Thursday 7/9/26: Milwaukee Housing Solutions

David Lee: Support for WUWM podcasts comes from Potawatomi Casino Hotel Milwaukee, home to 24/7 excitement, dining, and an on-site hotel at 1721 West Canal Street. More information at potawatomi.com.

Audrey Nowakowski: From 89.7 WUWM, Milwaukee's NPR, this is Lake Effect. I'm Audrey Nowakowski. Today, we'll tell you about a program that helps early education teachers get into affordable housing in Milwaukee. Then we'll learn about the Milwaukee Community Land Trust.

Lamont Davis: At the end of the day, we're not just developing housing, we're developing stability. We're developing community. We're building a future where families can stay rooted, pass something on, and feel secure.

Audrey Nowakowski: Plus, we'll learn how Acts Housing helps people in Milwaukee become homeowners.

Chad Venne: To me, the most powerful thing that I feel that they're doing is that education piece. I mean, housing is very complicated.

Audrey Nowakowski: All that's coming up on Lake Effect. This is Lake Effect from 89.7 WUWM, Milwaukee's NPR. I'm Audrey Nowakowski. Thanks for joining us today. The average price of a home in Milwaukee County rose about 8% since last year. Even with a stable job, buying a home feels out of reach for many. But why is housing so expensive and what can be done about it? On today's show, we'll look into systemic housing problems in Milwaukee and shed some light on possible solutions. One emerging solution is the Milwaukee Community Land Trust, which offers homes under $100,000 and a fixed appreciation rate to keep that home affordable in the long run. The organization is new and has just nine homes in its portfolio. As Lake Effect's Sam Woods explains, the model isn't a perfect solution to solve housing affordability. But it is built on decades of nationwide experience, proven to keep individual homes affordable forever. And it reveals truths about why homes are so expensive in the first place.

Sam Woods: Jeanette Torres was born in Milwaukee and raised around Mitchell Street on the city's South Side.

Jeannette Torres: I actually remember walking with my grandma up and down Mitchell Street when it was so beautiful and vibrant. And they would have festivals, and we would go and get materials that she needed, because she did a lot of sewing at home and cooking.

Sam Woods: So after recently moving back to Milwaukee from California, she wanted to buy a house in the neighborhood she grew up in. She was renting in the neighbor and her landlord was looking to sell. She asked to buy the house when he was ready, but it didn't happen.

Jeannette Torres: He sold it from under us. So we had 60 days to get out — in the winter.

Sam Woods: What Torres wanted was stability, a home that she could raise her children in and eventually pass on to them. Bonus points, of course, if it was in the Mitchell Street neighborhood. And after a couple of years of taking classes, saving, and building credit, she was introduced to the Milwaukee Community Land Trust.

Jeannette Torres: And they told us about a house that was available. It wasn't gonna be ready right away, but there was potential there. And when I heard the neighborhood it was in, I felt like that was, immediately, it was like a fit.

Sam Woods: The house was perfect for her family, in her desired neighborhood, and crucially, it was affordable. Founded in 2017, the Milwaukee Community Land Trust's model centers around a lease agreement between the land trust and the homebuyer. The agreement is that the trust retains ownership of the land, while the home buyer retains ownership of house and improvements. So far, the trust has sold nine homes under this agreement. As the Milwaukee Community Land Trust's Executive Director Lamont Davis says, because you're just buying the home and not the land, the price is far cheaper than most homes on the market.

Lamont Davis: Most of our homes that have sold are somewhere between $60,000 and $90,000 of the nine homes. So that's affordability, but we also need them to be durable. We need them have mostly free from defects, free from major repairs in the next 10 years.

Sam Woods: There are a couple other rules as well: owners or one of the family members need to be occupants, meaning the home cannot be converted to a rental property. And when the owner wants to sell, they agree to sell the unit back to the land trust at a 1.25% appreciation per year.

Lamont Davis: Other than that, we don't have any onerous rules. We lease the land to the homeowner, but they have the right to quiet enjoyment. We're not there as a landlord to say, "Hey, we didn't see you cut the grass." And we're not an HOA or any of those kind of things. Once you buy a home, it's your home.

Sam Woods: Because of the fixed appreciation rate, buyers do, in theory, miss out on some wealth-building. According to the Wisconsin Realtors Association, home prices have jumped about 8% in Milwaukee County since last year. This makes homes sold in conjunction with the land trust less than ideal for those looking for an investment property. But, as Dr. Vince Wang, a University of Wisconsin researcher who has studied community land trust explains, the community land trust model allows people who wouldn't otherwise be able to buy a home to get a foot in the wealth generation door. And sometimes they end up moving on to market rate housing anyway.

Vince Wang: About 60% of community land trust homeowners, when they sell the house, they will go on and purchase market-grade units. So they actually, community land trusts, some of the land trusts are serving as a platform to them to go up this economic mobility, you know, as a jumping board from renters to shared equity homeownerships and then to market-rate homeowners.

Sam Woods: But this trade-off between affordability and maximizing wealth generation is where community land trusts start to reveal underlying truths about our housing economy. If you are told that the key to personal wealth generation is buying a home, then you're gonna wanna see that home's value increase — ideally, as fast as possible, if you can afford the corresponding increase in property taxes. And if you can, you're promised a big payout whenever you decide to leave. But if the price of a home is always going up, that means, by definition, that home is more expensive for the next buyer. Dominique Merriweather is the executive director of Proud Ground, a community land trust based in Portland, Oregon. As difficult as it can feel to buy a home in Milwaukee, where the median home price is around $200,000, Portland is on another level.

Dominique Merriweather: Like our median home price is around $570,000 to $580,000. And so it's like, who has $160,000 just laying around for a down payment, when you're also putting kids through school, maybe paying off your own student debt?

Sam Woods: Proud Ground was founded in 1999 and currently has 614 homes in its portfolio, both in the Portland area and a few other counties in outer Oregon. Merriweather explains that Proud Ground primarily serves people who make below the area median income. For a variety of factors, this often ends up being Black and Brown, first generation home buyers who have historically been legally or financially shut out of the housing market.

Dominique Merriweather: Income-qualified, and then from there, we look at just groups who have been underserved. And in Portland, we've had redlining. Redlining was a part of our title records, just all the different things that go into like who can own and who can't own. And so our history here in the West and in Portland is very explicit around who could and who couldn't have ownership. And also, there was a lot of eminent domain and other aspects from the government that really pushed Black and Brown folk out of community. And then after that became like this speculative housing market that really created a lot of gentrification in neighborhoods that were historically Black and Brown.

Sam Woods: In economic lingo, the term speculation refers to purchasing an asset with the hope that its value will increase in the near future. In the United States, speculation has historically gone hand-in-hand with real estate, whether that is purchasing a field in Oklahoma hoping to find oil or purchasing a townhome in an up-and-coming neighborhood in Oregon. What Merriweather reports from Portland is a speculative market out of control, where housing is primarily a vehicle to generate wealth. Merriweather is under no illusion that affordable housing or community land trusts solve everything, but he does see the need for a paradigm shift when it comes to housing. Merriweather's vision is that we get back to basics, where housing as treated as a place to put down roots, not just a speculative asset.

Dominique Merriweather: Yes, there is this righting of the wrong, but homeownership alone isn't going to do that. We're just likely to be a piece of the puzzle. Our focus is really on ensuring that communities have assets that are taken out of the speculative market so that the whole community can benefit. For us, it happens to be homeownership. When folks are not stressed about rent going up, when kids don't have to change schools three, four times in a year, or three or four times in two years. There is a lot of research that talks about the positive impacts of those elements as well. And so we are a part of that structure that allows for those things to happen, but we also need some help to allow for those things to happened to their fullest potential.

Sam Woods: Here in Milwaukee, the Milwaukee Community Land Trust's Executive Director Lamont Davis sees the West Coast as a cautionary tale for what's coming to Milwaukee, and a call to action to ensure affordability now and stability for the future.

Lamont Davis: In Milwaukee, real estate is relatively cheap. When they hear about the price points that we're selling units at, $60,000 to $90,000, they can't believe that. They're like, "Someone needs help to buy a home at $60,000 or $90,000?" But we have to intervene before affordability leaves us and we're like the West Coast, where you're trying to buy a three-bedroom that's a million dollars, you know? Who can do that? So I think it's perfect for us to be intervening now, because we don't want this to grow into a bigger monster, where no one can afford home ownership.

Sam Woods: Does this mean that community land trusts solve housing affordability? Not entirely. For one, help is needed. Here in Milwaukee, our local land trust relies on partnerships with other organizations for funding, home loans, repairs, homebuyer education, and financial planning. The organization also currently relies on donations and public grants to cover the difference of buying a home at market rate and selling it at an affordable rate. This need for partnerships to cover other aspects of the home buying process and the need for capital to buy homes out of the market means that community land trusts are likely not going to upend housing market principles immediately. After 26 years, Proud Ground in Portland has just over 600 homes in its portfolio. And here, since its founding in 2017, the Milwaukee Community Land Trust sold just its ninth home this summer. So progress is seldom instantaneous. And as Dr. Vince Wang notes, housing affordability is a complex issue. And land trusts are just part of the solution, not a silver bullet.

Vince Wang: Yeah, the short answer is no, right? There is no single housing solution policy practice program being the silver bullet. We are living in the ecosystem of what we usually call the housing "spectrum of housing" or "spectrum of affordable housing." A community land trust is just one type within that spectrum in a society where the affordability issue has been getting worse, right? So one model is not enough.

Sam Woods: But there is also growing evidence of success for this housing model. In Portland, Merriweather reports that its portfolio of around 600 homes has shown remarkable stability before, during, and after the housing market crash in the late 2000s.

Dominique Merriweather: Proud Ground hasn't lost a home to foreclosure ever. And so, of those 614 homes, we've never lost one. We've had two that went close to, but we bought them out of foreclosure and resold them to another qualified home buyer. So when you talk about... I don't know of too many other quasi-government-funded programs that have a 100% success rate. But I think, across the nation, you see that most community land trusts, their ability to retain homes and keep them out of foreclosure is probably 95% and above for almost every single CLT. And so that, from a model perspective, just resonates success.

Sam Woods: Dr. Wang notes that community land trusts in the United States achieve their goal of attaining affordability in perpetuity. His census of over 300 land trusts nationwide found evidence that, not only is the initial homebuyer of a community land trust homebuying at an affordable rate, but future buyers of that home also enjoy affordability.

Vince Wang: We also look at the subsequent sales over time for future homebuyers, and we [see that] the affordability pretty much kept the same level for the same households with income levels. So that gives us more confidence in seeing that this perpetual affordability is retained in the model for future generations of generational fires.

Sam Woods: Locally, Lamont Davis sees evidence of success in the fact that people who make as low as 30% of the average median income in Milwaukee can still achieve stability through home ownership.

Lamont Davis: We're serving very low to moderate-income households that sometimes people write off and say, "These households should not even be into home ownership." They won't be able to make it as homeowners and we've proven that we can serve people as low as 30% AMI, which is right on the cusp of being homeless, when you look at the definition of that. We're talking about people who normally would probably be in renting situations or they would be buying something that may not be up to standard. So, I think that's the biggest evidence of success that we've been able to see.

Sam Woods: The vision, in a word, is stability.

Lamont Davis: At the end of the day, we're not just developing housing. We're developing stability. We're development community. We're building a future where families can stay rooted, pass something on, and feel secure in their tenure. Our model works because we really focus on people, not speculating. We're not trying to be the market-based solution. We're trying to be the solution for people like Jeanette.

Sam Woods: And on Milwaukee's south side, we return to Jeanette Torres. We met her at the beginning of this story, as she remembered walking down Mitchell Street as a child. She moved to California for a bit, finding she was priced out of a home there. Moving back to Milwaukee, only to be kicked out of her rental unit by a landlord looking to cash in quickly on rising home prices here. Now, her and her family have a place that is theirs. She knows where her kids will go to school. She knows who her neighbors are. She knows she can go to to borrow a lawnmower and who can help pick up trash when the snow thaws in the spring. She has stability. She has roots. She has a home in Milwaukee.

Jeannette Torres: I just wanted to say that I am grateful for the Milwaukee Community Land Trust, because they not only gave us keys, but they gave us hope and stability and a future that we can build on with our children. If you're out there and you feel like you can't own, like don't give up. It's not impossible. There are people in programs like MCLT out there here in the city that are willing to help and put in that work with us. That's all.

Audrey Nowakowski: That piece was produced by Lake Effect's Sam Woods. When it comes to housing challenges in Milwaukee, a lot of it comes down to cost. People may wanna buy, but just can't afford to. Now, we'll examine community organizations that are creating their own path to home ownership and hear from Milwaukeeans who've been waiting their whole lives for a home of their own. WUWM's Jimmy Gutierrez has the story.

Jimmy Gutierrez: To kick off 2026, Melody McCurtis and the Metcalfe Park Community Bridges team in Milwaukee had a surprise to share with Shirley Dunn.

Melody McCurtis: That house you've been checking on for us, making sure ain't no dumping happening and all that on 33rd? I'm here to tell you the house is yours.

Shirley Dunn: Oh my God! Lord Jesus!

Jimmy Gutierrez: And that is Shirley. Longtime Metcalfe Park resident and longtime renter. She had just won the neighborhood's lease-to-own lottery.

Melody McCurtis: This house will be completely yours in 15 years.

Jimmy Gutierrez: The Reclaim and Restore initiative works like this: Community Bridges buys a home from the city for cheap, they rehab and remodel it from the studs with local contractors, and they keep it all incredibly affordable.

Melody McCurtis: The house is $105,000.

Shirley Dunn: I'm around it at $901 a month.

Jimmy Gutierrez: Last week, she and her family walked through the house together, and you could not wipe the smiles off their faces. Going room to room planning their future.

Shirley Dunn: This is a living room.

Tryone Dunn: I'm going to put some bar stools up here.

Jimmy Gutierrez: Tyrone Dunn is Shirley's husband. Both are lifelong renters.

Tryone Dunn: I've been around here ever since I've been 19. My mother stayed in the house for 33 years on 33rd between Center and Hadley. So I know how it is when you renting, renting, renting, and you're just not getting nowhere. You know what I'm saying? So it feels good, you know, and it's a blessing.

Jimmy Gutierrez: In Metcalfe Park, less than 30% of the homes are owner-occupied. Rent averages around $1,300 in the neighborhood. So trying to save for a down payment and then a mortgage, you'd be better off winning the lottery.

Melody McCurtis: If Shirley was staying in that home for 20 years, and we add up how much rent is going into that home, like you have the ability to own. Let's reclaim these homes. Let's reclaim our neighborhood. Let's really invest in the people that make it what it is.

Jimmy Gutierrez: One of the reasons why programs like Reclaim and Restore are needed is because it's not easy to reclaim neighborhoods.

Kevin Solomon: You know, we often talk about supply and demand. And don't get me wrong, there is a lack of supply. And there's a lack a buying power from tenants. But there's also a power imbalance that's intertwined with those issues.

Jimmy Gutierrez: This is Kevin Solomon from Common Ground in Milwaukee. He's been working for years with tenants fighting that imbalance. He says corporate landlords are a big part of the problem.

Kevin Solomon: Landlords are organized, have a trade association, have a Super PAC, have hired lobbyists, have agenda items in Madison that they lobby for.

Jimmy Gutierrez: In 2016, renters in Milwaukee numbered around 42%. That number today is over 60%, almost a 20% increase in a decade. And we have more out-of-state landlords than ever before. Which equals less housing stock for residents, which is also less affordable.

Kevin Solomon: It's hard to compete against these big corporate landlords, because they have money, resources, attorneys, and can quickly jump on and gobble up the market. New properties come up, boom, they're purchased.

Jimmy Gutierrez: Metcalfe Park is working hard just to buy one at a time. Competing with that speed and scale just isn't possible. But it doesn't stop them from trying. Back on North 33rd Street, Tyrone and Shirley Dunn are standing in a back bedroom of their new home, planning.

Shirley Dunn: Woman cave. I'm gonna have a woman cave. My computer, I run bingo games. Hey, we're gonna be playing bingo.

Tryone Dunn: This is gonna be where all my clothes are.

Jimmy Gutierrez: Metcalfe's Reclaim and Restore shows a different path to homeownership — one that's affordable, keeps people in the neighborhoods they've long lived in, even if it takes winning a lottery to make it happen.

Shirley Dunn: If they need a place to stay, hey, they can always come here.

Jimmy Gutierrez: How do you feel about the view from your porch?

Shirley Dunn: Oh my god. Hey neighbors! I love it.

Jimmy Gutierrez: For WUWM, Milwaukee's NPR, I'm Jimmy Gutierrez.

Audrey Nowakowski: Lake Effect is available as a podcast, so you can listen when you like. Find it wherever you get your podcasts, then subscribe, download, and hear us on demand. In about 10 minutes, we'll tell you about a program that helps get early education teachers into affordable housing in Milwaukee. But first, we will tell you all about Acts Housing, and all the ways they work to turn renters into homeowners here in Milwaukee. That's coming up next on Lake Effect on WUWM. You're listening to Lake Effect on 89.7 WUWM. I'm Audrey Nowakowski. It's no secret that in Milwaukee, out-of-state investors have been buying up housing inventory to turn into rentals. That means less housing stock for people who want to become homeowners. One non-profit is trying to counter that trend and get more Milwaukeeans owning their homes in the city. WUWM's Maayan Silver has this report on Acts Housing.

Maayan Silver: Evette Richardson does not play when she's explaining housing basics.

Evette Richardson: Listen, I'm gonna start calling on y'all. Why is credit important?

Maayan Silver: She and Alex McCune are in a lofty, high-ceilinged event space, just west of Marquette University. These two Acts homebuyer coaches are walking 11 people through the myths of homeownership, tips on how to achieve it, and importantly, how to get finances in order.

Melody McCurtis: Why is credit important? A better life. I know that's right.

Maayan Silver: Going through these two nights of homeowner education makes participants eligible for down payment assistance and certain loans. It then tees them up to work with an Acts homebuyer coach, who will continue guiding them through the sometimes complex process. 25-Year-old Bernardo Nieto Ramirez is sitting in the front row. And he's just the kind of guy Acts is looking for.

Bernardo Nieto Ramirez: I guess I've rented for long enough now and I think we want to move forward with purchasing a house now

Maayan Silver: Acts has been around for a long time. Ramirez watched his parents buy their first house through the nonprofit when he was 11 years old.

Bernardo Nieto Ramirez: The requirement was that we were supposed to live there for the first five years, and then from there they purchased, I think the seventh year, they purchased another home. And that's currently where they reside right now.

Maayan Silver: They fixed up their first home, a duplex, and started renting it out. Now, they live in Lindsay Heights. Ramirez has the basics of homeownership down, but he wants to fill in the gaps. He's curious about loan applications, getting good terms. That's exactly where Acts' homebuyer coaching can step in, says Jordan Villegas. He's a manager with Acts' coaching program.

Jordan Villegas: I always recommend your first step to be meeting with a coach, because that coach will help you understand what your barriers are, what's in front of you, and break down your action steps into smaller bite-sized pieces.

Maayan Silver: That could be looking at preferred lenders, making sure people understand their loan estimates. All of these services are part of Acts' comprehensive approach to making homeownership more accessible. It has a lending arm, unsurprisingly called Acts Lending. It helps folks that may be just outside of being pre-approved for a loan with a traditional lender. The organization has realtors and lending and home rehabbing coaches. Then there's Acts Homes, which buys up properties that investors would typically buy. That allows Acts to create more housing inventory, to sell to people working through their program to buy a home. Here's Villegas.

Jordan Villegas: The majority of our folks have been either black or Latino, some of the underserved populations of Milwaukee, but our doors are open to everybody.

Maayan Silver: Most people who use Acts services are first-time homebuyers who earn 50% to 80% of the area's median income. We're talking $50,000 to $80,000 a year for a family of three. They're the missing middle, says Chad Venn. He's director of the Real Estate Certificate Program at UW-Milwaukee's Lubar College of Business. He says it's a really important but tough population to serve.

Chad Venne: Because at that price point, at those area median incomes, it's really hard for home builders and apartment developers to make projects work right now, with all of the headwinds of the high interest rates, the high cost of labor, the high cost of building, that they're really not able to service that AMI population without some sort of government assistance or tax credits or some affordability component.

Maayan Silver: According to a 2022 Wisconsin Policy Forum report, Milwaukee has a 28.9% homeownership rate among Black and Hispanic households. It's the lowest combined rate among the 11 peer cities Milwaukee was included with. Acts' comprehensive approach reduces those barriers to homeownership. They coach families on how to raise their credit scores, pay off debt, and create budgets. They can help people apply for grants through the city, county, federal, and other sources to get up to $10,000 of down payment assistance. And Acts Lending can provide loans of up to $200,000 without requiring a minimum credit score. Acts is funded primarily by philanthropy, in addition to grants and some city and federal support. In addition to helping home buyers, Acts also works with home sellers, people like Chad Venne.

Chad Venne: My family and I reached out to Acts Housing a few years ago when my grandmother had passed away. And my grandmother, she lived on the South Side of Milwaukee in the same house for 70 years. And that house was part of, you know, where my father grew up and my aunts and uncles grew up. And when she had passed away, my family felt it was pretty important that we wanted to pass some of that legacy. And so, you know, my mom and dad and my my uncles were inclined to try to find somebody that wanted to live in that house, similar to what they did.

Maayan Silver: Houses in Venne's grandmother's neighborhood were being snapped up by investors, who were turning them into rental properties. His family didn't want that. So Venne contacted Acts and negotiated for the nonprofit to buy the house at a lower rate than if it was an open market transaction.

Chad Venne: They worked on doing some subtle improvements to the building and then they ended up selling to one of their Acts Homebuying clients that had kind of gone through the education process

Maayan Silver: Over the past three decades, Acts has helped more than 4,000 individuals and families buy homes. People generally stay in their homes, and a smaller percentage eventually sell. Very few have foreclosed. The median current Acts homeowner, who purchased before 2023, has earned more than $72,000 in total equity. That's as they pay monthly housing costs that Acts says, on average, are two-thirds of what they'd be shelling out to rent an equivalent home. Acts' impact has increased steadily over the decades. About a third of their homebuyers purchased their homes in the 2020s. But still, they can't help every would-be homebuyer in need of support. Deatra Kemp, VP of Impact at Acts, says they're limited by capacity, both in terms of staffing and in terms housing on the market.

Deatra Kemp: Internal capacity for sure, but also it's, you know, we can only create so much capacity within the market. We've already lost thousands of units, and we're only capable of clawing back 100 a year. So there's work to be done for sure. There's a lot of work to be done.

Maayan Silver: In the meantime, it's wise to keep focusing on education and home buyer coaching, says Venne.

Chad Venne: To me, the most powerful thing that I feel that they're doing is that education piece. I mean, housing is very complicated. It's not as simple as, you know, "I wanna go buy a house." Part of it is making sure that you're in a financial position to be able to do it and that you understand all the implications that come with it.

Maayan Silver: Back in the near West Side, Bernardo Nieto Ramirez has completed his homebuyer education course. And Alex McCune is handing out graduation certificates.

Bernardo Nieto Ramirez: Bernardo Niazo Ramirez, you can come up here.

Maayan Silver: Nieto Ramirez grabs the certificate and returns to his seat.

Bernardo Nieto Ramirez: He's gonna be the one, I can tell. He's gonna the one. Ready to roll. Congratulations.

Maayan Silver: Hopefully on the path to follow in his parents' footsteps and buy his first home. Maayan Silver, 89.7 WUWM, Milwaukee's NPR.

Lauri Jones: Support for Seeking Solutions: Keys to Homeownership, comes from presenting sponsor, Educator's Credit Union. You can check out all our series coverage at www.wuwm.com/housing.

Audrey Nowakowski: We'll take one more break, and when we come back, we'll tell you about the Early Childhood Educators Program that's helping teachers get into affordable homes. Keep listening to Lake Effect on WUWM. You're listening to Lake Effect on Milwaukee's NPR. I'm Audrey Nowakowski. A local program is working to make housing more attainable and affordable for early educators. For teachers or childcare providers, the salary can range from $35,000 a year up to about $70,000. Now I don't have to get into any statistics for anyone to recognize that the current inflated housing market makes owning a home extremely difficult for early educators. That's why the Community Development Alliance created the Early Childhood Education Homes Program. They build homes on vacant city lots that cost about $105,000. The goal is to not only improve housing security, but also improve retention and recruitment of Milwaukee teachers and early educators. To learn more about the program, I'm joined now by Teague Whaley-Smith, the Chief Alliance Executive of the Community Development Alliance. He starts by sharing the obstacles teachers can face to owning a home.

Teig Whaley-Smith: I think everybody sees the dramatic effect that housing costs have had across the country, and particularly in great communities here like Milwaukee. And when that happens, when you have a shortage of housing and you have increased demand, the price goes up. And prices have skyrocketed, particularly in the area of rent. We've seen rent, you know, almost go up 30% or 40%, sometimes year by year. So that has a big impact on lower wage earners. And we know that there are so many passionate teachers and early childhood educators that love their careers and want to be working with kids their entire lives. 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. Do they want to continue in the career that they love and that they've chose, or do they want to be able to house their family? And nobody should have to make that choice.

Audrey Nowakowski: Right. And the Wisconsin Policy Forum reported that there was almost 10% of teachers that dropped out of the profession entirely. And financial stability is one of the reasons, among the many other stressors, that teachers face. So when we're talking about how do we weigh rent, mortgage, and the salary of these professionals, what is the average salary of a teacher in Milwaukee, compared to the cost of affording a mortgage?

Teig Whaley-Smith: So there's a wide variety of that term "teacher." You know, I grew up in an in-home early childhood education facility. My father was what many would call a daycare provider. And salaries for people that are doing this independently in their own homes or those people that are working in that classroom with zero to three month olds, wages can be as low as $14, $15-an-hour for some of those folks. You multiply that by 2,000 hours a year and you get to a salary that's around $30,000. Of course it can go up from there depending on your experience and what school system you're in, etc. But the general principle is that we don't want families spending more than a third of their income on housing, because if they do, they can't afford other quality of life amenities or necessities, including food and clothing and all those other of things that people need to spend money on. So if you're at $30,000 a year, what you can afford is about $100,000 home. And there are very few $100000 homes on the market in Milwaukee. The ones that you find actually require $100,000 or $200,000 of repair. So our goal was to really get to that price point. And 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 or $1,300 a month in rent into a home of about $900-a-month for mortgage and interest.

Audrey Nowakowski: Yeah. Let's get into this program you're talking about, and how you kind of came to third of the income category for helping you guys price out this program. So it is the Early Childhood Education Homes Program, and it's aiming to help tackle the problem of housing security for educators of all levels. Before we get into some of the specifics, can you share how it first started? Was it modeled after an existing program, either other places in the U.S., or something you wanted to try here in Milwaukee?

Teig Whaley-Smith: So post-COVID, there were several working teams working on different elements of quality of life in Milwaukee, whether it's food security or otherwise. And there was a group working on early childhood education that noticed that teachers weren't coming back into the classroom after COVID. And if early childhood education teachers were not able to get to the classroom, then that means that we, as parents, could not get into work, because we don't have a place to send our kids. So this is a problem bigger than just teachers. It's a societal problem that requires societal answers. Initially the group that was working on this included Nextdoor Foundation, COA, Malaika, UCC, Rooted and Rising. And they wanted to work on secure housing. And initially they only thought rental was possible and we said, "We actually think that, if we're serious about long-term stability, we need to focus on homeownership." Rents in Wisconsin, if they just increased by inflation since the 1950s and '60s, we'd only have about $800 a month in rent. Of course, rents are now averaging $1,200 or $1300 a month. Your mortgage payment stays the same. And so, we wanted a home ownership solution. So we partnered with those groups. We partnered with LISC, the Local Initiative Support Corporation. We were able to receive a $5 million grant from the Evers Administration for Innovation and the Department of Workforce Development. Housing is a workforce problem, and it is a work force solution. So that's how this idea first came about.

Audrey Nowakowski: Now when it comes to finding properties, is it a mix of finding ones that can be rehabbed? Are you building from scratch? How are you acquiring the houses that will be used for this program?

Teig Whaley-Smith: So any time you want to scale something up, you need to have systems. And the problem with rehab is that every rehab is different. Sometimes you need the replace the flooring. Sometimes it's the ceiling. Sometimes it the roof. Sometimes it is the basement. And we need to preserve as many homes as possible. But it's hard to bring that to scale. However, if you're building new construction housing, you can bring that to scale by building several of the same model of housing. That brings cost down for everybody. And we have an incredible opportunity here in Milwaukee: we have 3,000 vacant lots, all of which at one point had a homeowner in the neighborhood. And in the 1960s, those homes got transferred over to one landlord. And then there was a second generation and a fourth generation. And then we've got a seventh generation landlord, each one of the depleting the property of rent and not making an investment, to the point where those eighth, ninth generation landlords, their entire strategy is to buy it with cash, not provide insurance, not pay the taxes, wait for it to be taxed foreclosed, and then it's inhabitable and needs to be demolished by the city. And we can repopulate these neighborhoods and bring people back to the neighborhoods that they may have grown up in by building new construction housing on those vacant lots.

Audrey Nowakowski: So when it comes to all that coordination it takes to acquire the lots and then also, more importantly, build, what kind of partnerships do you have with the city or other businesses or organizations to make these houses?

Teig Whaley-Smith: Housing is at the core of all of our quality of life. 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. So at the Community Development Alliance, we bring partners together. We don't swing the hammers. We don't provide the direct assistance. But we're sort of quarterback or coach in this example, bringing in all of the teammates necessary to get the projects across the finish line. So that involves funders and philanthropy. And we've had great philanthropy on these efforts, including, not only LISC itself, but the Department of Workforce Development, Wells Fargo, Northwestern Mutual, Zilber Family Foundation, Greater Milwaukee Foundation. All these partners come together to fund the project, but then you need neighborhood organizations to give direction on what type of housing they want in the neighborhoods. And so we have a resident advisory council and we set up a project team with neighbors that we're building in so that they have input on what homes look like. You know, the deed restrictions that are put on them, they help draft those things. And then you bring in the builders. And so we're very fortunate to have... Habitat for Humanity has partnered with Envision Growth and [?] to build homes. Via CDC is building homes. MCC is building homes. And it's just been an incredible partnership of so many partners to come together. And then of course, educators need to know about the homes. So we've had partnerships with brokers like Don and Colbert, who were featured in a recent article, and the early childhood centers themselves, to be able to come to the holiday parties to talk about it, to come to the teacher retreats to talk about it. So it really does take a village to build a house.

Audrey Nowakowski: Absolutely. Now you mentioned these houses are sold for about $105,000. What's the average cost to get these homes up and ready to sell?

Teig Whaley-Smith: Yeah, so when my grandfather first built his home in the 1950s, it cost about $12,000 to build a single-family home. And the average annual salary was about $6,000. So in our country's history, we've figured out how to build a home for two years of the average salary for a lot of Americans, but unfortunately, Americans who look like me, white Americans, white families who built intergenerational wealth. If we had just seen inflation in those costs, similar to we talked about rents, a new home would only cost $100,000 to build, and you wouldn't have this gap. But that's not what has happened in the construction industry. The construction industry has lost the ability to build entry-level homes. 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. And so one of the things that we are piloting here is to really illustrate, when you do have government intervention, what you can do. And so it can cost anywhere between $250,000 to $300,000 to build these homes. It's a really big gap. But you have to understand that a home lasts for 100, 200 years. So it's really 20 families that you're serving over time rather than one. But what's really important is that I can't afford my grandfather's home. My kids can't phone my grandfather's home. We had this massive federal subsidy in the 1950s and '60s that went to wealth generation for one generation. And then the kids and grandkids were left on their own, and we've seen that. And so we have a process called Forever Affordable that allows the first family to build equity in the home, but also ensures that that home is sold at an affordable price for future generations.

Audrey Nowakowski: I'm just going to take a moment to reintroduce you. I'm Lake Effect's Audrey Nowakowski, speaking with Teague Whaley-Smith of the Community Development Alliance Early Childhood Education Homes Program. So we're talking about the homes and the need that they're filling, but for someone who's a teacher or early educator out there, how do they qualify? How do they learn about the program and what are the steps to then get them approved?

Teig Whaley-Smith: So, we've tried to make the process as simple as possible, but also achievable, so that people aren't given false hope. And so the way that the process works is that any educator can go to housingplan.org/ece, and there is an application process there. And the basic requirement is that you go through homebuyer counseling, because we want to make sure people know what they're getting into, and you have to have a pre-approval letter for about $95,000 to $100,000. Most families get down payment assistance, and that gets taken away from the mortgage that you need. And so that's really all that they need to do, in addition to being an early childhood educator. So the money that we raised is for third grade teachers and below. So you have to be actively working for an early-childhood education. That includes public schools, charter schools, independent practitioners that have a home child center. That's what you need to qualify, but then you also need to go through homebuyer counseling and get that pre-approval letter from a lender.

Audrey Nowakowski: With this program, the Community Development Alliance sold its first early childhood education home in October of 2024. How many teachers has this program helped so far? Where are you at now?

Teig Whaley-Smith: We're about halfway through. So there are about 20 educators that are in homes right now, and we have another 20 that are hitting the market right now. And there are homes available. We actively want as many educators to take advantage of this opportunity as possible.

Audrey Nowakowski: What kind of feedback have you heard from the teachers you've housed so far?

Teig Whaley-Smith: You know, it's really been incredible to meet the families that have gotten into these homes and what it has done for them. We have people that have moved from major housing insecurity into a stable home ownership opportunity going forward. And it's less about what they say, and it's more about the smile on their face. I mean you can tell when somebody is stressed out about anything, but you can particularly tell when somebody's stressed out about housing. I don't have the patience and tenacity to be in a classroom with 20 kids. And the people that do are really, really special individuals. And we need to make their job as easy as possible. And so, if we can take out the stress of housing insecurity, that's what we should all be doing.

Audrey Nowakowski: It's a major, major factor. You mentioned it'll be about 40 houses total. What kind of growth do you hope to achieve beyond that? Are there plans for more?

Teig Whaley-Smith: So our ability to continue this program requires, you know, major financial resources over multiple generations to do this. And so I think we've illustrated and proven the concept, and now we need the federal government, state government, and other larger government to really step in. The city and the county can't do this by themselves. And, so, housing has always been a public good. We've known it's been a public good. Again, I mentioned my grandfather. He received major assistance through loan guarantees and the infrastructure that was built to build his home, and we need that same kind of investment. If you look at the federal budget, there's about $200 billion each year spent on housing. And less than 1% is spent on home ownership for the average american. And so we really need to live our values. And if we believe in the american dream, we have to have people step up and say, "You know what? This project works. This is a good public investment to go forward." Our goal is to be building a hundred homes per year throughout the city. Not all of them will be for educators, but we always hope that a portion of them will be available for educators and other really critical workforce in our communities.

Audrey Nowakowski: Right, because with 3,000 vacant lots, the possibilities are there, but would you say the main limitations would be the funding and how that looks?

Teig Whaley-Smith: Yeah, the main limitation is funding. So the primary limitation to getting the funding is: 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. There will always be a role for rental. If you look at successful communities, there's about 30% of people that rent, and we should focus on that. But in some of the communities that we're building in, It's 100% rental. There are blocks in the city of Milwaukee that were built for homeowners and homeownership that now have been 100% turned over to landlords. And they're just extracting capital from our neighborhoods. And so we need to say enough is enough. You know? 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.

Audrey Nowakowski: You know, you're talking about the wider impact of homeownership in communities. And as we're talking specifically about housing for educators, how does it benefit not just them that this is no longer a major stressor, but their students, wider communities? How is this program making waves and benefiting more than the person who's setting foot in the home?

Teig Whaley-Smith: So there's really great data about the link between home ownership and education. If there are families in stable housing, those families and their kids have 30% higher educational outcomes. That's a major number that we should be conscious of for those working in education and otherwise. And the reason is that you constantly have kids that are in families who can afford the first month's rent, maybe the security deposit, but then that's it. And so they're there for a month or two, and then they get evicted. And your teachers talk about this six-month cycle in the classroom that kids can't focus and they can't stay at work. There's data that also shows the same is true for people that work and for the teachers that are in there. If they are having housing insecurity, and they're on that six-month cycle, how can they possibly focus on the kids in the classroom? And so this is kind of similar to getting on an airplane and that oxygen bag falls down and says, "Take care of yourself before you help others." We gotta take care of the people that take care of our kids. And so, if we do that, we are one step closer to achieving that higher quality of life for our entire community.

Audrey Nowakowski: Well, Teig, I want to thank you so much for joining me today to share more about the Early Childhood Education Homes program. It's great work, and I can't wait to see how it grows.

Teig Whaley-Smith: Thank you so much.

Audrey Nowakowski: Teig Whaley-Smith is the Chief Alliance Executive of the Community Development Alliance. You can find more stories from WUWM's Seeking Solutions: Keys to Home Ownership series at wuwm.com/housing. That wraps up Lake Effect for today. I'm Audrey Nowakowski. If you've missed any of the show this week, you can find all of our conversations at wuwm.com. If you'd like to take the show on the go, you can download the Lake Effect podcast wherever you listen to your podcasts. Tomorrow on Lake Effect, we'll share an update on tick bite cases in Wisconsin, and how to prevent them. Plus, we'll learn about the origins of the city's many neighborhood posters. That's on tomorrow's Lake Effect. But for today, thank you so much for joining us right here on listener-supported 89.7 WUWM, Milwaukee's NPR.