COVER FEATURE

THE AFFORDABILITY QUESTION

A new task force looks to address what to do about Wausau’s affordable housing - or lack thereof

Say what you want about Madison,

but they’ve been taking the lead on reimagining the challenges around affordable housing.

Mayor Satya Rhodes Conway last month unveiled a number of new initiatives meant to “create affordable housing, combat displacement, ensure seniors can stay in their homes, and end homelessness,” according to Madison’s Channel 3000. City officials told Channel 3000 that these moves are crucial as the city, if trends continue, could see 70,000 new residents and 40,000 new households.

Wausau is going in this direction too. The first hints at the demolition of the Wausau Center mall have begun as a private entity formed out of two non-profits starts to make it pad ready for developers, primarily for housing. The current number being thrown around is 1,000 new units of residential living in the downtown area in the next years to come.

Those units are all primarily expected to be market-rate housing. And the market is going up in Wausau. It’s not always easy to find a good source for median housing prices, though some are certainly around. Median rent in Wausau in 1990 was only $360. That increased to $473 in 2000, and $651 in 2013. Given that rate of increase, that would put the median rent at $754 this year.

But that’s only projecting a median rate today based on the historical increase per year on median rent prices. A look through housing prices on apartment.com reveal the real median price — of apartments actually available to rent — might be a lot higher.

A browse through apartment.com revealed several apartments in the $550$750 range, but many more were in the $900+ range. And some of the less costly apartments are income controlled, so can only be rented by folks who make under a certain amount.

And all of the new units being built now tend to be in that higher price range. As the costs of building go up as material prices increase — as much as 10% in a month, by some accounts — the idea of building new affordable houses or apartments is pretty much out of the question. What’s left are renovation projects, and those usually rely on tax credits that also come with income requirements for renters.

And, according to Mayor Katie Rosenberg, those credits only require an affordable price for 15 years, and some big ones are coming up soon. “Then people are finding themselves squeezed out,” Rosenberg says. “What does that look like and how can we make sure that not everyone is squeezed out at the same time in our community?”

It’s a problem Wausau is hoping to address with a new affordable housing task force.

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Housing in Wausau

Although the task force will be tasked with studying the housing needs of the city, a lot of the work has already been done. The city released a report earlier this year called The Housing Affordability report.

And that report is clear: The city needs more affordable housing. Demand for public housing is high, the report says. Public housing units run by the city’s Housing Authority typically see 100% occupancy or darned close to it. Even their subsidized units have very high occupancy, according to 2020 reports.

Median rent in Wausau ranges from $552 for a one-bedroom apartment to $1,063 for a four-bedroom. About onequarter of the units in the city are one-bedroom apartments, according to the report.

One really surprising statistic out of the report: More than half (52%) of all households in Wausau are considered low income by HUD standards. Also interesting, owner-occupied units (ie houses) go for 65% of the national median; but rent is 72% of the national median, lending credence to the notion that it is often cheaper to buy than rent in Wausau (as Rosenberg points out, as long as that someone can get past the barrier of coming up with a down payment, that is.) If anything demonstrates the need for affordable housing it’s that.

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Gentrification

City Council Member Tom Kilian didn’t mince words at an Economic Development Committee meeting where the affordable housing task force was discussed. It ought to include an anti-gentrification element to it, he told fellow committee members.

It didn’t go over too well. Kilian didn’t feel that an early idea he’d brought up at the committee — Community Land Trusts — went over well either. The idea behind Community Land Trusts is that they help ensure housing affordability for residents to help them avoid being priced out of their own neighborhoods. Communities as distinct as Oakland and Houston have adopted the land trust model.

Community Land Trusts are essentially anti-gentrification measures. But is gentrification necessarily a bad thing? Not everyone agrees. UCLA housing researcher Nolan Gray in an article for The Atlantic Monthly argues for more luxury housing, not less. Gray points to an apartment complex in Seattle that was once designed for young professional tech workers and says

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now its residents tend to earn one-third the median income of the Seattle area, saying it’s illustrative of a trickle-down effect. More housing, the argument goes, leads to more openings at the lower end of the housing spectrum eventually.

Gray argues that the NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) arguments went from opposing affordable housing in one’s neighborhood to opposing luxury housing out of a sense of anti-gentrification. But, Gray says, it may have the opposite effect.

According to a 2019 joint study between the UpJohn Institute and the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia, an increase in market-rate housing found that rents in other units dropped by 5-7%. A 2021 study in San Francisco made similar findings.

Economic Development Chair Tom Neal says that’s something he would like to find out as part of the task force. “Are they also providing vacated properties within the city, where people are leaving those behind, whether those are empty nesters or someone wanting downtown living, now that becomes housing stock? And that could become part of the affordable housing stock.”

Kilian isn’t convinced. He points to Thomas Street itself as an example of gentrification. Homes were demolished to make way for the expanded street construction. The new duplexes built in their place on remnant parcels are far less on the affordable end than the houses that were there before the construction, he points out. “I too have heard misinformation, Reagonomics, trickle down economics that helps the average person,” Kilian says. “That’s been debunked long ago.”

Kilian, with support from the neighborhood through public meetings he organized, opposed similar developments on the second phase.

Kilian has been actively calling for antgentrification measures. Three things he would like to see out of Madison’s affordable housing proposals: • Land banking: The strategic acquisition of land for the purpose of affordable housing • Using tax incentives to subsidize affordable housing versus luxury apartments • Community Land Trust: Although he says it didn’t get much traction at committee, Kilian says it’s something that could help boost the city’s affordable housing stock while combating the effects of gentrification.

Could the dorms add to the stock?

The University of Wisconsin—Stevens Point recently announced that they will no longer be operating the dorms at UWSP— Wausau. That means by the end of the year, the county-owned building will be completely empty and unused. Members of 4H used to use it around the time of the Wisconsin Valley Fair each year, but that’s apparently come to an end too.

Some are already considering its potential use as a form of affordable housing or even transitional housing for the homeless. Kilian and Rosenberg have been in contact about it.

Rosenberg told City Pages she had been in contact with Marathon County Administrator Lance Leonhard about the dorms for about a year, talking about a model that could work. They discussed the possibility of a model where the building could be prioritized for students but also could be accessed by non-students if there are units available.

One challenge with the dorms is that they’re outside a qualified census tract for housing credits that would assist in the renovations, Rosenberg says.

Leonhard told City Pages that nothing has been decided in regards to the UWSP dorms. Its planning will be linked to the development of the Westside Master Plan, Leonhard says. “Given the proximity of the building to the university, I would envision any housing uses to be discussed with UWSP Wausau representatives at length,” Leonhard says.

North Central Health Care CEO Michael Loy told City Pages that they are very interested in the possible uses the building could serve, such as acting as a transitional housing unit for homeless or recovering addicts. The McClellan House, a homeless transitional house on the city’s near east side, is a good start, but more space is needed.

“We’re trying to get a handle on a needs assessment around housing right now,” Loy said to City Pages. “There are several things we could use it for if the county needs someone to go into that property.”

Going forward

Rosenberg is clear about one thing: The task force will take some time. Not everyone is very happy about that, as some say the need is too critical to wait for official recommendations from a task force.

But the task force working on a problem doesn’t necessarily mean things can’t happen in the meantime. Catholic Charities pitched a proposal for homeless transition housing on the proposed site of the new Community Partners Campus on Grand Avenue, for instance.

Madison’s is a good example. The report from Madison focused on 2019 and came out earlier this year, and the first recommendations came from Mayor Rhodes Conway this past April.

First thing’s first. Getting a handle on the situation before acting is a critical first step toward addressing the housing shortage.