MILWAUKEE — Community and city leaders are coming together on Wednesday to discuss affordable housing. It’s part of an event put on by the Community Development Alliance (CDA) and the focus is ‘forever’ affordable housing.

“Housing is a primary social determinant of health. It affects everything from educational outcomes, to crime in our communities, to job opportunities and overall health. Some of the problems we see in Milwaukee and being on the worst list when it comes to Black and Latino success, the root cause of that is housing and homeownership,” said CDA Chief Alliance Executive Teig Whaley-Smith.

He and the CDA will bring together stakeholders like banks and philanthropists to residents and builders to discuss ways to not only create more affordable housing but to ensure it stays affordable for future generations. CDA is specifically focused on Black and Latino homeownership. According to their website,the few dozen houses produced in Milwaukee in the last 60 years are “at a price point unattainable to 90% of Black and Latine families.”

“There are 17,000 Black and Latino families waiting to buy a 1,000 square foot home at $100,000 or less and there are very few of those opportunities available throughout the city,” Whaley-Smith said about the need.

Lamont Davis, the Executive Director of the Milwaukee Community Land Trust (MCLT), is working on a solution through land trusts.

Davis said it’s “a model of affordability to bring homeownership where the buyer buys the house and improvement and the non-profit, The Milwaukee Community Land Trust, will retain the land.”

MCLT has four houses that are being renovated in the Lindsay Heights neighborhood. One of those houses, on 16th St., is listed for $90,000. Davis said the market price would be about $130,000.

“We want to make sure that we’re serving people who are in neighborhoods that are at risk of gentrifying. We also want to be able to serve folks that normally, without some type of intervention, would never get into homeownership,” Davis said. “So this model really helps us serve those people making $15 to $25 an hour.

And a key factor makes MCLT houses ‘forever’ affordable homes. Once the first family that moves into a home decides to move on, there’s a guarantee that the house will remain at an affordable price point for the next homeowners.

Davis said watching a family move into their own houses is a feel like no other.

“The joy that you see when a family is able to walk in their forever home, when they’re able to say this is where I’m going to be, it’s just tremendous,” he shared.

MCLT is planning on having 30 affordable houses in Milwaukee by 2025. That’s part of CDA’s goal of a 100 new affordable homes each year.

For more information on becoming a homeowner, you can go to MCLT’s website or CDA’s website.

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