Housing Reform

At Thursday's press conference I was joined by Rice Lake High School senior Anna Leamy, who came down to Madison as an intern for the day.

On Thursday, October 7, I joined fellow Republican legislators to unveil the Fixing Foundations package, a set of legislative proposals to address the shortage of affordable workforce housing in Wisconsin.

A 2019 report, Falling Behind: Addressing Wisconsin’s Workforce Housing Shortage, highlights several aspects of the housing problem, which is one of the biggest challenges I see in my roles as both state representative and executive director of the Barron County Economic Development Corporation.  In Barron County alone, hundreds of jobs are going unfilled, and one of the major reasons is we simply don’t have an adequate supply of housing units within the average family’s price range.  This pushes people to look elsewhere to live and work, which has ripple effects in the larger community.  Of course, the housing crunch isn't unique to Barron County - counties of all sizes in all parts of the state are experiencing similar shortages.  I believe the Fixing Foundations package will go a long way to getting Wisconsin's housing supply back on track.

My contribution to the package is a proposal that would allow municipalities to establish local housing investment funds (LHIFs), funded by revenues from designated properties on which residential units are developed or improved.  Municipalities would then be able to use these funds in a number of specific ways to further increase the supply of workforce housing, but at least 50% of spending from a LHIF must be for providing workforce housing for individuals who earn no more than 100% of the local gross median household income.