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Within 24 hours of Wisconsin Watch publishing a story Friday about a long-hidden suspect in the 1987 disappearance of a 23-year-old Price County pregnant woman, social media commenters brought up the name of a notorious murderer who — as far as we can tell — had nothing to do with Shelly Hansen’s disappearance.

Our investigation uncovered a 2008 search warrant application that identified Michael D. Raskie, Hansen’s supervisor at Marquip Corp., as law enforcement’s top suspect and the likely father of her unborn child.

The sworn statement revealed publicly for the first time that Raskie’s pickup truck was spotted at Hansen’s apartment in the early morning hours before her vehicle turned up at a tavern 10 miles away. Raskie’s brother rented a house a half-mile from the tavern, and Raskie stored some vehicles there, giving him a potential getaway if in fact he planted her vehicle at the tavern.

But in the last two years at least three true crime podcasts connected a different person — John R. Weber — to Hansen’s disappearance. Those accounts noted what is likely a coincidence: Hansen disappeared one year to the day after Weber killed his sister-in-law Carla Lenz. Weber was arrested in September 1988 after torturing his wife, Lenz’s sister.

Some speculated that Weber was a serial killer. One even suggested Weber was the father of Hansen’s unborn child, despite there being no evidence connecting them. Wisconsin Watch spent months developing sources in Price County, conducting dozens of interviews, scouring old newspapers at the Wisconsin Historical Society and reviewing public records. 

The disturbing truth we uncovered is that two men in picturesque Price County were suspected of murder in the 1980s and within two years brutally assaulted their wives.

Weber is still serving a life sentence for murdering Lenz and attacking his wife. Raskie was convicted of attacking his wife in February 1989. He was sentenced to seven years in prison and paroled in 1991, even though Raskie was investigators’ top suspect as early as 1989.

Raskie was never charged in Hansen’s disappearance before he died in 2015. Law enforcement officials told Wisconsin Watch they lacked enough evidence to charge him as of 1991 when he was released from prison.

A key breakthrough came in 2003 when a retired police officer shared the information about Raskie’s truck being at Hansen’s apartment the night she disappeared. Based on that and other evidence, investigators quietly convinced a court to let them obtain Raskie’s DNA in 2008. State and local officials have so far refused to provide test results showing whether Raskie’s DNA matched unknown male DNA found in Hansen’s vehicle.

Wisconsin Watch obtained the DNA search warrant doing what we do best — meticulous shoe-leather investigative reporting that is time-consuming, expensive and increasingly rare.

For months, I interviewed sources about the Hansen case, talking to former sheriffs, Hansen family members and witnesses who interacted with Hansen the last day she was seen alive. The Price County Sheriff’s Office refused to talk about the case because it remains an “ongoing criminal investigation.”

One thing that was surprising: Most people in Price County who I talked to don’t think it was Weber. And Raskie’s name being in the search warrant didn’t come as a major surprise.

Wisconsin Watch co-founder and longtime investigative reporter Dee J. Hall and I recently visited the Price County Courthouse to obtain records. Dee searched for Raskie’s name on the court’s public computer terminal, and the search warrant file showed up with both Raskie’s name and Hansen’s name. The record doesn’t show up if you search CCAP, the statewide online court records system, from anywhere except the courthouse in Phillips.

This was the first time I had seen any public document connecting Hansen and Raskie. For a case that was shrouded in mystery for almost 40 years, this was a huge scoop!

Another thing I found surprising: Investigators have never put Raskie’s name out to the public. They haven’t even told the public that they were investigating Hansen’s disappearance as a homicide. When Price County Sheriff Brian Schmidt gave an interview to WSAW in 2024, he provided no new information about the case, even though the search warrant affidavit with loads of new information had been sitting unsealed in the clerk’s office for seven years. 

We don’t know for certain why Raskie hasn’t been named previously, but former Sheriff Richard Heitkemper acknowledged that investigators had to be “very, very, extremely careful” because Raskie was well-connected to wealthy people in town. His wife’s brothers founded Phillips Plating, one of the county’s largest companies.

But if the Price County Sheriff’s Office is trying to find Hansen’s body, wouldn’t it help to release the name of the person they think may have disposed of her somewhere?

Why not give accurate, available information to WSAW, rather than allow the news outlet to speculate that Weber was a suspect?

There are still lots of unanswered questions about this case. Why did it take 16 years for a police officer to provide key evidence? Did Raskie’s DNA match the unknown male DNA on the steering wheel of Hansen’s car? If it didn’t, what other efforts were made to obtain more evidence?

We don’t know because officials have refused to answer those questions. They’ve also blocked the public from seeing the records that might help answer them.

We’ll keep seeking the records and asking those questions. And when we learn more, we’ll report the answers, how we found them and the evidence behind them.

How Wisconsin Watch uncovered a long-hidden suspect in a 1987 Northwoods disappearance is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 13 minutes

Click here to read highlights from the story

• For nearly 40 years law enforcement has publicly said little more than that pregnant 23-year-old Shelly Hansen disappeared after leaving work in Phillips and that her car was found the next day in a local tavern parking lot.
• Newly obtained records show investigators gathered enough evidence by 2008 to get the DNA of Michael D. Raskie, who law enforcement had identified as a suspect as far back as 1989.
• Nearly two years after Hansen vanished, Raskie was convicted in a vicious attack on his wife, whose family owned one of Price County’s largest businesses.
• A key breakthrough in the case came in 2003, when a former Phillips police officer told investigators he saw Raskie’s vehicle in Hansen’s apartment parking lot the night she disappeared. The officer reported seeing Hansen at a local bar hours after she left work. 
• The new reporting raises questions about why Raskie was never charged before he died in 2015 and why investigators kept so much of the case hidden from the public.

Nearly 40 years ago, Marchelle “Shelly” Hansen went missing in Price County, Wisconsin. Law enforcement officials have since told the public very little about what happened to the pregnant 23-year-old. 

The sheriff in 1987 said investigators didn’t suspect foul play. They have never publicly stated that she was killed, and she remains listed in a state Department of Justice missing person database. Her body has never been found.

But a Wisconsin Watch investigation has uncovered substantial information about the case, including a never-before-named lead suspect whose DNA was obtained through a long-sealed search warrant in 2008, seven years before he died.

Law enforcement officials long ago determined that Michael D. Raskie, Hansen’s supervisor at Marquip Corp., was their top suspect and the likely father of her unborn child, according to the newly obtained court documents. The records — including a search warrant affidavit containing sworn statements from investigators — confirm the Price County Sheriff’s Office has been investigating the case as a first-degree intentional homicide.

Raskie was never charged in connection with Hansen’s disappearance. Wisconsin Watch is naming Raskie because the court document identifies him as a suspect. He died in 2015 at the age of 64.

Price County Sheriff Brian Schmidt, who took office in 2009 after 20 years as a deputy, declined to comment for this story. He denied Wisconsin Watch’s request to review the Hansen case file, calling it an “ongoing criminal investigation.” In a 2024 interview with WSAW he gave no new details and didn’t mention the unsealed search warrant, but said there is still hope there might be “someone that knows something now that time has passed who wants to come forward and at least talk about this with us.”

The Wisconsin Department of Justice also denied a records request, citing the open investigation and “any potential criminal prosecutions.” A spokesperson said the agency is limited to an assisting role in the investigation.

Hansen’s family declined to comment on the investigation.

Cold case warms up

For nearly four decades, the Hansen case has stumped investigators, divided Hansen’s siblings and featured in recent true crime podcasts. Many reports have speculated that the unknown father of her unborn child is a likely suspect, but have not named Raskie.

Two years after Hansen’s disappearance, Raskie was convicted of a brutal attack on his wife, whose brothers founded Phillips Plating, one of the largest companies in Price County.

Raskie was sentenced in August 1989 to seven years in prison for the attack. They divorced shortly after. A former Price County prosecutor told Wisconsin Watch that investigators didn’t have enough evidence to charge Raskie before he was paroled in December 1991.

The Hansen case had a breakthrough in 2003 when a former Phillips police officer belatedly reported seeing Raskie’s vehicle parked at Hansen’s apartment the night she disappeared, former Price County Sheriff Wallace Krenzke told Wisconsin Watch.

It took five years of additional investigation before Price County deputy and lead investigator Christopher Jarosinski signed the affidavit seeking Raskie’s DNA. The affidavit reveals that Raskie was rumored to have been responsible for Hansen’s disappearance as early as September 1989.

A former Marquip employee who spoke with Wisconsin Watch, but is not mentioned in the affidavit, said she alerted the Phillips police officer in spring 1988 that officials should investigate Raskie in Hansen’s disappearance. A few days later, she said, Price County’s lead homicide investigator on the case at the time, Richard Heitkemper, contacted her and she told him she had seen Raskie and Hansen engaged in an intense conversation the day Hansen disappeared.

Who is Shelly Hansen?

Of the roughly 170 open missing person cases in Wisconsin, Shelly Hansen’s is the 40th oldest.

Hansen grew up in the Sheboygan County village of Random Lake, with six older siblings. When her parents divorced, she moved with her mother to Hawkins, Wisconsin, about 25 miles from the Price County seat of Phillips, about an hour-and-a-half northwest of Wausau.

Hansen graduated from Ladysmith High School in 1982. She then went to work at Phillips Plating and moved into the Starlite Apartments just north of Phillips. In November 1987 she was working second shift at manufacturer Marquip Corp. and a second job at the IGA grocery store in Phillips.

She saw her mother for the last time on Oct. 11, 1987, during a visit to Random Lake. Her mother told The Sounder newspaper that they picked apples at Waldo Orchards. Hansen surprised her mother with the news that she might be pregnant.

Two weeks later, Hansen sent her mother a letter confirming the due date was in July and she wouldn’t be getting an abortion. In another letter she wrote that the father was going to be paying the medical bills and “all of this stuff — dresser, bed, stroller, walker, everything. And my agreement is not naming him as father to anyone.”

“All I want to know is you’re with me and same with everyone in the family,” Hansen wrote. “If not, I’ll do it on my own.”

‘Her eyes told me everything’

An employee at the IGA grocery store where Hansen worked a second job reported her missing on Tuesday, Nov. 17, 1987.

Five days earlier, on Thursday, Nov. 12, the last day she was seen alive, Hansen spent the morning getting an ultrasound at Flambeau Hospital in Park Falls. Around lunchtime she brought the sonogram to the Park Falls bar that her brother Ron and sister-in-law Wendy were getting ready to open. Ron asked about the father, but she didn’t give a name — only that he was married, Wendy Hansen told Wisconsin Watch. 

Later that afternoon Shelly went to a laundromat in downtown Phillips where she ran into Kathy Krenzke — whose husband later became sheriff. Hansen proudly showed off the ultrasound photos of her healthy baby and talked about not being sure whether to visit her mother that weekend or go to Ron and Wendy’s bar opening.

“She was excited,” Krenzke recalled in an interview with Wisconsin Watch. “She showed me the ultrasound of the baby, and I wonder if they ever found that in her purse, because she took it out of her purse to show me.”

Krenzke asked Hansen who the father was, but Hansen wouldn’t provide a name. Krenzke said Hansen told her she planned to “confront” the father to make sure he would financially support the child.

Krenzke said Hansen appeared to be in a hurry, removing her still-damp clothes from the dryer with plans to air-dry them at her apartment near Marquip.

Hansen worked the evening shift at Marquip, now BW Papersystems, on the north end of Phillips — the same shift Raskie worked as a supervisor at what was then a corrugated splicing machine manufacturer.

Former Marquip employee Tina Andersen told a state investigator that Hansen showed her the sonogram the day she disappeared and that Hansen described the father as a Marquip foreman with two small children, according to the affidavit. Those descriptions fit Raskie.

Cindy Miller, another former Marquip employee, told Wisconsin Watch she saw Hansen that same day at the plant having an intense conversation with Raskie. She recalled Hansen previously asking if she had any leftover maternity clothes.

Miller, who handed out equipment at the tool room counter window, said she saw Raskie and Hansen near the bubbler, the large analog clock above them showing it was before 6:30 p.m. Miller told Wisconsin Watch she saw Raskie pacing, his hand gripping his wrist behind his back.

“She looked up at me, and our eyes locked, you know, looked right at each other, and just the expression on her face, it was very sad,” Miller said. “Her eyes told me everything.”

Previously undisclosed Hansen sighting

The only official story law enforcement officials have put out about Hansen’s last known whereabouts is that she was seen leaving Marquip at 8 p.m. on Nov. 12.

But the affidavit reveals another, previously undisclosed Hansen sighting that came to light in an August 2003 interview with former Phillips police officer Leonard Shilts, who died two years later. Shilts told investigators he talked to Hansen at the Tasmanian Devil bar while on patrol duty between 10 and 11 p.m. that night. Shilts said Hansen indicated she was leaving her apartment “for a time” and asked him to check in on it.

Shilts told investigators he drove past Hansen’s apartment building later that night between 2 and 3 a.m. He said he saw only two vehicles — Raskie’s truck and a white or light-colored vehicle that likely belonged to another apartment resident.

Hansen’s maroon Dodge Omni was found hours later at the Lake Ten tavern, located on a small clear lake 10 minutes southwest of Phillips, according to the affidavit. It was parked at an angle that looked as if someone had left it in a hurry, the tavern owner’s mother told investigators in 2007. She reported the abandoned vehicle to the sheriff’s office the afternoon of Saturday, Nov. 14, 1987.

Doug Sprague, the Price County sheriff’s deputy who responded to Lake Ten, told Wisconsin Watch that the tavern owner reported the vehicle wasn’t there when he closed the bar at 9 p.m. on Nov. 12. Sprague said the car was locked in the tavern parking lot, which overlooked a 42-acre lake and boat landing. Sprague said he later checked Hansen’s apartment.

“I went to where she lived, just north of town in a room, and none of her clothes were disturbed,” Sprague recalled. “There was nothing packed in a suitcase or anything like that. It just looked like she wasn’t planning to go anywhere.”

Another Raskie connection

At that time, Michael Raskie’s brother Steven rented a home about a half mile from the Lake Ten tavern, according to the affidavit. Steven told investigators in September 1989 — a month after his brother’s spousal abuse conviction — that he had heard the rumors implicating Michael in Hansen’s disappearance, but that he had never seen them together. 

He said his brother didn’t have a key to his home and didn’t appear to have used the residence during the times Steven was away working as a bricklayer.

But the landlord’s wife told an investigator in 2003 that Steven, who died in 2012, always left the rented residence unlocked. 

Michael Raskie’s ex-wife, who at the time was the human resources manager at Phillips Plating, told investigators over the course of three interviews in 2006 and 2008 that her ex-husband stored a dirt bike, a motorized tricycle and a Harley motorcycle in a shed on the property his brother rented. She declined a Wisconsin Watch interview request.

She also said she found it strange when she overheard Hansen talking about Raskie to her former co-workers at Phillips Plating. She said her husband told her that Hansen would bring him dinners at Marquip and that he “couldn’t get rid of her,” according to the affidavit.

Raskie’s ex-wife told investigators when she told her husband that Hansen had gone missing, he replied, “Well, she was a sick human being anyway.”

Wallace Krenzke, who was sheriff from 2003 to 2009, told Wisconsin Watch that deputies dredged Lake Ten and dug in multiple places, including a garbage pit behind the house Steven Raskie had rented. But the search for Hansen’s body came up empty.

A breakthrough — and a denial

Krenzke said the Shilts interview in 2003 — 16 years after Hansen’s disappearance — was a turning point in the case. The affidavit cites interviews from 1987 and 1989, but then nothing for 14 years. Then there was a flurry of activity in the years leading up to the 2008 search warrant for Raskie’s DNA.

Raskie himself was interviewed three times in 2004 and 2005. He told investigators that Hansen was capable of manipulating someone over a pregnancy.

“Sometimes you had the feeling like she would do something like that to someone,” Raskie is quoted in the affidavit. Asked if he had any theories about what happened, he mentioned the 2004 murder of a woman in Salt Lake City whose husband confessed to throwing her body in a dumpster. He noted that without a body, police could not be sure that the Utah woman was murdered.

Raskie also denied a sexual relationship with Hansen, while speculating that his ex-wife could have been behind the disappearance because she suspected him of an extramarital affair.

DNA retrieved from car

In 2006, investigators collected DNA swabs from inside Hansen’s vehicle, which was still in law enforcement custody as of 2024. The State Crime Lab identified DNA from one unknown male. Investigators obtained DNA from Steven Raskie and ruled him out.

They also ruled out a former Marquip employee who told investigators he had an informal “sexual” relationship with Hansen, but suspected she was also seeing Michael Raskie. The former employee was unmarried at the time with no children and did not fit Hansen’s description of the father.

At one point, he told investigators he had confronted Raskie about having sex with Hansen. Raskie never admitted or denied it, according to his telling, but “would smile and walk away.”

When asked if he had ever been in Hansen’s vehicle, Raskie stated he may have sat in her passenger seat. He said he and Hansen were part of a group of Marquip employees who often drank together after work. 

The affidavit notes two other witnesses who in the 2000s provided circumstantial evidence that Raskie and Hansen had a personal relationship.

Hansen’s next-door neighbor told investigators that in the days before Hansen’s disappearance she was awakened by a violent and extremely intense argument she could hear through the thin wall. She said she heard a male speaking in loud, accusatory tones and a female voice speaking in calming tones. She also told investigators the male’s vehicle was a “spruced up” “guy truck” pickup.

An investigator also spoke with a witness who said he saw Raskie and Hansen kissing outside the Stonecroft Tavern. The witness also said Hansen told him in November 1987 that the father of her unborn child was married with two children, according to the affidavit.

Based on all of the presented evidence, Price County Circuit Judge Douglas Fox ordered the DNA sample be taken from Raskie. Records show Jarosinski took three swabs from Raskie’s mouth.

Because the investigative file remains closed to public inspection, the results of the lab testing remain unknown to the public. Though Raskie acknowledged sitting in the passenger seat of Hansen’s vehicle, the unknown male DNA was found on the left side of the steering wheel, which could mean the person drove the vehicle.

For investigators to obtain DNA evidence, they must lay out their case in a sworn application filed in court. Then-Price County District Attorney Mark Fuhr, now the county’s lone circuit court judge, asked every six months that the search warrant records remain sealed to protect confidential informants in the case. In 2017, two years after Raskie died, the seal expired and was not renewed.

A search for Raskie’s name in the online statewide court record system does not reveal the existence of the search warrant, but Wisconsin Watch found it by searching on the single computer terminal in the Price County Clerk of Courts office.

Why wasn’t Michael Raskie ever charged?

The affidavit renews questions about the Hansen case, specifically why Raskie was never charged and why law enforcement officials have kept so much of their investigation secret.

“I was asked once by the local paper what the status was of Michael Raskie,” recalled Krenzke, the former sheriff. “I said, ‘If I had information which would lead me to probable cause, he’d be arrested.’ I told them I had none.” Krenzke added that he was unaware authorities had obtained a DNA sample from Raskie during his time as sheriff.

Krenzke said he kept some distance from the investigation because as chief of security at Marquip in the 1980s and 1990s he had worked with both Hansen and Raskie. Schmidt, the current sheriff, also overlapped with Hansen and Raskie when he worked at Marquip from 1987 to 1989.

Heitkemper, the lead investigator on the case in 1987 and sheriff from 1995 to 2001, said the case got off to a slow start. Heitkemper said he was the county’s only homicide detective at the time and yet he wasn’t assigned to the case until many days after Hansen was reported missing. All that time Hansen’s car remained unattended in the Lake Ten parking lot, he said.

Heitkemper blamed then-Sheriff Wayne Wirsing, who died in 2018, for not assigning him the case sooner because he was a political rival. Heitkemper ran for sheriff against Wirsing and lost in 1986, 1990 and 1992 before defeating him in 1994.

Miller, the former Marquip employee, said not long after she left the company in spring 1988 she saw Shilts at a gas station and told him police should be looking at Raskie in the Hansen case. She said she got a call from Heitkemper a few days later and shared her account of seeing Hansen and Raskie at the bubbler.

Heitkemper acknowledged Raskie became the lead suspect while he oversaw the case.

Heitkemper said Hansen called her mother Joyce Hansen the day she disappeared and told her Michael Raskie was the father of her unborn child, although he said Joyce didn’t share that detail with investigators until years later. 

Joyce Hansen died in 2022. Her obituary notes Shelly is “assumed dead.”

Heitkemper added that Raskie’s connections in Price County made the Sheriff’s Office particularly cautious in tying him to Hansen’s disappearance. 

“Raskie was a very well-liked individual,” Heitkemper told Wisconsin Watch. “He had a lot of contacts throughout the community, a lot of people with money, and so we had to be very, very, extremely careful where we let information out.”

Buck Schilling, who served as Price County district attorney from August 1990 until January 2003, right before the breakthrough in the case, recalled Heitkemper telling him he wanted to be able to charge Raskie in Hansen’s disappearance before Raskie was released from prison.

“At the time I don’t believe they had enough evidence for me to charge him,” Schilling said. “Even (Heitkemper) knew he didn’t have enough evidence yet.”

Schilling reviewed the 2008 search warrant at Wisconsin Watch’s request. He said it shows the Price County Sheriff’s Office established probable cause to obtain Raskie’s DNA, a lower standard than proving someone’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in criminal court. Prosecutors generally must believe the available evidence can meet that higher standard before filing charges.

If the unknown male DNA on the left side of Hansen’s steering wheel matched Raskie’s, it might have strengthened the case because it could be used as evidence that Raskie drove the vehicle at some point.

A state Department of Justice spokesperson said the department is reviewing Wisconsin Watch’s request to reconsider its denial of releasing Hansen case records.

Editor’s note: This story corrects the description of Marquip in 1987. By then it had switched from manufacturing building construction machines to corrugated splicing machines.

Anyone with information about the Shelly Hansen case should contact the Price County Sheriff’s Office at (715) 339-3011.

Nearly 40 years after Shelly Hansen vanished in Wisconsin’s Northwoods, unsealed records reveal a hidden suspect is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

Reading Time: 2 minutes

Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service won 12 awards on Friday as part of the Milwaukee Press Club Awards for Excellence in Wisconsin Journalism, including six first-place gold prizes for stories on the Wisconsin Supreme Court, shuttered power plants, a detained immigrant, police misconduct and a Milwaukee high school barbershop.

In the online reporting category, state reporter Tom Kertscher took home two gold prizes for his profile of former Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman and for a story with reporter Paul Kiefer on coal power plants ratepayers continue to pay for years after they stop producing electricity.

Freelance reporter Larry Sandler and data reporter Hongyu Liu won a gold award in the best online explanatory story or series for their three-part series “Supreme Costs,” which examined how Wisconsin became the first state to feature nine-figure spending on a high court election.

Intergenerational reporter Chesnie Wardell earned the gold award in the writing category best short soft feature story for her report about a barbershop at Rufus King International High School.

Pathways to success reporter Natalie Yahr along with Cap Times reporter Erin McGroarty won a gold award in the writing category for their story on Miguel Jerez Robles, a Cuban asylum seeker whom ICE arrested after a routine immigration hearing. Yahr and pathways to success reporter Miranda Dunlap won a bronze award in the online category for best long hard feature story for their report on high schools offering more college courses.

Photojournalist Jonathan Aguilar received silver and bronze awards for his photography in the best photo essay and best feature photo categories. His images captured an urban angler and a Dia de los Muertos celebration. Photojournalist Joe Timmerman won a silver award in the best feature photo category for his portrait of an anonymous transgender teenager.

Former reporter Mario Koran’s work on Milwaukee County’s Brady list, which lists law enforcement officers who have been dishonest, won two awards for best investigative story or series, a silver award in writing and a gold award in video. The project was a collaboration among Wisconsin Watch, TMJ4 and the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

Former intern Margaret Shreiner won a silver award in the online category for best investigative story or series for her report on a mother who couldn’t get a public defender after 10,000 calls to lawyers. The Press Club hands out awards in both professional and student categories. Shreiner won the award in the professional category while interning as a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Wisconsin Watch and Milwaukee NNS win 12 Milwaukee Press Club awards is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.

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A 2023 report found Wisconsin needs around 200,000 new housing units to meet demand by 2030.

Forward Analytics, the nonpartisan research arm of the Wisconsin Counties Association, said in the 2023 report that Wisconsin needs between 140,000 and 227,000 new housing units.

Those differing estimates are based on population changes, migration to Wisconsin and other trends, such as whether young adults choose to live with parents. Forward Analytics concluded the total need is “200,000 or more” units.

The League of Wisconsin Municipalities, Wisconsin Realtors Association and Wisconsin Builders Association cite that 200,000 estimate as part of their joint effort to address the shortage.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition’s 2026 housing profile for Wisconsin found the state needs to make 118,000 more homes available and affordable for the lowest-income households.

The needed housing represents about 7% of the state’s 2.8 million housing units, according to Census figures.

This fact brief is responsive to conversations such as this one.

Sources

• Forward Analytics A Housing Hurdle: Demographics Drive Need for More Homes
• League of Wisconsin Municipalities More Wisconsin Housing
• National Low Income Housing Coalition Housing Needs by State: Wisconsin
• U.S. Census Bureau Quick Facts: Wisconsin (2024)

Is Wisconsin projected to need 200,000 more homes to meet demand by 2030? is a post from Wisconsin Watch, a non-profit investigative news site covering Wisconsin since 2009. Please consider making a contribution to support our journalism.