When Mark Hammond saw a vacant lot near the Mayfair Collection mixed-use community in Wauwatosa, he knew he wanted to build an apartment complex. The location checked all the boxes for desirable housing. It had access to transit, schools, parks, jobs, grocery stores and a medical center. Such a project could also chip away at a long-standing affordable housing shortage in Milwaukee County’s suburbs. So Hammond — a Wauwatosa resident, former chair of the city’s Community Development Authority and current vice president of MSP Real Estate, Inc. — got to planning, which included asking the county to chip in. The result is an 80-unit housing development, with most units available to those earning up to 60% of the county’s median household income. Do you have feedback on Milwaukee NNS's reporting? Take our survey to let us know how we're doing! The project is one of MSP Real Estate’s 18 affordable housing developments statewide and its first project subsidized by Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley’s effort to expand housing options for lower-income workers in Milwaukee’s suburbs — the region’s largest affordable housing push in over 20 years. Hammond said about $2.5 million in aid made the project possible during a time when financing workforce housing is particularly difficult. “The financing that we got through the county really took a project that would not have been able to proceed — would really have had no chance in moving forward — and made the project feasible,” he said. Municipalities statewide face an affordable housing crunch, but the Milwaukee metro region is home to a particularly big mismatch between jobs and workforce housing. Most job growth is happening in the suburbs, while affordable housing is largely concentrated in the city of Milwaukee’s historically disinvested neighborhoods, especially in Black and brown-majority communities. For instance, 92% of Wauwatosa workers lived in another municipality when last measured in 2019. “You don’t want people to come into your community, work and leave,” Crowley told Wisconsin Watch. Crowley and his colleagues since 2022 have allocated more than $15 million to boost affordable housing in the suburbs — aiming to reduce barriers that prevent residents from living near work and seeking broader opportunities. “You’re going to have to have affordable housing units in places outside of the city of Milwaukee,” Crowley said. “We can no longer continue to use affordable housing to concentrate poverty.” Milwaukee County officials hope the investment will incentivize affordable housing construction at a time when developers face worker shortages and rising costs due to inflation and interest rate hikes. But subsidies alone can’t fix the problem, experts say. Success would also require loosening restrictive municipal zoning policies that have narrowed space for development and reinforced the region’s stark racial segregation. The Milwaukee-Waukesha-West Allis metro area ranks sixth nationally for restrictive zoning policies, according to an index developed by Princeton University’s Eviction Lab. Less than 2% of the region’s developable land is zoned for densities that could accommodate affordable housing. But Hammond is optimistic about the region’s progress. He sees not-in-my-backyard sentiments easing in some communities. “Since I started in this space I’ve noticed much more of an acknowledgment or an appreciation by most all communities of a need for affordable housing,” Hammond said. About 70,000 Milwaukee County families earn $15 per hour or less, but the county has just 30,000 rental units considered affordable for them — those costing no more than $650 per month, according to a December 2022 county memo. The 40,000-unit shortage for such lower-income families includes 7,000 suburban units, according to the memo. That limits options for people earning higher incomes as well, including those living paycheck to paycheck but making too much to qualify for housing subsidies. After moving out of his parents’ South Side Milwaukee home in 2020, 24-year-old Rogelio Balderas, who works in Wauwatosa for a real estate services company, said he found apartments ranging from $700 to $800 on Milwaukee’s Upper East Side. Now he struggles to find a similarly priced one-bedroom apartment, requiring him to increase his monthly budget to $1,100, nearly 40% of his income. “There’s nothing available within a reasonable price range,” he said. Affordable housing is generally defined as costing no more than 30% of a person’s income. Robin Alexander, who lives on Milwaukee’s East Side, said he and his partner would consider moving to a suburb, but they can’t afford it. That’s even as he works two jobs — one full-time, one part-time — and his partner also works part-time.