Ald. Amani Latimer Burris.
A resolution authored by Ald. Amani Burris calls for creation of a housing task force to explore solutions to Madison's housing crisis.
Later this month, the city of Madison’s Plan Commission and Housing Strategy Committee will take up a resolution that seeks to form a task force to study affordable housing in our city. The resolution is expected to come before the city council for a vote on Oct. 3.
The proposal for the task force comes at a time when Madison is undergoing a housing crisis. A 1,980-square-foot home on Williamson Street was first listed at a whopping $949,900 in August, and the average cost of a one bedroom apartment is now over $1,400 a month because of demand.
The resolution, introduced by Ald. Amani Latimer Burris, would invite various stakeholders to explore solutions to our housing crisis, including partnerships between employers and developers and a review of relevant city processes, among other things.
While timely, the task force would be broad in focus — seemingly duplicating efforts already underway through the office of Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway to address affordability and supply. This includes efforts to subsidize affordable housing with city funding.
Madison is the fastest growing city in the country and it makes sense that we need all hands on deck to find solutions to our housing emergency. Burris is correct on that front.
However, there is a glaring omission in the resolution, as it fails to confront the restrictions forced on local governments by the state.
Wisconsin’s Republican-controlled, landlord-friendly Legislature has limited the powers of municipalities in policing the rental industry. And as a result, rent control and other tenant protections are banned from being used at the local level to alleviate housing precarity.
Earlier this summer, a luxury student housing project downtown was at first rejected and then approved by the city council after City Attorney Micheal Haas opined that the developer of the project, Core Spaces, could potentially sue the city if the council didn’t reconsider its initial denial. Under state law, municipalities cannot require affordable units from a developer.
The council was correct in its initial rejection — increasing housing stock alone won’t meet our city’s affordability needs. But they did not strategically consider the bigger picture.
If we are to fully confront the issue of our housing crisis in a holistic, sustainable way, the conversation must include a deep analysis of state preemption as soon as possible, before developers or anyone can strongarm us with it. Madison must be ready to confront, through litigation and imagination, the very real barriers to housing affordability that exist top down in Wisconsin.
A year-long task force focused on Madison, as proposed by the resolution, is too limited. What we need is an exploration of state and federal responsibility.
Now, it’s understandable that an exploration is not as immediate of a solution as our current crisis calls for. Lawsuits and court battles don’t result in the immediate building of affordable housing stock. But what they do is confront the issue at the root. We are in this situation because municipalities like Madison have been denied the most important tools available to solve their own problems. We can’t build our way out of this mess when our toolbox is almost empty. We need to fill that toolbox instead of resigning ourselves to the fact that we only get two nails and a hammer for a job that requires so much more.
Of course, there’s no guarantee of a successful legal path forward. The future of the liberal majority on Wisconsin’s Supreme Court is still in limbo, as legislative Republicans continue to threaten to impeach recently elected Justice Janet Protasiewicz. But whether it’s now or later, we must take every opportunity we have to build, shape and push the argument that Madison deserves the autonomy to solve our housing crisis.
It’s clear that our affordability problem is much bigger than what our mayor, our council and our city can confront with the current status quo.
