 26 - Wk: 41 Date: 10/5/2026 3:04:51 PM | ||
| About Wisconsin Workforce Housing News (WWHNews.com) | ||
| Click to Display / Share This Note - Vol: 10 - Wk: 125 Date: 8/13/2026 3:49:48 PM | ||
| List of Housing Resources | ||
| WWHNEWS Notes: To add a resource or correct above send data and link to wwhnews.com[at]gmail.com... | ||
| Click to Display / Share This Note - Vol: 11 - Wk: 125 Date: 10/5/2026 7:23:20 PM |