Here & Now

Moore, Steil Discuss Housing Inequities in Milwaukee

Frederica Freyberg:

Washington came to Wisconsin this week. A U.S. House Select Committee held a field hearing on Milwaukee housing inequalities, and how to address them to expand wealth building. The chair of the committee was joined by Wisconsin U.S. Representatives Republican Bryan Steil and Democrat Gwen Moore.

Gwen Moore:

Home ownership has been a key way to build generational wealth. Milwaukee has a 29% point gap in Black to white home ownership. Black home ownership is just 27%. And Milwaukee is losing an estimated thousand homeowners in neighborhoods of color every year. Like for renters, the difficulties for first-time home buyers are myriad.

Bryan Steil:

We spent today earlier on a bus tour through Congresswoman Moore’s district, seeing actually a lot of the similar challenges that we see in cities across the state of Wisconsin. We see often older housing stock and the challenge that that places on families with repairs.