Our communities will wither if people can’t afford to live here

The quality of life in America, Wisconsin and Ozaukee County is being set back by an oxymoron: affordable housing.

The words contradict each other. For millions of Americans, it is impossible to apply the adjective “affordable” to “housing.”

This is the sorry condition of life for the poorest strata of the population, some of whom are homeless. But the hyper-inflated cost of buying or renting a home is also eroding the social infrastructure of communities like Port Washington, Grafton and Cedarburg. 

Young, working families of the middle class, people who have been the source of the vitality of these communities as they’ve grown, are being excluded from the fundamental element of the life they are seeking—a home of their own.

Ozaukee County has a large stock of modest but sound houses built over the past five decades or so and a number of them are on the market. But the median price of the 398 homes now listed for sale in the county is $603,200. 

The average age for first-time home buyers in the U.S., now at 38, is later in life than it has ever been, a sign of the growing difficulty of accruing savings adequate to make a down payment on a home.

One of the reasons the cost of homes has outpaced the rise in family incomes is that houses have grown progressively larger. Fifty years ago, the average-size house in the U.S. was 1,400 square feet. Today, the average is about twice that amount of space, even as families are getting smaller, now an average of 3.15 people per household.

Communities have fueled that housing size growth with zoning ordinances that require large lots and setbacks and other restrictions that inflate costs. Homes in the near southwest side neighborhoods of Port Washington, rows of compact houses on narrow lots up close to sidewalks and streets, could not be built legally today.

Those houses were built for families that helped the city grow and prosper. They were affordable for people who worked in Port Washington factories, offices and stores, raised their children here, contributed their taxes to support schools and city services and their time and energy to service organizations to build a vital community.

In terms of the number of homes on available land, those are high-density neighborhoods, built before dense became a pejorative in community land use planning. Many a developer has since been sent back to their drawing boards by plan commissions because their subdivisions were judged to be too dense.

It was a credit to Port Washington officials in 2024 that in seeking a developer for a 39-acre tract of land at the city’s western edge, they recognized the need for affording housing by making a high degree of density a requirement. 

Mequon developer Cindy Shaffer tried to meet that standard by responding with a creative proposal for 263 homes in a mix of single-family houses, townhouses and apartments. The streets lined with single-family homes would resemble a neighborhood from the era of smaller homes, with two-story houses on small lots with backyards, garages and alleys behind them.

A few homeowners living near the proposed subdivision complained about the density at public hearings. Some city officials said the development did not reflect their concept of a traditional neighborhood, and told Shaffer to do better.  

The city then suspended negotiations with the developer, saying staff and elected officials needed to give their full attention to paving the way for the billion-dollar data center they invited to the city. Now Shaffer is threatening to sue the city for $3.9 million in damages for breach of contract—and an opportunity to make housing in Port more affordable appears to be lost.

In an ironic twist, an extremely dense development is in the yearslong process of being built on the city’s south side with full city approval. It features rows of houses barely a few feet apart, but here density is not to be confused with affordable housing. The tightly packed homes in the Prairie’s Edge development overlooking Lake Michigan have price tags in the seven-figure vicinity.

Fortunately, urgency over the need for more affordable housing seems to be gaining some momentum elsewhere. Gov. Tony Evers put forward a promising plan to include $20 million in the 2025-27 state budget to provide grants to local governments that reduce minimum lot sizes and widths and setback requirements or adopt traditional neighborhood development ordinances.

The Legislature’s Joint Finance Committee, as it seems wont to do at every opportunity in its ongoing effort to stymie the governor’s proposals, shot down this potentially effective incentive to make housing more affordable.

Still, there is reason for some optimism in the hope for a legislative lift to affordable housing. Assembly Republicans, including Rep. Rob Brooks of Saukville, have introduced a package of bills with that goal.

The legislation includes enhanced loan programs for home buyers and regulatory changes that encourage affordable home building, including a bill to give state approval to what are known as accessory dwelling units (ADU) built on the same property as existing homes. Sometimes referred to as coach houses, these ADUs could include garages remodeled as homes.

In Ozaukee County, Kathleen Cady Schilling, executive director of Ozaukee Economic Development, is proposing a study funded by the county and municipalities to help communities in the county provide more affordable housing options. 

Noting that few barely affordable houses in the $250,000 to $450,000 range are available in Ozaukee County, she persuasively expressed the need for the study by telling county officials, “We want our children to be able to buy a home in the community where they grew up.”

In other words, the future of our communities depends on “affordable housing” no longer being an oxymoron.