By Karen Stokes
Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley (Photo/Karen Stokes)
Milwaukee County is receiving $6 million in funding through the American Rescue Plan Act to expand affordable homeownership opportunities throughout the county.
The county is building 120 new single-family homes in the City of Milwaukee’s King Park neighborhood that will support first-time homebuyers and provide equitable access to affordable-rate housing options for families and residents.
“We’ve done this many different ways, one partnering with developers all over Milwaukee County in different Municipalities whether we’re talking about Senior housing, or housing for people with disabilities. We have a very special project where we basically invested in the King Park neighborhood to create 120 single family homes because of the American Rescue Plan Act,” said Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley. “This is going to give first time home buyers, particularly black and brown families the ability to move into a single family home at an affordable rate.”
Crowley said that the partnership is with Habitat for Humanity.
On March 11, 2021, President Joe Biden signed the American Rescue Plan into law. Under the American Rescue Plan, EDA was allocated $3 billion in supplemental funding to meet the urgent needs of American communities.
“We have to recognize that the American Rescue Plan Act did provide dollars that have to be spent by the end of this year,” Crowley said. “When you’re using one-time funds to build an infrastructure like affordable housing, I do believe it can have a long term impact. We also need to recognize that these are limited funds and we still need to strengthen our partnership with both the State of Wisconsin and the federal government to make sure that we can continue to make these types of investments because they do take resources. Building homes has not become cheaper. We know that inflation is cooling but inflation is still here and the cost of labor has also increased. This has definitely got us to the point where we can make a huge impact but I truly believe that this is just a first step”.
The public can and need to share their voice in advocating for public housing. The need for affordable housing must be top of mind.
Crowley states that the public should hold elected officials accountable like himself and others and contact your representatives whether in Congress or in the U.S. Senate as well as your State Representatives, Senators or Governor.
“A lot of the affordable housing in Milwaukee County has been concentrated within the city of Milwaukee and I truly believe we’re seeing a turning of the tide. They’ve been able to create partnerships with Wauwatosa, Brown Deer as well and South Milwaukee. You see an increase in affordable housing,” Crowley explained. “We really need folks to talk to their elected officials about making sure that there’s zoning laws that are in the books that allow for affordable housing to happen. There are many individuals who work in many municipalities whether they are police officers, fire fighters, teachers, they may work in sanitation but they can’t afford to live in some of these communities. It’s extremely important and critical that we contact our elected officials to make sure that they are on board and they are being proactive to bringing affordable housing to many different communities within Milwaukee County”.