These are the “golden days” for a couple of niche career fields right now. One of those is Community (or Urban) Development Director. The other is housing study author.
When you watch as many local government meetings as I do, you notice common themes developing across the region. Right now, everything is “we need to build more housing!!” And Community Development Directors are charged with finding ways to accomplish that. And their most powerful ally in that effort is the person they hire to determine “how much more housing we need”.
I’m pretty sure that every city, village, and county in our listening area has completed separate housing studies since the end of the pandemic. In reviewing the stories done here on WHBY about those studies, the “experts” found that Appleton needs to add 11,000 new housing units, Green Bay has to add 7,100, Oshkosh needs 1,700, Menasha needs 1,300, while Neenah needs another thousand. Outagamie County needs to add 18,000 new homes while Winnebago County needs another 10,000.
I’m pretty sure that after sitting through all of those presentations, I found myself asking “we need all that housing for whom, exactly?” (More on that point in a moment) And invariably, those elected officials receiving the reports didn’t ask that question. They also didn’t ask the housing study authors if they considered the planned housing developments recommended in neighboring communities. Nobody in Menasha asked if their 1,300 “needed” units were in addition to the 1,000 across the river in Neenah and the 11,000 Appleton “needs” to add just a few blocks away. And considering that a number of different consulting firms produced these reports, I doubt the authors called each other to say “Hey, how many new homes are you telling Neenah they “need” to add, because I’m working with the folks literally right across the street and I don’t want to artificially inflate my numbers.”
Armed with these incredibly-specific-to-just-their-municipality studies, Community Development Directors have led local elected officials on a stampede to do “whatever it takes” to build more housing. Their first step was to amend zoning codes. There have been changes to requirements for setbacks from neighboring property lines. Then accessory dwelling units were allowed–permitting things like garage loft apartments or “mother-in-law suites” to be added to existing single-family properties. In Appleton, I’ve seen just a handful of applications make it to a Common Council committee in the years since that was approved–and the first few were denied due to not enough space on the lot.
That was followed by the all-out war on single-family residential zoning. Language restricting development in those areas to just houses and duplexes is being struck down–replaced with “whatever housing the city deems suitable”–meaning large apartment complexes in the backyards of people who for 30-years have had a field or a stand of trees in their backyards. Then, entire city comprehensive plans were re-drawn, with R-1 all but eliminated, and commercial corridors re-designated for “mixed use”.
Every vacant (and sometimes not yet vacated) buildings in urban areas are given special use permits to be converted into housing units. First, it was old factory buildings or warehouses. Then, every school being closed due to age or declining enrollment should be converted into boutique apartments. Now, any building that was used for office space needs to be converted to high-density housing–while empty big box stores or malls (more on that in a moment as well) should be torn down to make way for townhomes and apartment towers.
You can’t even build a new municipal project without having some housing element now. Appleton wants to put apartments above its new transit center downtown. Green Bay is floating the idea of tacking on an apartment complex to a new fire station. Given that residents of downtown Appleton are already complaining about noise outside their apartments, I can’t see how anyone will enjoy living above idling buses all day–or right next to a building where big trucks drive around with sirens on in the middle of the night.
This week, someone was finally willing to take another look at the numbers, and see if we really do need to be busting our buns so hard to build so much more housing. Forward Analytics examined updated demographic data for the entire state of Wisconsin and found we are NOT going to see the population growth they expected when compiling their own housing needs study in 2023. FA is willing to admit that the 140-thousand new homes they estimated needed to be built in Wisconsin by the year 2030 should be revised down to just 84-thousand. That is just 60% of the numbers that many other analysts have quoted the past three years in their own housing studies.
Forward Analytics’ revision is based, in part, on the state’s continual aging of the population. An estimated 283-thousand Wisconsinites will be of retirement age in 2030, and the study’s authors admit, they will not need new residential development to handle their housing needs. And as they age into assisted living facilities–or die in their homes–they will create new housing opportunities for others that do not require new construction.
And this reminds me of the previous housing “push”–before it became all about “affordable housing”. Pre-Covid, senior housing development was all the rage in this area. Local leaders were told that as Baby Boomers got older, they wouldn’t want to take care of a house, and would instead prefer to live in “vibrant, convenient, active-living communities”.
Nearly every city I cover solicited developers pushing for senior living units–especially along waterfronts. In Oshkosh, I recall one developer wanted prime real estate along the Fox River near the UWO campus, promising a complex that would “incorporate the college into the living experience”. Apparently, professors were going to come to the apartments for lectures and workshops with the residents, and students would swing by for “inter-generational activities” with the seniors. They even brought in an older woman that was gung-ho about the idea and couldn’t wait to “go back to college!” That complex was built, but I have heard NOTHING about UWO programs there–and the management company’s website makes no mention of it. Given the school’s staff cuts and funding crisis, I doubt any such “outreach” will be coming any time soon.
As it would turn out, most Boomers are choosing to “age in place”–a decision supported by government programs that provide in-home services (which are much cheaper than institutional care), or by family members moving in for multi-generational household. That means prime “affordable housing” properties are tied up in age-limited units–all because leaders at that time were told they “had to build now”.
While I hope the updated Forward Analytics study will lead some local leaders to reconsider their singular vision of “More housing! More housing!”, I fear that the other motivating factor will still lead them to build at all costs. People involved in government love building big things. Another couple of events you get to cover a lot in local media are groundbreakings and ribbon cuttings. It doesn’t matter if you are an elected official or a Community Development Director, nothing makes it look more like you are doing a “great job” than lifting some dirt with a gold-painted shovel, or cutting a red ribbon with a gold-colored giant pair of scissors.
So, every time a new apartment tower breaks ground, or that mixed-used redevelopment downtown finishes construction, everyone who voted for it puts on the hard hats and smiles for the camera. But we hardly ever get invited to a ribbon cutting for a new single family home. There aren’t many press events for the digging of the first basement and foundation in a new subdivision. (The one exception is when Habitat for Humanity is building the home, but they are a non-profit that is always looking for publicity, donations, and government grants.)
That dubious motivation became the source of a testy exchange during a recent Oshkosh Common Council meeting. During debate on the city making a $12.5-million offer to purchase the former City Center Mall site (for, you guessed it, more affordable housing development) Mayor Matt Mugerauer expressed concerns about the cost and viability, calling it a “vanity project” and pointing out that some elected officials and City Hall staff “like to point to buildings and say ‘I helped build that’.”
Council member Joe Stephenson took exception to Mugerauer’s comment stating defiantly that he does not consider the City Center redevelopment a “vanity project” and that building more housing on that site will “revitalize the downtown area”. Not surprisingly, Stephenson is (you guessed it) an Economic Development Program Manager for the East Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission. These are his salad days, baby!
With Wisconsin birth rates dropping below replacement levels, all of the new housing of today will eventually become more and more vacant. I hope that those pushing so hard to build it will still be around to watch the AI robots tear the buildings down to make way for the data centers that will power their destruction of the human species.
