Can Milwaukee Really Create 10,000 Affordable Homes?
“But Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, who took office in 2004, has been making an effort to reverse this legacy. In February of this year, Barrett announced his ‘Ten Thousand Homes in Ten Years’ affordable housing initiative. It’s an effort to extend the reach and impact of the city’s recent downtown building boom: Recently, the city opened a $524 million arena for the NBA’s Bucks, built a $450-million glass skyscraper for Northwestern Mutual, and added almost 12,000 new residential units. This surge of development may have reshaped the city’s skyline, but it has done little to alleviate the lack of housing for lower-income residents. Just 760 of those new units, says Department of City Development commissioner Rocky Marcoux, are affordable.”