The cost of housing continues to rise in Milwaukee. From 2021 to 2025, rent for a one-bedroom unit in Milwaukee has risen by more than 30%. From January 2025 to January 2026, Milwaukee saw median home sale prices rise by nearly 11% — the largest increase in the country.
That has a huge impact on early childhood educators and other low wage workers, says Teig Whaley-Smith, chief alliance executive at Community Development Alliance (CDA). Last year, the teacher turnover rate in Milwaukee Public Schools alone was 12.9% according to the Wisconsin Policy Forum. While many compounding factors can impact teachers leaving the profession, financial stability is a major factor.
"Wages can be as low as $14, $15 an hour for some of those folks," he says. "You multiply that by 2,000 hours a year, and you get to a salary that's around $30,000."
That’s why the Community Development Alliance (CDA) started its Early Childhood Education Homes (ECE) initiative. The program is helping to fill Milwaukee’s 3,000 vacant lots with new, affordable homes — available for teachers and caregivers of children in third grade and below.
"Housing is at the core of all of our quality of life," says Whaley-Smith. "Data shows that it impacts education, safety in neighborhoods, employment rates, and overall health. The way you get to that goal of healthy housing is through collective impact."
“There are so many passionate teachers and early childhood educators that love their careers and want to be working with kids their entire lives,” he adds. “And then all of a sudden their budget changes because they're spending two or three times more on housing and they have to make really painful decisions.”
To support the program, CDA has assembled a coalition of community and philanthropic partners — including LISC Milwaukee, VIA Community Development Corporation, Wells Fargo and more. In addition, Whaley-Smith says a $5 million grant from Wisconsin's Department of Workforce Development helped kickstart the program. Without government funding to offset construction costs, he says it's difficult to get entry-level homes built.
“The construction industry has lost the ability to build entry-level homes,” he says. “They’re focused on these very large ‘McMansions,’ and it doesn't make business sense for somebody to build an entry-level home from beginning to end without massive federal intervention.”
So far, 20 buyers have purchased homes through the program with 20 more homes currently on the market. To keep the process efficient and reliable, Whaley-Smith notes that all the homes in the program are built new to avoid unpredictable rehabilitation costs to existing homes.
"If you're building new construction housing, you can bring that to scale by building several of the same model of housing that brings costs down for everybody," he explains. The homes for the program cost $250,000 to $300,000 to build and are designed to be efficient entry level homes — 1,000 to 1,200 square feet on the first floor with a full basement underneath to have room for expansion.
“We were able to hit a price point of about $105,000 for each of these homes – so that you have people that are moving from paying $1,200 to $1,300 a month in rent into a home of about $900 a month for mortgage and interest,” Whaley-Smith says.
In order to qualify, you need to be actively working in early childhood education, whether it be in public schools, charter schools, or independent practitioners that have a home child center for children in third grade and below. The other basic requirement is to go through home buyer counseling and have a pre-approval letter from a lender for $95,000 - $100,000.
"Most families get down payment assistance and that gets taken away from the mortgage that you need," notes Whaley-Smith.
In addition to providing secure housing for Milwaukee’s early childhood education workforce, Whaley-Smith sees the program as an opportunity to boost homeownership, increase owner-occupancy and reduce the power of landlords in Milwaukee neighborhoods. He says healthy neighborhoods should be comprised of around 70% owner-occupied properties and 30% rental properties.
"In some of the communities that we're building in, it's 100% rental,” Whaley-Smith says. “There are blocks in the city of Milwaukee that were built for homeowners ... that now have been 100% turned over to landlords – and they're just extracting capital from our neighborhoods.”
Although programs like Early Childhood Education Homes require major government funding, Whaley-Smith sees it as an investment that can serve future generations of Milwaukee families.
“This is a problem bigger than just the teachers,” Whaley-Smith says. “It's a societal problem that requires societal answers.”
Beyond workforce housing for teachers, he says CDA hopes to build 100 homes each year. But he says securing funding is a matter of political will — and a statement about our priorities as a society.
"The main limitation is funding... do we as Americans, do we as Wisconsinites, do we consider housing to be a public good? And if we're serious about that, we need to move away from rental and back to homeownership strategies," notes Whaley-Smith.
"We need to say, 'Enough is enough.' These homes are for homeowners - and that can be done through policy change, and you see that throughout the country, of saying that big corporations can't own single-family homes. And it's also going to take a public investment. But just to be very clear, that public investment cannot be done by local government by itself. It's going to require the state and federal government to step in," he adds
If you're an early childhood educator seeking to buy a home in Milwaukee through the ECE, you can find out more about the program and apply here.
Join WUWM and local organizations to discuss solutions to housing in Milwaukee on April 27 from 5 to 7 p.m. at Community Development Alliance Homeownership Lab, located at 3800 W. Lisbon Ave., Milwaukee. RSVP to attend the event.
Support for Seeking Solutions: Keys to Homeownership is provided by Educators Credit Union, Greater Milwaukee Association of Realtors and Geis Garage Doors.
