It's small - - 11 lots - - but includes reuse of building materials - - and while it will barely make a dent in the dearth of such housing across Waukesha County, it's a nice step in a good direction by the city government.
I await the snarky comments from outraged conservatives and other assorted free-marketeers who overlook the heavy government spending/subsidies for other things they no doubt enjoy: park systems, Medicare, Federal highways, local and state roads, 911 operators, fire departments and police protection, mortgage and property tax deductability, public health laboratories, and food inspections,Wisconsin corporate tax breaks for computers and manufacturing equipment, choice and charter school per-pupil grants, FAA towers, weather forecasting, SBA lending, low-interest student loans, clean water and sewer systems, Industrial Revenue Bonding and Tax Incremental Financing throughout the land, etc.
I would ask you to travel to the City of Waukesha, which you and so many mistakenly group in with Waukesha county as a whole, and see just how much affordable housing we have. I think you'll be pretty surprised. Its not just this small project you are talking about, the City has tons of apartments, single family homes, and other living arraignments that are affordable.
ReplyDeletePhoenix heights, a huge redevelopment project (yes redevelopment, not sprawl) that converted a brownfield site into a an affordable housing subdivision.
Look at the fact that we have around 45 percent of our housing stock in multi-family units (lets see how the rest of Waukesha county measures up).
I know lumping Waukesha in with the Brookfields, New Berlins and Delafields is easy and helps perpetuate outright lies about the City but anyone who lives in Waukesha can attest that like Milwaukee we have a wide range of housing options.
I don't think I misrepresented anything. I agree that Waukesha has some affordable housing, though if I am not mistaken, the city's planning recently included a rollback of those goals.
ReplyDeleteI think that the goals of that committe were to try to make more new housing single-family, not multi-family. There are no plans to start getting rid of multi-family developments.
ReplyDeleteThe new project discussed in this post is single-family. I think creating more affrodable single-family is a step in the right direction. Getting people investing in am affordable single-family property as opposed to throwing their money away in rent is something we should embrace.
As a Waukesha resident and a proponent of affordable housing options I just don't like it when people from Milwaukee county start lumping the City of Waukesha in with the other communities out here without checking the facts. When a City has almost 45 percent of its housing stock in Multi-family housing its kind of silly to accuse us of being rich, white, racists who don't want any affordable housing. I know you haven't said this, but the Shepherd has.
I am also someone who supports light rail/mass transit projects (as long as it is done right). I believe that if Waukesha wants to get Milwaukee water we need to cooperate on a regional level on things like transit.