David Crowley grew up with first-hand exposure to the issue of affordable housing long before he became Milwaukee County Executive and the Wisconsin Democratic nominee for governor.
“When it comes down to struggling, I know what that’s like,” Crowley told UpNorthNews, sharing how his family had been evicted three times before he graduated high school. “I’ve seen my mother struggle to pay for the bills and put food on the table.”
Now, with communities all over Wisconsin wrestling with having too many “McMansions” and not nearly enough moderately priced housing units, Crowley believes his experience — personal and political — can make him a catalyst for collaborative housing solutions statewide.
“We’ve had the lowest unsheltered homeless count per capita than any other community our size across the country,” Crowley said. “We’ve been recognized three out of the past five years by the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). We’ve done great work with our Housing First model.”
His Republican opponent, US Rep. Tom Tiffany, also has ideas for addressing the affordable housing shortage in Wisconsin. It is one of a handful of topics that occasionally attracts earnest bipartisan efforts in the Legislature. But Tiffany’s approach is in line with his political philosophy that is rooted less in investment and more in “cutting red tape,” which can lead to reductions in protections for customers, workers, and the environment.
Housing is a big quiet crisis
Housing doesn’t get the attention granted to other matters like healthcare, childcare, education, and taxation. Part of the reason lies in its complexity with many sub-topics — builder incentives, zoning changes, subsidized rent, mortgage assistance — and many types of people involved — builders, bankers, owners, renters, housing advocates, and policymakers at the federal, state, and local levels. But the complexity masks how the lack of affordable options can create a crisis for each individual, family, or local employer impacted.
In the last session of the Legislature, lawmakers took bipartisan action on a number of housing bills. Gov. Tony Evers signed measures into law that modified a low-income housing tax credit program to boost the amount of state tax credits allocated to rural housing projects. A workforce home revolving loan program through the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority (WHEDA) can provide gap financing to supplement a mortgage for buying a new single-family residence. And a new commercial-to-housing conversion loan program can breathe new residential life into former factories, strip malls, office buildings, and motels.
But the challenges remain daunting, with estimates that the state would need to build or renovate tens of thousands of units by 2030 to keep up with population growth and areas of job creation.
Crowley: Planning, partnerships, job pipelines
Crowley frequently touts his record of collaboration in achieving housing progress rather than a top-down approach.
“It’s important that those who have been negatively impacted by the problems in our community, that they’re leading and bringing their voice to the table to be a part of the solution,” Crowley said. “There isn’t a one-size-fits-all to the issues facing every community across this state.”
Another facet of the housing crunch is a shortage of construction workers, now further exacerbated by President Trump’s push for mass deportation of workers from other countries. Crowley wants more partnerships between unions, employers, and technical colleges in order to grow registered apprenticeship programs in carpentry, electrical, plumbing, and HVAC, creating a faster jobs pipeline in order to scale up the rate of construction.
Crowley’s platform calls for predevelopment support to move proposed housing plans more quickly from concept to construction, perhaps with WHEDA using an expanded loan program to cover early architectural, engineering, and legal costs.
Outdated or discriminatory local zoning rules also make up a major obstacle to building more affordable housing. Crowley wants to give local governments the tools to be more flexible in zoning so duplexes, fourplexes, and small multi-unit buildings can be built where people already live and work, either through incentive grants that reward communities for updating their codes or, if necessary, enacting state legislation to bring outdated zoning rules in line with current community needs.
Tiffany: Cut regulations, block ‘Communist China’
While Tiffany includes a section in his campaign website about housing, it lacks specific initiatives to help potential homeowners afford to make a purchase.
“I will partner with the Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority to modernize housing assistance and expand opportunities for Wisconsin families seeking to purchase their first home,” Tiffany pledges.
The rest of the section is devoted to attacking what he says are the government regulations and permitting delays through measures that would punish local governments who take too long, in his estimation, to review plans.
Tiffany said he wants to “set clear timelines for local governments to approve or deny residential permits, with accountability if deadlines are missed through automatic approval, fee refunds, or third-party review to prevent unnecessary delays” and create a 30-day deadline for local governments to act on subdivision applications, “with automatic approval if they miss the deadline.
Included in Tiffany’s plan would be an incentive program that rewards municipalities that “reduce unnecessary residential building standards by at least 25%,” though it’s not clear which building standards he defines as unnecessary and which are valid protections against shoddy construction or vital for safety, such as up-to-date sprinkler systems or two-stairway egress in case of fires.
Tiffany also appears to see the government of China as a factor in Wisconsin’s housing market.
“Building on my work in Congress,” Tiffany said, “I cosponsored the Protecting Our Farms and Homes from China Act to prohibit Chinese corporations and entities of the Chinese Community Party from purchasing American farmland and residential property. As governor, I will advance these same principles to protect Wisconsin homes and farmland for Wisconsin families.”
However, when Republican Eric Hovde was challenging Sen. Tammy Baldwin in 2024 and made the same argument about the threat of Chinese purchases, Wisconsin Public Radio found a Cornell University researcher who found that China “holds zero acres of land” in Wisconsin. If anything, Chinese real estate purchases appear largely confined to the luxury markets of the largest cities in the US.
Tiffany has spoken in support of the recently enacted “21st Century ROAD to Housing Act,” which includes a provision designed to stop Wall Street equity capital firms from buying Wisconsin homes as short-term investments, but he missed each vote on it in Congress.
