Milwaukee County To Use $19M For Affordable Housing, Home Ownership

WAUWATOSA, WI — Milwaukee County will use $19 million provided by the American Rescue Plan Act to increase the supply of affordable housing and rehabilitate tax-foreclosed homes across the city and suburbs, County Executive David Crowley announced Monday at a news conference.

The program will put about $15 million in ARPA funds toward affordable housing supply and about $3 million will go to rehabilitating foreclosed homes in the suburbs, Crowley told reporters.

"As far as the $15 million we're looking at providing gap financing either to bring rents down in market-rate deals, or to do larger affordable housing multi-family projects," said Milwaukee County Housing Administrator James Mathy at the news conference.

Developing affordable housing has been under a squeeze, especially in the suburbs, because of supply chain issues and an increasing cost of land, Mathy told reporters. With the county funds provided by the bill, such gaps can be confronted, Mathy said.

For the $3 million toward rehabilitation, what that looks like depends on the local stock of tax-foreclosed houses in the coming years, Mathy told reporters.

"We recognize that in Milwaukee County the foundation of housing is one of the main social determinants of health," Crowley said. "And there still remains a large gap as it relates to homeownership for African Americans throughout Milwaukee. So this is one of the reasons why Milwaukee County is focusing on a new home ownership initiative through ARPA funds"

The bill comes after a report from Wisconsin Policy Form found that in 2019, there was a below-average amount of affordable housing units created, and that funding for various services was a bottleneck, Urban Milwaukee reported in 2021.

More recently, a study identified Milwaukee as one of the most competitive rental markets in the first half of this year. The RentCafe study also found that Milwaukee only increased its rental stock by 0.1 percent in the first half of 2022.

Suburbs have been a recent focus of efforts from Milwaukee County when it relates to affordable housing and racial equity.

One example of that taking place is in Shorewood, where the village's Community Development Authority has met with county officials at various points to discuss the intersection of the two concepts—and how to implement solutions in the village while working with the county.

At one meeting between county officials and the Shorewood CDA in July 2021, Milwaukee County's director of the Office of African American Affairs, Jeff Roman, commented about the village being ahead of the curve.

The north shore community, which has a distinct lack of undeveloped land, has sought to address affordable housing by approving an extension on a tax incremental district. The extension will provide the village with extra money that can be used toward affordable housing.

To achieve the tax incremental extension, the village worked in part with the county's Office on African American Affairs and the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council.