Builders urge mandate for home production as supply dries up in Wisconsin

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Housing experts argue the lack of an affordable housing tax credit system in Wisconsin, and a disconnect between the state and local communities are major barriers to home-ownership.

The comments came during a Milwaukee County roundtable on affordable housing issues, where experts weighed in on how best to tackle barriers to affordable housing. While the state and local governments have taken steps to improve the situation, such as the state setting aside more than $400 million roughly two years ago to make housing more affordable, only about $15 million of that has been spent as of October 2025, Teig Whaley‑Smith, chief alliance executive of the Community Development Alliance, said. 

“There is such a disconnect between state housing policy and what communities are advocating for,” Whaley-Smith said. “We know what the plan is in Milwaukee County, the City of Milwaukee for housing. What is the state’s housing plan? When is the last time the state did a housing plan?”

The state government needs to better communicate with local communities, collaborate and come up with a strategy to best spend its resources in order to solve Wisconsin’s housing shortage and affordability issues, he added.

A clear state mandate to produce single-family, entry-level homes would help stop the supply of such homes from drying up, Whaley-Smith argued.

“Nobody is owning that and saying, we actually need to solve this problem,” he said. “But it is solvable, it just takes the right people and the right effort, and the right moment in time to make it happen.”

Another proposal to solve the state’s housing crisis, creating an affordable homeownership tax credit program, came from Anthony Kazee, of KG Development Group.

He mentioned Indiana created an affordable homeownership tax credit program to help spur construction of new, affordable homes.

“Because the cost … to build these is just ridiculous,” he said of affordable housing developments.

Whaley-Smith also noted communities outside Wisconsin have placed outright bans on buying single-family homes and duplexes as investment opportunities as a way to help keep homeownership prices down and combat what he called “predatory investors.”

“And I think that that sends a strong signal that we are no longer open for that bad behavior in a way that nothing else does,” he said. “Because all these single family homes and duplexes that were built in Milwaukee were built by homeowners, and for homeowners, nobody built a duplex as an investment property, and certainly corporations didn’t own them at that time.”

But the state in 2017 Act 317 largely banned communities from passing such local ordinances, he said. 

For its part, the county wants to collaborate with the state, the federal government, lenders, developers and local communities to continue developing affordable housing units, Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley said. 

Homelessness and housing affordability is an issue that “is deeply personal,” Crowley added, noting he is “someone who has experienced housing security firsthand.”

But Crowley also touted the county’s recent successes tackling the issue, noting the homeless population has decreased roughly 75% in under 10 years, saving Milwaukee taxpayers more than $30 million at the same time.

“And so here in Milwaukee County, we know that too many of our neighbors are still facing barriers,” he said “Whether we’re talking about housing, rising housing costs that we continue to see, limited availability all throughout Milwaukee County, this state and this country, and we know that there are systemic inequities that continue to persist. But we also know that these challenges are not necessarily easy. They’re very complex, and they demand us to be not just coordinated, but sustain the work that we do.”