Not Enough Housing for the Growing Workforce
Thursday, September 12th, 2019 -- 11:46 AM
(WRN) -Not enough places to live, a new study from the Wisconsin Realtors Association finds housing availability has not kept up with a growing workforce."The situation has been slowly developing, but basically over the last ten years in our fast-growing counties and in small towns, we've not built enough housing units to accommodate our population growth and the job growth. When you don't built enough housing units of any type . . . obviously then prices rise, rents rise, and people have difficulty finding any sort of affordable or decent housing options in the communities where they work."
Study Author Kurt Paulson says there are changes that are helping in some states.
"A lot of them do have to do with altering zoning regulations, and other sorts of local government land use regulations that kind of limit the ability of housing construction, whether that be reducing lot sizes or decreasing parking requirements, (and) other sorts regulations that drive up the cost of housing that ere not related to public health and safety."
The study found that many lower-income residents are paying more than 50 percent of their income on housing.
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