The Corliss is a new private affordable housing development in Milwaukee’s Bay View neighborhood.
The development cost nearly $200 million, including some public funding, and offers over 500 affordable rental units. It consists of eight buildings at the site of a former landfill at 135 E. Becher Street.
Milwaukee's District 14 Alderwoman Marina Dimitrijevic represents the area where The Corliss is located. She spoke with WUWM’s Eddie Morales about how the project could help address housing challenges.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Eddie Morales: The project aims to address problems like resident displacement, rising costs, and keeping aging residents in place. Can you explain the scale of those concerns and how much of an impact that city officials hope The Corliss will have?
Marina Dimitrijevic: Just like many cities across the United States, affordable housing is still something we're really struggling with. We, as the City of Milwaukee, are thousands of units under what we need for a city our size when it comes to affordability. It's one of the top things I hear, especially in my community.
This is a way to chip away at what is a very large-scale problem. And speaking of scale, this is a pretty large-scale project. It's just under 600 units and every unit is affordable, meaning that it'll be somewhat income-based. There is specifically over 100 units dedicated for older adults who want to age in place. So this is quite the right step in the right direction on what I do think will be a long worthwhile journey to making our city more affordable and accessible for everybody.
Are there any specific stories that you've heard from residents about wanting to age in place or affordable housing that has really resonated with you throughout this process?
In my district, in the south side Bay View area, I think one of the more attractive pieces to our neighborhood is our amazing public school system that we have. I often hear that parents love living in the area and walking to school with their kids. But at the same time, there's this kind of inequity that some teachers and staff and people can't even afford to live in that same community in which they're working in. I think that's what we see often, especially in the Bay View area, as it becomes more popular and unaffordable.
Then, kind of on the other side of that age spectrum is I hear very frequently, "Marina, I've lived in Bay View, in the south side, my whole life. I've paid off my mortgage, but I just can't afford to stay here." I mean, I even have some people that are renting out parts of their houses just to stay up-to-date on bills. I think some older adults want smaller living quarters that's easier to be more independent and this really meets that need.
What other affordable housing gaps does the city need to fill?
This is one part of the housing spectrum, right? We need to make sure that people have stable incomes, higher wages. We also need to be sure that we're preventing homelessness. I have two or three very large homeless encampments in my district off of Rosedale near Chase Avenue. We have people being evicted at too high of a rate. So there's still much, much work to do, but this puts us on the right path.
How does the city of Milwaukee compare to other cities when it comes to these issues?
Unfortunately, I think we're in a similar situation. I think it's a national problem. I think that we do need some national and federal solutions, and we're doing the best we can, but it does trickle down to the local level. This project in particular had a mixture of funding sources, whether it be state funding sources, tax credits, and then we used our local funding as well through the [Milwaukee] Housing Trust Fund. We also used tax incremental financing.
I like to point to this project and show that when all the tools are used to tackle the crisis of affordability, we can build these large-scale projects when everything lines up. Honestly, we need a couple more of these throughout the City of Milwaukee if we want to continue to be a city that grows and thrives, where everybody can thrive, not just a few.
Support for Seeking Solutions: Keys to Homeownership is provided by Educators Credit Union, Greater Milwaukee Association of Realtors and Geis Garage Doors.
