Suburban Surrender: New Berlin Kills Affordable Housing Plan

There's a New Berlin Wall taking shape.

That community walked away Monday night from an affordable housing plan it had once promoted, thereby sending an exclusionary message to the entire region, through its Plan Commission retreat, that Milwaukee alone must continue to shoulder and solve the area's affordable housing shortfall.

Also as a result of the on-again-off-again-now killed plan: one New Berlin alderman and Mayor Jack Chiovatero are the subject of recall petitions - -and don't be surprised if both the developer of the scuttled workforce apartments or organizations representing low-income or disadvantaged citizens file suit - - so the mess can't easily be swept under the rug.

What a spectacle: New Berlin chooses to place itself behind a New Berlin Wall.

Regionalism in southeastern Wisconsin is set back years, decades.

In fact, let's cut the word out of the political vocabulary around here altogether.

Hat tip, New Berlin: you've changed the political landscape and language, too.

Now let's see if the New Berlin Wall gets extended: Remember that the Southeastern Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission is about halfway through writing a housing plan for the seven-county region - - the first such plan in more than 35 years.

Even though most of the job growth in the region is in the Milwaukee suburbs, does anyone think after New Berlin did what it did - - come what may - - that there is a prayer for any out-of-Milwaukee community building affordable housing?

Waukesha's application for Lake Michigan water is often called the precedent-setter because it is the first under the Great Lakes Compact seeking a diversion water outside the Great Lakes basin.

But New Berlin's 2008 smaller application was the first actual application under the new Compact.

It received a lower-level review because only part of New Berlin is outside the basin, and it won backing at the Milwaukee Common Council, but the New Berlin capitulation on affordable housing shows it sees no need to truly participate in regional problem-solving.

To the Milwaukee aldermen who bought New Berlin's 'good partner, good neighbor' rhetoric during the 2008 water discussions, and who might entertain selling water to Waukesha, too:

Remember what New Berlin - - one of your water system partners - - did to the region tonight.

If Waukesha comes seeking Lake Michigan water not only for the city but also for the sparsely-developed and unimproved land outside its borders (think new big-lot housing and jobs aimed at local people) - - make sure you get any agreements about water and housing, or transportation and other regional issues in detail, and in writing.

Or else the New Berlin Wall will be encouraged to run west to Waukesha, then farther south and west into its expanded water service territory that will grow it by 80%.

Move water by Milwaukee far away - - to spread sprawl and social inequities, too?

Are you kidding?

Was that the intention of the Great Lakes Compact - - to underwrite government-sponsored economic apartheid with Great Lakes water?