Everyone knows how expensive it is to buy a house these days.
In Wisconsin, home prices have risen much faster than income, 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 nonprofit.
The result?
Affordable home ownership.
A new community land trust program is taking shape in Green Bay.
It's Mayor Eric Gennrich joins us with more and 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, you know, 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.
Yeah, this wouldn't be city or public housing, right?
How would it work?
Correct.
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 going to be operated by the city, but we did provide
some seed fundings that they could do a little bit of 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's already been established, but I should also say Habitat
for Humanity was a really instrumental part of this brainstorming process.
They're going to 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 going to 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?
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,
we've seen home prices in the city of Green Bay go up 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 taking an all-of-the-above approach to housing affordability
here in the city of Green Bay.
We recognize that not one single solution is going to 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 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 be 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're 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 to pull out some of that equity
if they were to decide to sell the home down the line.
But it's not going to be 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.
In your city's model, the plan is to provide wraparound services.
What do those look like?
You know, a lot of those, I think, are going to be determined in the future,
but I was referencing the fact that we were working closely with
NeighborWorks Green Bay. They're really the housing agency in town and are going to be
the ones who are operating the land trust.
And so, you know, they're really well experienced with home buyer training,
you know, anti eviction training that they've been doing for decades here.
And so they're really going to be the entity that are going to figure out exactly what
kind of services are going to be necessary for these homeowners,
but they're really 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, you know,
warm and instrumental role in some of those organizations, but we recognize the role that
all residents play and absolutely encourage people who are, you know, in the rental housing
environment, in condos, in homes to step up and take some ownership of their neighborhoods.
But homeownership is still really a dream for many people.
And it's a great way, you know, to set aside some wealth for yourselves and for your families
down the line. In the land trust model, it's like I was explaining earlier, it's, you know,
it's kind of modestly controlled. But it's still a great way, as I said, to develop a
nest egg for yourselves and 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 Kenner. Thanks very much. Thanks so much for having me.
Thank you, sir. Thanks. Yeah. Thanks again for reaching out. I 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
ten 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 going to 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. Great. Well, again, thank you so much and happy Friday.
Yeah. Same to you. Thanks for reaching out. Okay. Bye. All right. See ya.