Everyone knows how expensive it
is to buy a house these days.
In Wisconsin, home prices have
risen much faster than incomes,
according to the Wisconsin Policy
Forum.
That freezes out renters from
creating generational wealth
through home ownership.
But there are innovative ideas to
get people into their own homes,
like land trusts, where the
buyer gets a mortgage for the home
only and then leases the land
under it from a non-profit.
The result, affordable
home ownership.
A new community land trust program
is taking shape in Green Bay.
It's Mayor Eric Genrich joins us
with more. Mayor, thanks a lot for
being here.
Thanks so much for having me.
So there are land trust programs in
other parts of the state.
What made you interested in this
idea?
Well, as you said, yes, we're
certainly not the first ones to
adopt a community land trust here in
Green Bay.
I believe they're in place
in Madison area, Southeast
Wisconsin, La
Crosse, I believe area has one as
well. And it's really a movement
that's grown pretty significantly
over the last few years.
You know, you did a great job of
kind of giving an
overview of that concept
and why it's so appealing to us
is the idea that we
will be able to.
Set aside a certain number of homes
that will remain relatively
affordable forever.
There's a number of strategies that
we deploy currently within the city
of Green Bay and that are common,
I think, across the country, but
oftentimes those periods of
affordability are limited to
15 years or a couple decades or
something like that. With the
community land trust model,
because the rate of appreciation
is managed a bit
and regulated a bit for those
who own these homes.
These homes will, especially
in the long term, be a lot
more affordable when you compare
them to other homes that are
available on the private market.
Yet this wouldn't be city or
public housing, right?
How would it work?
Yeah, no, that's a great clarifying
question. Yeah, we've partnered with
NeighborWorks Green Bay, which
is a local housing nonprofit,
but they're a local affiliate
of a nationwide organization,
NeighborWorkS America.
And so they have a lot of access
to expertise around the country with
fellow affiliates who have gone
down this path of community land
trust. Not something that is
officially gonna be operated by the
city, but we did provide some
seed fundings that they could.
Do a little bit of a feasibility
research to make sure that this was
a good fit for Green Bay
and Greater Green Bay.
Thankfully it turned out that it was
and NeighborWorks really
was clearly the right entity to
house this organization, given the
work that they've done on housing
creation and housing affordability
over the last three decades or
more. Within the city of Green Bay.
And so it's a great partnership that
that's already been established.
But I should also say Habitat for
Humanity was a really instrumental
part of this brainstorming
process.
They're gonna have representation on
this board, a number of local
nonprofits.
The Chamber of Commerce was really
instrumental as well when
we were figuring out exactly how we
would structure this.
And so a lot of folks have been
involved and we're looking for even
more to continue to be involved
in the future because this is
not something that
only can be supported by
the city government.
It's really gonna require private
philanthropy and generous
individual donors,
foundations and things to make sure
that this gets to the stage
or to the level that really has an
impact on housing affordability.
Because in your community how
out of reach is home ownership
for most people?
You know, relatively speaking,
home ownership is easier
to attain here in Green Bay than it
is in many other parts of
the country.
We just ended up on one of these
lists where it said Green Bay was
the number one place for
people on social security
to live.
So relatively speaking we're
affordable, but in comparison
to our history, not at
all the case. You know we've seen.
Home prices in the city of Green Bay
go up, you know,
double digit percentage points
pretty much every year over the last
five years.
So home ownership is out of reach,
unfortunately for far too many
people. And we're in the position of
really, you know taking in
all of the above approach to
housing affordability here in the
City of Green bay.
We recognize that not one
single solution is gonna get us
to that point, but
community land trust we feel is
definitely a tool that.
Hasn't been utilized in the past and
needs to be part of the equation in
the future.
Give us a sense of this, if someone
buys a house through the
community land trust first,
how affordable might it be to get
in and then can they
sell it at a profit?
Right. Yeah.
So, you know, it is
expensive just to construct a home
these days.
So some of those costs are kind of
built in the way that we're going to
be able to bring down the
cost of construction is really
through private philanthropy, as I
was suggesting.
So it's going to important for
donors to step up to bring that
initial cost down to
a level of affordability for low
and moderate income folks going
forward. Once we construct
the home, find the family.
Set up a situation where they are
able to purchase this home,
they would be able to realize a
percentage of increase in value
over the years.
So I think the formula that's been
arrived on is 2% a year.
So certainly these families are
going to be able pull out some of
that equity if they were to decide
to sell the home down the line.
But it's not going to to the
extent that we've seen in the
private market. So that's really
where. These homes become
even more affordable 10, 20,
30 years down the line.
City's model, the plan is to provide
wrap-around services.
What do those look like?
You know, a lot of those I think are
gonna be determined in the future,
but I was referencing the fact that
we're working closely with
NeighborWorks Green Bay.
They're really the housing agency
in town and
are gonna the ones who
are operating the land trust.
And so, they're really well
experienced with home
buyer training,
anti-eviction training that
they've been doing for decades
here. And so they're really gonna
be the entity that are gonna figure
out exactly what kind of services
are going to be necessary for these
homeowners, but they're well placed
to do that.
What kind of stability for a
community do owner-occupied homes
create?
Yeah, I mean, they're so essential
here in Green Bay.
We have a great system
of neighborhoods.
We just celebrated the 50th
Neighborhood Association to be
established within the city of Green
Bay, I think historically homeowners
have played more of an
instrumental role in some of those
organizations, but we recognize
the role that all residents play and
absolutely encourage people who
are in the rental housing
environment, in condos,
in homes.
To step up and take some
ownership of their neighborhoods.
But home ownership is still really
a dream for many people and it's a
great way to
set aside some wealth for
yourselves and for your families
down the line.
In the land trust model, like I was
explaining earlier, it's
kind of modestly controlled, but
it's still a great, as I said,
to develop a nest egg for yourselves
and for for your children and
grandchildren. And that's something
that we want to encourage.
We'll be watching this as it takes
shape.
Mayor Eric Gendrick, thanks very
much.
Thanks so much for having me.
Thank you, sir.
Thanks again for reaching out.
Really appreciate it.
Yeah, well, maybe we can come
up and do a field story as
we call it as this
gets going.
When do you think it will
actually, you know, like the hammers
and nails and that kind of thing?
Yeah, yeah, no, I should have
touched on a little bit of that.
We're hoping that our first
parcels go into trust here at the
end of the year or early next year.
So probably between four and
10 parcels will
go in and hopefully a good number of
those will actually begin
construction in 26.
So definitely an opportunity for a
story out of the gates.
They're gonna be kind of
concentrated in one of our new
neighborhoods that we're working on
right now.
So it'd be a good site to visit for
sure.
Well, again, thank you so much and
happy Friday.
Yeah, same to you. Thanks for
reaching out.