The first Wood County Housing Summit took place on March 7th at Mid-State. More meetings will take place in the future.
By Melissa Kaye
Wisconsin Rapids (WFHR, WIRI) – The Wood County Housing Summit saw more than one hundred people in attendance on March 7th. The day-long event took place at the Wisconsin Rapids Mid-State campus. Attendees included representation from local government officials, bankers, developers and builders, as well as local citizens. These people represented a good cross-sector of different industries and perspectives from not only Wood County, but also from across the state.
The morning of the event consisted of an overview of what is happening in housing at the local level. Kayla Rombalski is the Community Development Educator with Extension Wood County and one of the organizers of the Housing Summit. She spoke with me the day after the event on what the Housing Summit consisted of and their first impressions on the success of the day.
The different industries and organizations that attended the Wood County Housing Summit portray the broad reaching effect lack of affordable housing has on our region. Kayla said the representative from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation spoke on how the lack of housing has affected their organization.
Mayor Randy Meyer gave the keynote address at the Wood County Housing Summit. He spoke about the public/private partnership model they have to address the housing shortage in Sheboygan Falls. They’ve brought the employers to the table with their Economic Development Corporation and other organizations to talk about making a difference in housing in their community.
In River Falls, they have a community based housing program that is powered by solar. It’s not only available for low income families, but also to seniors. The housing is more affordable because they pay no electricity bills. Peter Kilde is the Executive Director of West CAP. He spoke on how they worked with community block grant dollars to get the 1300 Residences project off the ground to address housing in River Falls.
Rebecca Roberts from the Center for Land Use Education at UWSP spoke on how the Town of Amherst in Portage County changed the zoning to allow accessory dwelling units. Now, people living in the town can modify a separate building on their property into another housing unit. Stevens Point recently passed a similar zoning change to allow ACUs and ADUs on properties in the city.
Senator Patrick Testin and Representatives Scott Krug and Donna Rozar spoke for an hour on what they are doing at the state level to address the housing crisis. You can read a detailed article on that segment of the Wood County Housing Summit here.
The afternoon wrapped up with people in attendance brainstorming on what can be done specifically in our community to alleviate the housing shortage. Very general questions were asked and everyone filled out answers on notecards. They then broke out into small groups to discuss further before coming back to a large group debrief. The main takeaways included lifting up lived experiences that are not seen in this work, knowing when meetings are happening at the local level regarding housing, and educating municipalities on multi-family units and cooperative housing units.
The Wood County Housing Task force will dig into all the feedback received during the Wood County Housing Summit. They’ll identify liked themes to come up with key takeaways and priorities to create a recommendation report that will ultimately end up with the County Board.
Housing is not just a low income challenge. It affects all socioeconomic levels from low income families to doctors looking to move to the area for a job. If you are interested in getting involved, you can visit the REDI Dashboard to see when meetings are and read past meeting notes. If you cannot attend meetings in person, there is always a Zoom option.
