We are.
Sure.
And the goal is we're not cutting this, right?
We're going to try to do a.
Right.
It's about a five-minute discussion.
But you don't have to worry about that.
That's my problem.
Yeah.
I'll let you do the hard work.
You do the hard work.
I just ask about it.
All right.
Stand by.
All right.
Affordable rental housing across the state
is getting a boost with the Wisconsin Housing
and Economic Development Authority
announcing nearly $50 million in housing tax credits
to developers that are expected to create some 5,000 rental units for working families.
For more on this, we are joined by WEDA CEO Elmer Moore Jr., and thanks very much for
being here.
I am delighted to be here and share with you some of the good news of the work we've
been doing.
Where is the need most acute for affordable rentals and will these developments be located
in those areas?
You know, an interesting thing about housing in today's environment is that it's acute
everywhere.
The need for affordable housing is experienced in rural, small urban, and in the city centers,
and so wherever we can make strategic investments in the form of housing tax credits across the
state, they're going to be desperately appreciated, and I want to make one minor correction.
This is going to finance more like 2,128 units, but those units are going to support probably
close to 5,000 residents.
I see.
So, it's residents, not units?
Absolutely, yes.
Gotcha.
And these developments and developers will be working across the state.
Absolutely, it's 35 developments.
You know, one of the realities is that we have not seen a tax credit development in all 72
Wisconsin counties, but in this instance, we're going to be looking at 26 communities
across the state, which is actually pretty successful.
What is the definition of affordable?
I'm so glad you asked that.
And I'm going to give you two definitions.
When we talk about affordable housing, usually what we're referring to is what I refer to
as capital A affordable, which means a subsidized housing development that is rent restricted
to people with incomes 80% or below of the area median income.
These are often financed with tax credits or other public sources.
The other side of affordability is really just housing that occupies no more than 30%
of a family's income.
So, we have started a conversation about affordable housing with that capital A, also housing
that people can afford, which might be unrestricted, but it's not necessarily as expensive as
what we have historically called market rate.
So, how do the tax credits accrue to developers?
This is a great question.
Housing tax credits work very differently than so many other kinds of tax credits.
A developer or a community applies for competitive or non-competitive tax credits, and they sell
those credits to an investor.
The investor has the ability to write down their tax liability for up to 10 years, depending
on the type of credit, for that amount every year.
So, for instance, a million dollar tax credit award can generate something like $9 million
in equity awarded by developers who will, for 10 years, write off a million dollar investment
from their tax liability.
The value of tax credits to housing is it makes it possible for the development of housing
that will be income and rent restricted, but still operate in a sometimes profitable
way, but certainly it's solved in twig.
Otherwise...
Go ahead.
Yes, I'm sorry.
I was just going to ask if this is a model that has worked historically.
The LI-Tech program, the low-income housing tax credit program, was a bipartisan effort
from 1986.
This was Ronald Reagan's administration's work.
It is well understood as the most successful private public partnership in our country's
history.
It has generated hundreds of thousands of rental housing units and home ownership units across
the country.
For Weida alone, we're talking 61,000 units have been created using the housing tax credit
program.
We have deployed, ready for this number, $644 million in just tax credits.
That has really moved the needle and it has incentivized the investment of communities
and developers in the form of housing across the state.
How does a lack of such kind of affordable rental units affect the economic health of
the state, not to mention the needs of lower-income renters?
That is playing out in the form of diminished health outcomes.
There's an aspect to educational outcomes.
Everything that we care about in our society is impacted by whether or not people have
safe, stable housing.
If they can't afford the housing that they are occupying, and very many people, something
like 60% of renters are in housing that actually is considered unaffordable.
They are rent-burdered.
The economic outcomes is they're not able to make very key investments in things that
will support them thriving, whether that's child care, investing in their own education,
access to health care, whether it's the choice between paying rent or putting gas in your
car so you can get to work on time.
Housing is at the very core of how we experience life.
It's people who don't sleep well because they're cold, because they're cramped, because the
quality of the housing that they have access to is affecting their health.
They're not able to get to work on time.
They're not able to make investments in our economy.
They're not showing up to school, well-rested to learn.
Everything is better when housing is better.
Is it the expectation, though, that because of declining working-age population, the need
for new housing units like this will also decline?
Unfortunately, that isn't exactly the case.
There's multitudes of housing, whether it's senior housing, family housing, housing for
people with special physical or cognitive needs.
In Wisconsin, 60 percent of the housing is more than 40 years old.
I live in a house that's 120, and I can guarantee you when those craftsmen were building that
structure, they didn't necessarily plan for me to be living in it 120 years later.
That's how housing has always been.
We are in a crisis because housing is both unaffordable.
We aren't producing enough of it, and what we have is often aging out.
Well, Elmermore, we leave it there.
Thank you so much for joining us.
I'm so grateful.
Thank you for your time.
Correct that number as well.
Thank you.
We will correct that number that we set at the head.
Thank you.
That sounds great.
Have an amazing weekend.
Thanks for your time.
Thank you.
You too.
It was nice to see you.
Nice to see you.
All right.
So, I got two leads to redo.