families and students will suffer.
>> Beth Swedeen, thanks very much.
>> 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
homeownership. 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.
Its mayor, Eric Genrich, joins us with more. And
mayor, thanks a lot for having me.
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
area, southeast Wisconsin. La Crosse I believe area
has one as well. And it's really a movement that's
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, 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 with the
Community Land Trust model, because the rate of
appreciation is managed a bit and regulated a bit for
for those who own these homes, these homes will,
especially in the long term, be a lot more affordable
when you compare them to 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,
clarifying question. Yeah. We've partnered with
Neighborworks green Bay, which is a local housing
nonprofit. But they're a 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, this path of community land trust.
And so it's a great partnership that's already
been established. But I humanity was a was a really
instrumental part of this brainstorming process. You
know, they're going to have representation on this
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 that only
can be supported by the city government. It's
really going to require and generous individual
donors, foundations and things to to make sure that
this gets to the stage or to the level that really
has an impact on housing affordability.
community, how out of reach is home ownership for most
people? >> You know, relatively
speaking, homeownership is is easier to attain here in
green Bay than it is in many other parts of the
on one of these lists where it said green Bay was the
number one place for people on Social Security to to to
live. So relatively speaking, you know, we're
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 homeownership 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 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. 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? Yes. So, you know,
it is expensive just to construct a home these days.
So 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, for donors to step up to, to
bring that initial cost down to a level
affordability for low and moderate income folks going
forward. Once we, you know, construct the home, find
the family, set up a situation where they're
able to to purchase this home, they would be able to
realize a percentage of increase in value over the
years. So I think the the formula that's been arrived
on is 2% a year. So certainly, you know, these
families are going to be able to 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 really where these homes
become even more affordable ten, 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, you know, referencing the fact that
we were working closely with Neighborworks green
Bay. They're the really the housing agency in town and,
and are going to be the ones who are operating the,
the land trust. And so, you know, they're really well
training. You know, anti-eviction training that
they've been been doing for decades here. And so
they're really going to be the entity that that are
going to figure out exactly 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 in green
Bay. We have a great system of of neighborhoods. We
just celebrated the 50th neighborhood association to
be established within the city of green Bay. I think
historically, homeowners have have played, you know,
more of an instrumental role in some of those
organizations. But we residents play and
absolutely encourage people who are, you know, in the
rental housing environment, in condos and homes to to
step up and take some ownership of their
neighborhoods. But homeownership is is still
really a dream for many people. And it's it's a
great way, you know, to to set aside some, 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
to develop a nest egg for yourselves and for for your
children and grandchildren. that we want to encourage.
>> We'll be watching this >> We'll be watching this