Here & Now

Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway on the Housing Shortage in Madison

Frederica Freyberg:

The budget also included $525 million toward affordable housing in Wisconsin. Housing is sorely needed in this state with experts saying Wisconsin will need to build nearly 140,000 housing units during this decade to accommodate its under 65 population. In Madison, the fastest growing city in the state, the cost of housing, both renting and buying, is out of reach for many. Needed housing units fall way short of demand due to population growth. Madison gained 5,600 residents just since 2020. The capital city is one of the most expensive places in the state to buy a home, and because the city’s rental vacancy rate is so low, demand pushes the average cost of a one bedroom over $1,400 a month, according to rental sites. How do efforts to boost affordable housing make a dent? We turn to Madison Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway. Thanks for being with us.

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

Thanks for having me.

Frederica Freyberg:

So will the five measures in this affordable housing package that are part of the budget between funding to rehab or converting commercial buildings into housing help the crunch in Madison?

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

I certainly hope so. I think we have been doing perhaps more than other cities around the state have in terms of the production of housing, so it doesn’t change a lot for us in terms of what the city does, but any time there’s more funds available to produce housing, that’s helpful.

Frederica Freyberg:

So what are your city’s particular pain points when it comes to not having enough housing?

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

I think really what we’re facing is that historically, and I’m talking for decades, Madison has underproduced housing. We have not kept pace with population growth. You referenced our recent population growth, but we have been growing as a city for quite some time, and we just have not produced enough housing units. That’s why we find ourselves in the problem that we’re in now and really the solution is to build more housing. When I say that, I mean every type of housing. We need more single family. We need more condos. We need more apartments. We need big buildings. We need small buildings, and so we’re trying to do anything we can to make it easier to produce housing.

Frederica Freyberg:

Like what?

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

So we’ve done a number of things around our zoning code to make it easier to build housing by right or to add additional height if you’re building housing or if you’re building affordable housing. We’ve made it easier to build backyard cottages. We do a bunch around subsidizing affordable housing out of the city’s budget as well, and then we work closely with partners, whether that’s developers, the university, you know, other entities in town to encourage the production of housing in different areas of town.

Frederica Freyberg:

And yet it seems like you need these housing units to go up right now.

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

Yes!

Frederica Freyberg:

All of that takes a long lead time.

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

Yeah. We do see projects take two to three years, really, to come to fruition. And so that’s why it’s been so important that we work as fast as we can now to make it easier so that we start to see the impacts of that going forward. I will say that under my administration, we have permitted thousands of housing units and we have seen hundreds of affordable housing units come on-line so we’re making progress, but there’s more that needs to be done.

Frederica Freyberg:

One thing that stands out when you drive around or walk around Madison, is all of these kind of luxury high-rise apartment buildings going in. Now that gives you some units, it gives you some vacancy, but do those buildings ratchet up the rents for everyone?

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

Well, so a couple of things there. First of all, you see those buildings and you think they’re luxury buildings but, in fact, not all of them are. In fact, many of them have affordable components inside that building. So when we’re subsidizing housing, we are often not creating an entire building that’s affordable but we are creating a percentage of the units in that building. And so that definitely helps. The other thing is that there’s actually good data that putting in new market rate housing does not raise the rents of surrounding available housing. Now, what is causing rent pressure is the lack of units because when landlords can rent for a higher rent, they’re going to. As long as we have vacancy rates in the one or two percent, the market is entirely tipped to the landlord’s favor as opposed to the tenant.

Frederica Freyberg:

So this is not to mention low-income housing. How would you grade Madison on that?

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

So we need all types of housing, but we particularly need to be creating housing that is affordable for people that are at 30% or lower of the area median income. And interestingly, that people that are between 80% and 120% of area median income. Those are the two places where we see the biggest need, and so that’s where we’re trying to focus the work that the city does to produce housing.

Frederica Freyberg:

So if as projected Madison is expected to grow by another 100,000 people by 2050, what will the housingscape look like then?

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

Well, I hope that we will have caught up in our deficit of housing and that we will keep pace with housing production. It does mean that Madison is going to be more dense than it is right now and that we are going to see more big buildings. We’re also going to see more duplexes, and triplexes and backyard cottages but I really hope the work we’re doing now is going to pay off and allow us to catch up with the housing market.

Frederica Freyberg:

Madison Mayor Satya-Rhodes Conway, thanks very much.

Satya Rhodes-Conway:

Thank you.