When Wisconsin families talk about housing costs — rising rents, unattainable down payments, property tax bills that keep climbing — the response from some elected officials is a shrug. Housing is complicated. Markets are local. There’s only so much a state can do. That answer has become a way of avoiding accountability for a crisis that state policy choices have directly shaped — and that state policy changes can directly improve. The truth is that governors and legislatures have more tools to lower housing costs than they typically choose to use. The question isn’t whether state leaders can act. It’s whether they will.
📋 What Wisconsin Families Need to Know
- State governments control zoning authority, housing finance programs, tax policy, and federal fund allocation — all of which directly shape whether housing gets built, who it’s built for, and what it costs.
- Zoning reform — loosening land use restrictions that block multifamily and higher-density housing — is widely considered the single most effective lever for increasing housing supply and slowing rent growth over time.
- Wisconsin’s Low Income Housing Tax Credit allocation is controlled by WHEDA and directed by state policy priorities — it is one of the most powerful tools for producing affordable units that the state controls directly.
- Property tax reform, tenant protection policies, and state investment in housing counseling and down payment assistance all affect affordability for renters and buyers without waiting for the market to self-correct.
- States that have moved aggressively on housing — including bipartisan examples in Montana, Utah, and others — have demonstrated that meaningful reform is achievable when leadership makes it a priority.
Why State Government Holds the Key to Lower Housing Costs
Housing markets are local in the sense that prices are set neighborhood by neighborhood. But the rules that govern what can be built, where, and for whom are set at the state and local level — and state government has the authority to shape those rules in ways that individual cities and counties often resist on their own. This is not a theoretical argument. It is how housing policy actually works.
States control the enabling legislation that determines what local governments can and cannot do with zoning. States allocate federal housing tax credits that finance the overwhelming majority of affordable apartment construction in the country. States design and fund the housing finance agencies that provide below-market mortgages to working families. States set property tax structures that determine how much of a household’s income goes to housing overhead. And states decide whether to pass or block tenant protection policies that give renters stability when markets tighten.
The Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies has documented extensively how state-level policy decisions — not just local markets or national interest rates — drive affordability outcomes across states and metros. The Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center similarly finds that state-level choices about housing investment, regulatory structure, and financing programs have measurable effects on the availability and cost of housing for low- and moderate-income households. When state leaders claim they can’t influence housing costs, they are, at best, misinformed.
Zoning Reform: The Most Powerful Tool State Leaders Underuse
If there is a single policy intervention that housing economists across the ideological spectrum agree on, it is this: restrictive local zoning is a primary driver of housing scarcity, and states have the authority to change it. Exclusionary zoning — rules that limit development to single-family homes, cap building heights, impose minimum lot sizes, require excessive parking, or simply make multifamily housing illegal in large portions of a municipality — artificially restricts supply in exactly the places where demand is highest. When supply is restricted and demand keeps growing, prices rise. That is not a market mystery; it is the predictable result of a policy choice.
State-level zoning reform can take several forms. Some states have enacted legislation that allows accessory dwelling units — in-law suites, backyard cottages, converted garages — by right in all residential zones, overriding local bans. Others have required municipalities to permit multifamily development near transit corridors or job centers. Some have established state-level review processes that give developers a path to approval even when local governments reject projects without adequate justification.
The results in states that have moved on this are instructive. Brookings Institution research on zoning reform has tracked outcomes in states that have enacted meaningful land use changes and found real effects on housing production — particularly in markets where supply had been most constrained. Montana passed bipartisan zoning reform in 2023 that eliminated single-family-only zoning statewide. Utah created a state-level housing accountability framework that incentivizes municipalities to meet housing production targets. These aren’t liberal or conservative policies — they’re supply policies, and they work.
Wisconsin has a long way to go on this front. Local governments in the state retain substantial land use authority, and the political culture in many established communities — particularly suburbs — is resistant to density. A governor who is serious about housing affordability has to be willing to challenge that resistance with state-level action, not defer to it.
The Critical Role of Accessory Dwelling Units in Wisconsin
One of the most accessible near-term zoning interventions for Wisconsin is the expansion of accessory dwelling unit (ADU) rights statewide. ADUs — secondary units on single-family residential lots — add housing supply without requiring new land acquisition, large-scale development, or significant infrastructure investment. They can house adult children, aging parents, renters who need affordable options close to employment, or anyone who needs a modest, lower-cost unit in an established neighborhood.
Many Wisconsin municipalities currently prohibit or heavily restrict ADUs through local zoning codes. A state law establishing ADU rights by right across all municipalities — removing the ability of local governments to ban them outright — would instantly expand the supply pipeline in cities, suburbs, and smaller communities without displacing existing residents or dramatically altering neighborhood character. The National Conference of State Legislatures tracks ADU legislation across all 50 states, and the trend is strongly toward state preemption of local ADU bans.
State Investment in Affordable Housing Development
Zoning reform increases what the private market is allowed to build. But the private market, operating on its own, will not build housing that working-class and low-income households can afford without public subsidy. The economics simply don’t work — construction costs are high, profit margins on affordable units are thin, and developers gravitate toward higher-income renters and buyers who can support higher rents and sale prices. Closing that gap requires deliberate public investment.
The primary tool for producing affordable rental housing in the United States is the Low Income Housing Tax Credit (LIHTC), a federal program that allocates tax credits to states based on population. States then award those credits competitively to affordable housing developers — and the credits attract private equity investment that finances construction. WHEDA administers Wisconsin’s LIHTC allocation and publishes the qualifying criteria and competitive scoring system used to award credits each year.
The policy choices embedded in that scoring system are significant. Does Wisconsin prioritize developments in high-opportunity neighborhoods with access to jobs and good schools? Does it weight deeply affordable units — for the lowest-income households — heavily enough to actually serve them? Does it direct investment toward communities that have been historically underserved? Those are gubernatorial and legislative choices, not automatic outcomes. A governor who treats LIHTC allocation as a technical function rather than a policy opportunity is leaving one of the state’s most powerful affordable housing tools underperforming.
Beyond LIHTC, states can invest directly in housing trust funds — dedicated pools of capital that provide grants and low-interest loans for affordable development projects that don’t pencil out under standard financing alone. The National Low Income Housing Coalition tracks state housing trust funds across the country. Wisconsin has a state Housing Trust Fund, but its capitalization and consistent funding have not matched the scale of the state’s affordable housing deficit.
Renter Protections That Create Stability and Reduce Cost Burden
Lowering housing costs isn’t only about building more units or reforming zoning — it’s also about protecting renters from the kinds of market shocks that make housing costs suddenly and severely unaffordable. When a tenant is evicted without adequate notice, loses a home to a no-cause termination, or faces rent increases that double their monthly payment with no ability to plan, the cost burden of housing extends beyond the rent itself to include moving costs, security deposits, storage, lost work, and the broader financial disruption of housing instability.
State-level renter protections — notice requirements, just-cause eviction standards, habitability enforcement, and access to legal representation — reduce that instability and give renters a more stable platform from which to manage housing costs. The National Low Income Housing Coalition’s renter protection policy framework documents the range of options available to states and the evidence on their effectiveness. Wisconsin’s current tenant protections are among the more limited of any Midwest state — a policy gap that a new governor could choose to address directly.
It’s worth noting that renter protections and housing supply are not competing priorities — they are complementary ones. A state can pursue both without contradiction. Stability for existing renters and affordability for future renters require different interventions, and a serious housing agenda addresses both.
Property Tax Relief as a Direct Housing Cost Tool
For homeowners and renters alike, property taxes are a direct housing cost — and Wisconsin’s are among the highest in the country. As documented by the Tax Foundation’s annual property tax rankings, Wisconsin consistently places in the top ten nationally for property tax burden as a share of home value. For homeowners on fixed incomes, for first-time buyers stretching to afford a mortgage, and for renters whose landlords pass property tax costs through in the form of higher rents, that burden is real and ongoing.
State leaders have several tools available to provide property tax relief without simply defunding the local services — schools, roads, public safety — that property taxes support. Circuit breaker programs, which limit property tax liability as a percentage of income for qualifying households, provide targeted relief to those most burdened. The Wisconsin Homestead Tax Credit is the state’s existing version of this concept, but it has not been updated aggressively enough to keep pace with rising home values and tax levies. Expanding eligibility thresholds, increasing benefit amounts, and extending circuit breaker protections to renters — who bear property tax costs indirectly — are all within reach of a governor with the right priorities.
What Wisconsin Needs From Its Next Governor on Housing
The list of available tools is real and well-documented. What has been missing in Wisconsin is the combination of political will, executive focus, and cross-agency coordination needed to deploy them at meaningful scale. Housing affordability is not a niche issue or a single-constituency concern — it is the foundational economic question for working families in every corner of the state, from Milwaukee’s north side to the Fox Valley to rural communities where workforce housing shortages are slowing economic development. A governor who treats it as a first-tier priority changes what gets proposed, what gets funded, and what gets built.
David Crowley has spent his executive career making decisions that directly shape housing outcomes for over 900,000 Milwaukee County residents. He has governed through rising rents, managed county budgets that interact directly with housing, homelessness, and public health, and represented communities where the distance between policy choices in Madison and families’ daily lives is as short and direct as it gets anywhere in Wisconsin. The experience of governing a major county through a housing affordability crisis is exactly the preparation the next governor needs to move the state’s housing agenda from intention to action.
Wisconsin can lower housing costs. It has the tools, the federal funding mechanisms, and the policy models from other states to draw on. What it needs is leadership that shows up to use them. To follow David Crowley’s campaign for Wisconsin Governor and his commitment to making Wisconsin more affordable for working families, visit crowleyforwigov.com.
Frequently Asked Questions
What can a state governor actually do to lower housing costs?
Governors have more housing levers than is commonly understood. On the supply side, a governor can push for statewide zoning reform that overrides local restrictions blocking multifamily and higher-density development, direct the state’s Low Income Housing Tax Credit allocation toward the most affordable and underserved projects, and increase investment in the state housing trust fund. On the affordability side, a governor can expand property tax relief programs, strengthen renter protections, increase funding for housing counseling and down payment assistance, and use the bully pulpit to make housing a legislative priority. The Urban Institute and Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies both publish accessible policy research on which interventions have the strongest evidence base.
Does zoning reform actually lower rents?
The research increasingly says yes — particularly in markets where supply has been most constrained by exclusionary zoning. The mechanism is straightforward: more housing units competing for renters reduces the leverage landlords have to raise prices. Brookings Institution research and a growing body of housing economics literature find that upzoning — allowing more density in more places — increases housing production and, over time, moderates rent growth. The effect is not immediate; buildings take time to permit and construct. But states that have moved on zoning reform are already seeing increased permitting activity, which is the necessary precondition for future supply relief. Doing nothing guarantees continued scarcity and continued rent growth.
How does Wisconsin compare to other states on housing affordability policy?
By most measures, Wisconsin has not been a leader in state-level housing policy. The state’s renter protections are among the more limited in the Midwest. Its zoning framework gives local governments broad authority to restrict density without meaningful state accountability. Its housing trust fund has been undercapitalized relative to the scale of need. The Wisconsin Policy Forum has documented these gaps extensively in nonpartisan research comparing Wisconsin’s housing policy framework to peer states. By contrast, states like Montana, Utah, and Minnesota have moved on zoning reform, housing finance, and renter stability in ways that offer Wisconsin both a model and a competitive benchmark for the kind of policy leadership that produces results.
