Build Affordable Housing in the Rubble of I794
The Milwaukee-focused urbanist YouTube channel Cream City Routes just released their sophomore video, this one all about the proposed changes to I794 in downtown Milwaukee. They review the history of freeways in Milwaukee (they were designed to go through multiple minority neighborhoods and fully destroyed those communities) before going over the benefits of removal over reconstruction. A large portion of the video focuses on the cost and tax benefits of removal (insofar as it is significantly cheaper not to build overpasses than to build them and the land that is cleared will produce significant tax revenue if it is developed).
The Cream City Routes video does a good job of painting in the lines and imagining a world without a massive, crumbling symbol of racist policies, but there it begs the question: what should we build, and how can we make it for everyone?
It is true that allowing developers to build on the newly available land would produce tax revenue that could offset poorer Milwaukeeans’ burden and help the City and County provide better services to the rest of the city. Unfortunately, the buildings that would be built there would definitely not be accessible to anyone but the most elite. Almost every new construction housing complex has been luxury apartments that can sit 50-70% vacant. And I get it – construction is extremely expensive, especially right now. To a certain extent, if you’re looking to make money on housing, you need to charge exorbitant rates to justify the cost of the building you just built.
That’s why we need to fix the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee (the failures of which have been reported by Milwaukee Beagle previously) and bring back public housing to actually create affordable housing. Too often, the City of Milwaukee just uses TIF with affordability constraints on a certain percentage of units to achieve minor housing affordability wins. (A TIF, or Tax Incremental Financing, is an agreement between a municipality and a developer to use the future increase in tax revenue after a development occurs to provide payments to developers for a time. Then, after that time is up, the city gets the full increase in tax revenue.) The issue with this is that the constraints are based on the market of housing and are subject to change. It’s not reliable or dependable long-term. Public housing would have most of the economic benefits of for profit development, without the inequality boosting profits for developers, or unaffordable half empty buildings. Part of the issue with the “Projects” was that they were in separated, segregated sections of cities. Placing public housing in the downtown would be a fully integrated way to allow everyone in Milwaukee to be able to enjoy the great downtown.
Another form of non-market housing we need to support is housing co-ops. These are buildings owned by the people who live in them but differ from condos by instilling more community in the management of the building and by avoiding marketization. These are an appealing alternative to public housing in that they run themselves and are relatively insulated from the corruption we saw at the Housing Authority. Every dollar you spend on cooperative housing gets spent on the housing – you aren’t paying for someone else’s profit. Another similar alternative is co-housing, like the new development in Riverwest. This is housing made affordable by utilizing shared spaces for cooking and leisure (the units themselves are much smaller than normal).
I see a world where the city could work with a developer to build new buildings in the footprint of 794, get them their money for building it, then operate the building as public housing or set it up as a co-op. Even if the city isn’t directly involved, they should definitely be discerning with the way they approve construction – we can’t just keep filling our downtown with empty high-rises.
If you want to voice your concerns and advocate for better use of the land when we get rid of the car sewer, please leave a public comment on the website below: https://www.794lakeinterchange.wisconsindot.gov/
