The median home price in northeast Wisconsin has more than doubled over the last decade, while fair market rents in the region’s two largest cities have also climbed sharply.
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Computers line the walls of a reentry center inside the Women’s Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center in Vandalia, Mo. Incarcerated women preparing for release can use the computers to search for employment and other resources while on parole. (Photo by Amanda Watford/Stateline)
Women on parole report higher rates of housing instability, poor health and serious mental health and substance use disorders than men on parole and women who weren’t on parole, according to a new analysis from the nonpartisan think tank Council on Criminal Justice.
For people leaving prison, parole is a period of transition that can involve finding housing and work, reconnecting with family and accessing health care while also meeting the conditions of supervision. How well those pieces come together can shape whether someone successfully settles back into the community — a key part, some argue, of reducing future involvement with the criminal justice system and promoting public safety.
The council’s latest report examined nationally representative 2021-2023 data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, comparing women who reported being on parole both with women who were not on parole and with men who were on parole.
About 13% of women on parole reported moving three or more times in the previous year, compared with 2% of women who were not on parole and 6% of men on parole, according to the analysis.
Women on parole also were more likely to report poor health. About 29% rated their overall health as fair or poor, compared with 16% of women not on parole and 17% of men on parole.
About 24% of women on parole met the criteria for a severe mental health disorder, compared with 7% of women not on parole and 10% of men on parole, according to the council’s report. About 25% of women on parole also reported experiencing a major depressive episode during the previous year, compared with 10% of women not on parole and 12% of men on parole.
The analysis found that substance use disorders were common among people on parole, but severe disorders were more prevalent among women. About 32% of women on parole met the criteria for a severe substance use disorder, compared with 24% of men on parole and 3% of women not on parole.
The disparity was especially large for opioid use. About 18% of women on parole met the criteria for a severe opioid use disorder, compared with 5% of men on parole and 0.4% of women not on parole.
Health and housing can make the demands of reentry harder to manage, including maintaining employment, attending treatment and supervision appointments, and managing family responsibilities, according to the report.
Women on parole also were more likely than men on parole to report living in a household with minor children. About 29% of women on parole lived in a household with at least one child under 18, compared with 19% of men on parole and 30% of women who were not on parole.
The survey, however, did not indicate whether respondents were parents, caregivers or financially responsible for the children, according to the report.
Health insurance coverage also differed among the groups. About 11% of women on parole reported being uninsured, compared with 7% of women not on parole and 20% of men on parole, according to the analysis.
The report’s authors wrote that the findings point to the need for reentry planning that goes beyond supervision requirements to address housing, health care, mental health and substance use treatment and family responsibilities. The authors could not determine whether the conditions preceded or resulted from criminal justice involvement, but the findings strongly suggest women on parole face distinct reentry challenges.
Stateline reporter Amanda Watford can be reached at awatford@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
A coalition of local businesses and volunteers headed by Habitat for Humanity is planning to fix 100 homes in 100 days in Menasha .
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Gov. Tony Evers has formally requested a disaster declaration from President Donald Trump in response to a tornado that ripped through the Fox Valley in late July.
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Wisconsin’s homeless population has been rising in recent years, but the state continues to outperform its Midwest neighbors in addressing homelessness.
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This story is part of The uprising in Sherman Park: 10 years later, a Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service series examining resilience, collective action and ongoing efforts to address the inequities that sparked a pivotal moment in Milwaukee’s history.
Milwaukee County Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Marcelia Nicholson-Bovell remembers hearing the pain of community members who felt unheard and disenfranchised during the Sherman Park uprising of 2016.
The unrest occurred after Milwaukee Police Officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown shot and killed 23-year-old Sylville Smith. Heaggan-Brown was acquitted of Smith’s killing but was later sentenced to prison on unrelated sex crimes charges. His death sparked days of protest in Sherman Park, with clashes between residents and police and significant damage to property.
“I think a lot of it had to do with the community’s relationship to public safety, but also the historic disinvestment,” said Nicholson-Bovell, who was a new county supervisor representing parts of Sherman Park in District 10 at the time.
Milwaukee’s manufacturing industry once supported good-paying jobs for Black residents, said U.S. Rep. Gwen Moore. But when many of those family-sustaining jobs vanished, residents faced structural inequalities that impact maternal health outcomes, incarceration rates and poverty and unemployment, she said.
“Years of facing disinvestment and these challenges cultivated tensions that reached a breaking point after Sylville Smith’s death,” Moore said.
In the aftermath of the uprising, many government leaders, community members and philanthropists shared an interest in addressing longstanding systemic issues that contributed to the summer’s tensions.
Ten years later, those investments have led to some changes, although it’s unclear how many Sherman Park residents directly benefited.
An investment of $4.5 million in state funding to improve housing stock and employment opportunities in Sherman Park and Milwaukee was announced a few weeks after the uprising by then-Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele.
The initiative promised $1.5 million for employment programs, $2 million to help the city demolish and renovate tax-foreclosed properties and $1 million in Wisconsin Fast Forward grants awarded to Milwaukee businesses and nonprofits for job training.
With $1 million, the city launched the Milwaukee Employment/Renovation Initiative, or MERI. The program helped six developers purchase distressed tax-foreclosed homes for $1 and receive grants of $10,000 per property to rehabilitate them to go back on the market.
The program faced early criticism from residents, and progress was slow initially.
The developers eventually renovated and sold 104 homes, 81 in the greater Sherman Park area, with most projects wrapped up by mid-2019, according to a presentation to a Common Council committee at the time. Additional private donations and funding led to a $7.9 million total investment in the properties.
Each property renovation had to employ at least one worker certified in the city’s Residents Preference Program for unemployed, underemployed or low-income workers. A total of 33,000 hours were logged by Residents Preference Program workers.
Jim Gaillard, vice president of Ezekiel Community Development Corp., said the initiative fit naturally with the nonprofit’s model of training chronically unemployed people, minority contractors or those impacted by the justice system to develop skills in the construction trades while rehabbing homes. The nonprofit, also known as Ezekiel HOPE, works to sell the properties to first-time homeowners.
“We needed to show some people that they could do more than what they thought they could do, so it gave people hope,” Gaillard said.
The city later launched another round of funding, dubbed MERI 2.0, that was open to a wider boundary of tax-foreclosed properties.
Lafayette Crump, commissioner of the Department of City Development, said both iterations helped shape the Homes MKE program, under Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s administration, which has fully renovated 77 homes with 20 more properties still in progress.
“It’s really a great example of how strategic public investment could improve property values, return homes to the tax rolls but also strengthen neighborhood stability by moving more of these properties back into productive use,” Crump said.
Ezekiel renovated five homes through MERI, three during the second phase and three in Homes MKE.
“I think the other big thing is that it opened people’s eyes to what can be done if you put a concentrated effort together,” Gaillard said.
Darlene C. Russell, director of community engagement for the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, remembers the period of unrest as a painful and emotional time.
“I also remember neighbors checking on one another, community leaders stepping forward and residents asking what they could do to help,” she said.
That spirit of community care inspired the Greater Milwaukee Foundation to launch Reasons for Hope MKE with $200,000 in initial funding. The micro-grant fund is designed to provide immediate and flexible support for community-led efforts throughout the city, Russell said.
Over the last 10 years, the fund awarded 312 grants totaling over $2 million.
While Sherman Park was central to its creation, the fund is open to grassroots organizations throughout the city for neighborhood-strengthening initiatives such as youth and arts programming, community events and leadership development, according to Russell.
“It was never intended to be a quick fix to systemic issues. Instead, it was designed to invest in trusted neighborhood leaders already doing the work,” Russell said.
Residents from a variety of neighborhoods serve on the fund’s Community Advisory Council and receive training on grant administration. The current 13-member council reviews Reasons for Hope MKE grant applications and makes funding recommendations.
Community members have donated $146,800 to the Reasons for Hope MKE Fund in addition to institutional funding.
This year, the fund has supported Sherman Park through grants for activities like community gardening and wellness programming with Iwigara Holistic Hub in the 2800 block of North 35th Street and the UpStart Kitchen Food Crawl with PRISM Economic Development Corp.
The BMO bank branch, O’Reilly Auto Parts, Jet Beauty Supply and a former BP gas station, which were damaged or destroyed during the uprising, were rebuilt. The BP gas station is now a Citgo.
Other investments supported the Sherman Phoenix Marketplace development, the county park and other initiatives.
The city provided $225,000 for the Sherman Phoenix Tax Incremental District. Moore and Sen. Tammy Baldwin advocated for federal funds for the neighborhood, including a $750,000 grant to the Wisconsin Women’s Business Initiative Corp. to support the Sherman Phoenix and neighborhood entrepreneurs.
Milwaukee County received a $250,000 Community Development Investment Grant in 2018 from the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. to support construction costs of the entrepreneurial hub, according to Nicholson-Bovell.
Milwaukee County funded $2.3 million in heating, ventilating and air conditioning system upgrades for the Mary Ryan Boys & Girls Club at Sherman Park in 2016.
More recently, Nicholson-Bovell and the County Board helped leverage nearly a million dollars of American Rescue Plan Act funding to build public and private partnerships to support a multimillion-dollar revitalization of the park. Improvements included a new splash pad, improved lighting and pathways, resurfaced athletic spaces and more.
“When you go into Sherman Park today, it looks a lot different than it did 10 years ago,” Nicholson-Bovell said. “It feels more open, more airy, it’s better lit.”
Looking back, Crump said he’s glad there was political will at local and higher levels of government to make some determinations after the Sherman Park uprising, and later in 2020 and 2021 after the COVID pandemic and death of George Floyd prompted similar conversations.
“But it’s unfortunate that it takes those major incidents that draw a lot of attention in order to make those things happen,” he said.
Going forward, Mabel Lamb, who became executive director of the Sherman Park Community Association in 2018, said she would like to see even more investment in the neighborhood’s housing stock, upgrades for businesses and the community as a whole.
As their work continues, Moore, Crump and Nicholson-Bovell plan to keep listening to residents.
“My constituents didn’t want just jobs, but an opportunity to have a voice in their community and to feel respected,” Moore said. “There is still so much work to do.”
Russell said after 15 years with the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, she’s learned that hope is not simply an idea.
“It is something you can witness. It is something you can nurture. It is something you can invest in,” she said.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Investments changed Milwaukee’s Sherman Park after 2016 uprising, but who benefited remains unclear 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.
This story is part of The uprising in Sherman Park: 10 years later, a Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service series examining resilience, collective action and ongoing efforts to address the inequities that sparked a pivotal moment in Milwaukee’s history.
Ten years after the Sherman Park uprising, many of the economic conditions residents and activists pointed to as problematic – even dangerous – in 2016 still remain, according to U.S. Census Bureau and local data analyzed by NNS.
Many residents at the time said the unrest on Aug. 13, 2016, was about more than the fatal police shooting of Sylville Smith by a Milwaukee police officer. They pointed to long-standing poverty, decades of disinvestment and a lack of opportunity as some of the conditions that fueled the uprising.
Today, even as some measures of economic progress have improved, many of those same challenges are still present in the Sherman Park neighborhood.
“Some good changes have happened,” said Vaun Mayes, a community organizer and one of the city’s violence interrupters. “But for the most part, Sherman Park is still basically the same and has the same general issues.”
To examine how Sherman Park has changed since the uprising, NNS analyzed U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey five-year estimates, comparing the 2016 and 2024 datasets, the most recent five-year data.
Because the Census Bureau does not define Sherman Park as a neighborhood, NNS approximated the neighborhood using census tracts and a city neighborhood map.
NNS examined:
The comparison between indicators then and now shows a mixed picture.
Taken together, the findings suggest that although some measures associated with upward economic mobility improved, many of the economic outcomes often associated with those indicators, including higher incomes and greater housing stability, did not.
For example, the share of adults age 25 and older holding at least a bachelor’s degree increased from 7.2% to 8.9%, and the unemployment rate declined from 20.1% to 15.8%. However, poverty rose across every age group at the same time.
Poverty increased most among elderly residents, increasing from 15.9% in 2016 to 33.0% in 2024.
Similarly, median household income, adjusted for inflation, and homeownership declined: Roughly seven in 10 occupied housing units were renter-occupied in 2024, compared with roughly two-thirds in 2016.
Although incomes declined, the average cost of rent, adjusted for inflation, increased from $1,126 to $1,196. Population also declined in the area since 2016.
The neighborhood remained overwhelmingly Black, though it became slightly more racially diverse.
Public safety trends also show a mixed bag.
Through Aug. 10, Milwaukee police recorded 97 aggravated assaults, 12 nonfatal shootings and three homicides in Sherman Park this year. All three types of crimes were up from the same point last year when police recorded 67 aggravated assaults, five nonfatal shootings and two homicides in that time span.
At the same time, robberies, thefts and carjackings were all below last year’s levels.
Specific types of violence in Sherman Park have fluctuated over the course of the past 10 years, according to data from the Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission.
The neighborhood recorded 35 shooting victims in 2016, including homicides and nonfatal shootings. That number rose to 47 in 2017 – the year following the uprising.
The number of homicide and nonfatal shooting victims has fluctuated over the decade, rising sharply during the pandemic years before falling to 17 in 2024.
ShotSpotter data from MPD gives a sense of the frequency of gun shots throughout the neighborhood over the past few years.
Sherman Park accounted for roughly 7% of gunfire calls citywide between 2021 and 2025.
“There’s still good people there that are working to improve things that are happening on the ground in that neighborhood,” Mayor Cavalier Johnson said.
Johnson pointed to the Sherman Park Community Association; Sherman Phoenix, a marketplace built on the grounds of a bank that was set ablaze during the unrest; the neighborhood’s new Business Improvement District; and his administration’s Year of Housing initiative as examples of continued investment in the neighborhood.
Karin Tyler, executive director of the city’s Department of Community Wellness and Safety, said the Sherman Park uprising was a defining moment for Milwaukee, one that exposed deep challenges but also sparked action, resilience and a stronger commitment to community-led public safety.
From that moment came critical investments, she said, including Milwaukee’s Blueprint for Peace and Program the Parks, which created safe spaces and positive opportunities for young people.
“Sherman Park also has one of the strongest networks of block captains through the Alert Neighbor Program, a reflection of residents taking ownership of the safety and strength of their neighborhood,” Tyler said. “Local businesses throughout Sherman Park and the surrounding area have stepped up as well, investing in and working alongside the community.”
Johnson said that Black homeownership has improved citywide, though those gains haven’t appeared yet in the Sherman Park data analyzed by NNS.
Despite the challenges, Mayes has also seen signs of progress.
“SPCA (Sherman Park Community Association) has become a stronger and more vocal and invested organization for the area and have taken up and advocated for more issues,” he said.
“But has housing changed? Has job access changed? Quality of life?” he asked.
Mayes said he’s also noticed a gap between investment and outcomes in youth services.
“Investment and grants focused on issues of youth have been prioritized. However, the impact from those investments could be more impactful and intentional,” he said.
While citing progress, Johnson also acknowledged work that still needs to occur in the neighborhood, especially given its recent past.
“Certainly, there are challenges. There can be lagging things, especially when something traumatic like that happens,” Johnson said. “It is like a bomb going off in a place like that.”
Johnson said the city needs to do more work on housing in Sherman Park.
He said his administration’s plans to focus on housing this year will eventually impact neighborhoods such as Sherman Park.
Though the changes will take time, Johnson said, some of the issues that have plagued Sherman Park and other neighborhoods for years have historic roots. He pointed to decades of deindustrialization that continues to affect Milwaukee.
“What it did is leave cities, communities like Milwaukee and the Upper Midwest … holding the bag, looking around like, ‘Where are the opportunities?’” he said. “That is not a city of Milwaukee issue, it’s more of a national and international sort of issue.”
Milwaukee Public Schools also recognizes the deep pain that sparked the unrest in Sherman Park, said Stephen Davis, the district’s media relations manager. He stressed the district’s commitment to serving students and families across every neighborhood in Milwaukee.
“Specifically, we are actively directing investments toward schools in historically disinvested communities,” Davis said, citing MPS’ investment of nearly $13 million in four schools on the North Side as well as a new districtwide literacy plan to address the “multigenerational literacy crisis.”
The Milwaukee Police Department stressed its commitment to Sherman Park and other communities as well.
The department remains committed to strengthening trust and partnership, a spokesperson for the department said.
“We continue to enhance police-community relations and ensure our training, policies and risk-management practices align with nationally recognized best standards,” the spokesperson said.
Mayes said he’s seen some fruit of efforts to improve police-community relations, describing the relationship as “leaps better than back then.”
The city’s formal body that pays close attention to how the police and community are relating to each other is the Milwaukee Fire and Police Commission.
“The (Fire and Police Commission) is planning some more meetings out in the community, which is exciting,” said Commissioner Krissie Fung.
“I’m also looking forward to continuing to improve the complaint process with the new investigator that is coming on board,” she said.
Fung acknowledged that the commission’s role in overseeing the Police Department has changed significantly over the past decade, particularly following the passage of Act 12, which shifted some crucial authority of the commission to the police chief.
At the time, both the chair and vice chair of the commission resigned in protest.
“Act 12 was a blow to the whole city,” Amanda Avalos, the commission’s former vice chair, previously told NNS. “It took away something that was a really positive thing that the city had. … It was a really unique form of community power.”
Fung said one high point for transparency was the adoption of Standard Operating Procedure 575 governing the public release of police video.
Police video of Sylville Smith’s shooting death wasn’t released until June 2017, when it was shown during the murder trial of Milwaukee Police Officer Dominique Heaggan-Brown. He was eventually acquitted of Smith’s killing but sentenced to prison on an unrelated sexual assault charge.
The symptoms residents said helped give rise to the unrest in 2016 reflected what researchers describe as the social determinants of health — the economic and social conditions that shape people’s health and quality of life.
Those conditions include employment, education, income, housing stability and neighborhood conditions.
“Limited access to stable employment, economic opportunity and resources can contribute to the conditions that increase the risk of violence,” Tyler said. “Public safety cannot be separated from economic stability and opportunity.”
Tyler said improving conditions means investing in local leaders like Vaun Mayes and programs that support youth engagement, violence prevention, economic opportunity and community-centered public safety.
Today, many Milwaukee leaders continue to describe violence prevention in those terms.
Michael Levas, a specialist in pediatrics and emergency medicine at Children’s Wisconsin, says that while parenting plays an important role in preventing violence, parents also need stable housing, economic opportunity and community support to help children succeed.
In other words, economic conditions can increase the risk factors associated with violence.
Mayes said the data trends in Sherman Park since the uprising acknowledged the good, bad and yet to come:
“We have some great things and progress, yet there is still much work left to do.”
Paul Kiefer of Wisconsin Watch contributed to this report.
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
10 years after uprising, stubborn challenges persist in Milwaukee’s Sherman Park neighborhood 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.
A person works on a condominium in Chicago. Some U.S. cities are trying to modernize the housing permitting process by adopting AI tools. (Photo by Robbie Sequeira/Stateline)
New housing projects can sometimes stall out as a developer applies to city or county planning boards and goes through cycles of inspections, reviews and approvals.
Now, cities are increasingly turning to artificial intelligence to address one of the most persistent sources of housing permitting delays: incomplete applications. And two new streams of federal money aim to help them.
AI can handle time-intensive tasks such as scanning applications and flagging errors. The aim, some city officials say, is to eliminate repeated rounds of corrections that can add weeks or months to the process — but to leave final decisions in the hands of human reviewers.
The sweeping new federal housing law enacted last month creates an Innovation Fund with $200 million annually for local efforts to speed up permitting. And the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is offering up to $3 million in grants for local governments to deploy automated building code permitting systems.
Syracuse, New York, applied for one of the HUD grants, along with cities across the country, including Coeur d’Alene, Idaho; Mobile, Alabama; and Richland, Washington.
Vincent Scipione, chief information officer for Syracuse, told Stateline that if the city wins the grant, it would open up a competitive bidding process for vendors and ask them about two big topics: data governance and algorithm design. The city wants to install an AI system to assist developers to file more complete applications upfront thus reducing time needed for revisions.
“Who owns the data that is being handled, and how is it being handled? That’s important,” Scipione told Stateline. “If it ends up being an AI-based solution, then algorithms that are involved and we need to ask what they are going to be handling?”
Large cities including Baltimore, Denver and Los Angeles have recently launched AI tools to streamline housing permitting, and smaller cities such as Everett, Washington; Lebanon, New Hampshire; and Naples, Florida, are following suit.
Texas’ Harris County, which includes Houston, this month put $750,000 toward an artificial intelligence program meant to speed up the permitting process for new construction projects.
The Denver City Council voted in March to approve a five-year contract for an AI Guided Plan Review platform to reduce permitting backlogs, for around $4.6 million. A city official said only about 37% of applications are accepted on the first round, and the goal is to increase that to 80% with the new tool.
The lone dissenting vote — council member Flor Alvidrez — raised concerns about the inaccuracies of AI systems generally. She also said local architects and developers raised concerns with her that AI may not be ready to handle the complexity of zoning codes and site-specific conditions.
Matt Mudd, press secretary for Louisville, Kentucky, Mayor Craig Greenberg, told Stateline the city is testing an AI-assisted residential permitting system aimed at reducing delays caused by incomplete applications. The pilot uses property information, Geographic Information System (GIS) data and local permitting requirements to flag missing or incomplete information before an application reaches a reviewer, with early testing capable of reducing “avoidable” resubmissions by 50% or more, Mudd said.
The project is in the testing phase with a small group of builders and has not yet launched publicly. Mudd said employees remain responsible for permit reviews and final decisions.
Honolulu was one of the first cities to introduce AI into its permitting process with a tool called CivCheck. That program examines building permit applications to check applications against local codes and bylaws, flag missing information and guide applications through corrections.
Dawn Takeuchi Apuna, director of the city and county of Honolulu’s Department of Planning and Permitting, said the better the quality and completeness of the applications, the better and faster the department’s review.
Prior to agreeing to work with CivCheck, Takeuchi Apuna said, city officials made sure the vendor knew that they weren’t looking to replace staff. She wanted AI to replace time spent by city planners reading incomplete applications and sending them back, and free them up for more face-to-face meetings with developers.
The rollout of Honolulu’s overhaul of its decades-old permitting process, which included a cloud-based platform called HNL Build as well as CivCheck, wasn’t entirely smooth, however. An anonymous survey of more than 150 employees — half the staff — in the weeks after HNL Build launched provided almost universally negative feedback and many urged a return to the old system, the Honolulu Civil Beat reported.
The median wait time to obtain a new building permit dropped to 2.5 months from August through April — a 40% decrease compared with the same period a year earlier, a Civil Beat review found.
So far, Honolulu has reported that CivCheck pre-screening has dropped permit reviews from an average of 3.4 review cycles per application to 1.4 cycles for single- and two-family residential projects. A single review cycle is the time spent by a planner examining a permit application, identifying problems or incomplete information, sending it back to the applicant for corrections, and then reviewing the revised application.
CivCheck applications averaged 7.7 corrections, compared with 23.5 corrections for applications that did not use CivCheck, and the average time an applicant spent going through the city’s permitting process decreased from 73 days to 32.5 days, both officials from the city and county of Honolulu and CivCheck told Stateline.
“We want to get back to just the face-to-face and the more complex part of the review,” Takeuchi Apuna said.
She added that AI “doesn’t necessarily catch or know how to make the decision on” the grayer areas of a project — where a proposal might meet basic requirements on paper but have unusual site conditions or neighborhood impacts — while a planner knows the context and ambiguities to determine how a rule or code applies.
Seattle also crunched the numbers during its pilot of CivCheck and found it was 87% accurate on application completeness checks and 92% accurate on design-compliance checks. CivCheck showed an approximate 50% reduction in average days for intake review of permits and a 35% reduction in correction cycles per review.
However, Seattle officials noted in their reports that while CivCheck showed promise, the city was not ready to adopt it fully. As of its June 2026 report, the city was still exploring funding and logistical support for tools such as CivCheck.
CivCheck told Stateline it was working with more than 20 cities, ranging from pilot projects to full implementation.
“When you can remove three, four or five review cycles of feedback and turn that into one review cycle, that’s where you start to see material improvements in permit turnaround times,” said Cyrus Symoom, co-CEO of Clariti Software, a community development and permitting solutions provider that acquired CivCheck.
Their tool, Symoom said, is solely to be used as a fact-checker but isn’t meant to replace or take the place of human decision making on permits. Ultimately, if a mistake is made, it’s up to the planner to properly vet that information.
“If you’re just gonna take the existing (permitting) process and bring it digital without an idea of what part of the process you want to fix, you’re not gonna see any real change,” he said.
Zhenia Dulko, a planner and researcher with the educational and membership organization American Planning Association, said that group has identified more than 70 state and local cases of AI being used across planning functions, including 13 for zoning and development.
While automation can take technical and onerous work off planners’ plates, Dulko believes it allows planners more time for the work AI cannot perform such as talking to residents, connecting stakeholders to projects and front-facing public engagement.
“AI will help speed up some of this work but there’s a lot of this planning work that doesn’t need AI because humans want to talk to humans about their ideas and visions, and find a way to finish that project.”
Dulko said planners also consider factors such as the surrounding community, inclusion and equity goals that may be harder for an automated system to replicate.
“Efficiency in terms of numbers is important but in terms of time it’s even more important,” Dulko said. “But we just should not miss these very other important things. We should remember that this is just one part of the permitting equation.”
An August 2026 Journal of Urban Economics paper looked at Los Angeles data on development timelines for all multifamily housing projects permitted by the city between 2010 and 2022. The analysis estimated that reducing approval times by 25% could have increased the rate of housing production by almost 24%, if the researchers accounted for both already-started projects that would have been finished sooner and the effect of incentivizing new development.
But some city officials caution that while AI can help speed the permitting process, applicants are responsible for some of the delays.
“I think a lot of people assume that it’s all on the local permitting agencies, and think we’re this big black box that no one can figure out what we’re doing and that we’re just sitting on applications,” said Takeuchi Apuna. “It’s important to educate people and let them know that the applicant plays a major role. CivCheck helps address that role, but permitting is really a back-and-forth process. Applicants account for at least 50% of that whole dance and the actual review time.”
Saf Rabah, CEO and founder of Govstream.ai, an AI tool that has contracted with Louisville and Bellevue, Washington, says the permitting process is a two-way street that relies on both city and developer. He said the process could use more guidance from cities to help applicants who may not be well-versed with building permitting.
“A lot of people end up applying for the wrong permit and go down this rabbit hole when they upload their plans. There is no validation. There is no guidance. There is literally nothing. It is a minefield of ‘gotchas’ in front of a builder,” said Rabah.
Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
A veteran waves from a housing unit built exclusively for veterans by a Utah-based nonprofit. Despite national veteran homelessness reaching a record-low in 2025, half the states recorded increases during the January 2025 point-in-time count. (Photo Courtesy of USA Project Valor)
Veteran homelessness dipped slightly from 2024 to 2025, according to the latest results from the January 2025 point-in-time count.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development counted 32,495 veterans experiencing homelessness, 387, or 1.2%, fewer than the previous year. HUD counted 18,877 veterans in shelters, and 13,518 living unsheltered in places not meant for habitation.
Twenty-five states recorded increases in veteran homelessness from 2024 to 2025, and 23 recorded decreases. Just two states — Alaska and Massachusetts — saw no change.
The state with the largest increase, by raw numbers, was Oregon, which saw 228 added veterans, a 16% increase. Pennsylvania saw an increase of 98 veterans, a 14% increase, while New York, with an additional 93 homeless veterans, had a nearly 8% increase.
Mississippi had the largest percentage increase, rising 88%, going from 40 homeless veterans in 2024 to 75 a year later. Utah and Wyoming saw increases of 36% and 30%, respectively.
California recorded the largest numerical decline, with 624 fewer veterans experiencing homelessness, a 7% dip to 8,686. Florida declined by 192, while Indiana and Illinois each recorded 79 fewer homeless veterans. North Dakota’s numbers dropped 36% to 28 homeless veterans.
Since 2010, veteran homelessness has fallen by more than 56%, reaching an all-time low in 2025, and it’s been one of the few sustained decreases in any subset of homelessness during that time span. Details from this past January’s point-in-time count have not been released.
Adam Ruege, principal of policy and evaluation at Community Solutions, a national nonprofit that works with cities, counties and states to reduce homelessness, said the long-term decline resulted from sustained federal investments in housing and mental health services dating back to 2009.
States have taken a bigger role in addressing veteran homelessness, with programs ranging from incentives for landlords, to coordinated services.
“Twenty years ago, being a veteran increased your likelihood of being homeless,” said Ruege, who previously worked for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs. “What we’re seeing states do now, is that they are filling the gap between what the federal response isn’t doing and what localities can’t do because of funding constraints.
In July, New Jersey announced that its Bringing Veterans Home initiative saw more veterans finding housing than entering homelessness. According to state officials, since the initiative launched in November 2024, it has permanently housed more than 2,500 veterans, backed by more than $30 million in state and federal money. There’s pending legislation to codify the program.
In March, the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs had a statewide by-name registry that allows agencies and service providers to coordinate individual cases instead of making veterans navigate programs independently. The registry, at last update, showed 150 veterans experiencing homelessness, dropping 25% in a year and 41% in two years.
States making efforts to incent or spur landlord participation in voucher and other housing programs, Ruege said, is one of the biggest steps toward getting veterans into permanent housing.
Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis approved a statewide measure in June that created a pilot program getting landlords to participate in a federal voucher program that compensates landlords for holding a vacant unit for up to 45 days while a veteran prepares to move in and reimburse up to $2,000 in qualifying property losses beyond the security deposit.
Maine Democratic Gov. Janet Mills signed a law in April that establishes an incentive program that can give grants to nonprofits for landlord and housing provider incentives, risk-mitigation payments and veterans’ past due rent.
“I think a big factor in their success has been recruitment of landlords,” said Ruege. “It’s just a matter of political and private will, and in some ways, the will of a landlord, to make strides in cutting down homelessness on the local level.”
California announced $109.6 million in July for 278 permanent supportive homes across four communities, including 103 units reserved for veterans.
In March, Pennsylvania awarded about $805,000 from its Veterans’ Trust Fund to county agencies and nonprofits, including programs providing emergency housing assistance, residences, for veterans leaving homelessness and services for veterans exiting homelessness.
Erin Healy, a principal for large-scale change at Community Solutions, said veterans have often been treated differently from other groups experiencing homelessness.
“So, there is a sense of urgency around veteran homelessness, which doesn’t necessarily exist, even though it should, for all homelessness,” Healy said. “But we know these solutions and more empathy can still work for these other groups that are experiencing homelessness.”
Since the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2024 Grants Pass v. Johnson ruling gave governments greater latitude to enforce public camping restrictions, at least 14 states and more than 350 cities have adopted tougher laws targeting camping, sleeping or other activities associated with unsheltered homelessness.
Indiana, for example, enacted a statewide public camping ban that took effect in July, while Georgia and Oklahoma have adopted laws that can hold local governments accountable for failing to enforce restrictions on public camping and related conduct.
Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
This story is part of a collaboration between Wisconsin Watch and Door County Knock, exploring the factors that make pet ownership in Door County a pricey challenge. Read Wisconsin Watch’s story here.
Owning a pet and finding rental housing can be difficult, especially in a tight rental market like Door County. As of May 2025, Sturgeon Bay’s vacancy rate — the percentage of total housing available – was less than 1%, and local housing experts say the rest of the county is similar.
Add pet policies and extra fees, and finding affordable rental housing when you have pets is an even bigger challenge.
Laurel Grey moved to Door County with two dogs and two cats. She had to stay in a motel while she was looking for housing, before selling her home in Onalaska. Grey said she called every place she could find and eventually got into a property in Sturgeon Bay.
The apartment’s pet policy included an extra deposit and a $50 per animal per month fee — an extra $200 a month. Three of her pets died before apartment management changed the policy to prohibit pets, except for service animals or emotional support animals (ESAs).
Though Grey’s remaining dog was grandfathered in and allowed to stay, she said, the monthly fee was raised to $75 per animal per month. The issue of pets and housing is one of economic inequality, she said.
Anybody who can’t afford to own a home or chooses to rent is either not allowed to have a pet or has to pay significantly more in housing costs, according to Grey.
“Do you realize how classist that is?… I used to be judgy of surrendering pets, but there may truly be no other option for some people,” she said.
Housing insecurity and a lack of affordable pet-friendly housing are among the biggest reasons animals are surrendered to the Wisconsin Humane Society, according to Corey Viars, the organization’s media specialist for its Green Bay and Door County campuses.
When people surrender pets to the Humane Society, they fill out an intake form that includes the reason they are doing so, Viars said, and “housing” is cited by 24% of people across the state. Of that number, almost half are related to moving, and a third are related to landlords not permitting an animal.
“One of the most common reasons for surrender is moving and simply not being able to find pet-friendly housing,” Viars said. Pet deposits and pet rent increases add additional barriers to pet ownership, he added.
The Door County Humane Society does not have as many animals as some of the other campuses, according to Viars, because it is one of the smallest campuses in the state. However, seven animals were adopted from Door County during the first week of August, he said.
Strong emotions are almost always involved when people are giving up a member of their households.
“Our intake desk is an emotional place, and those surrendering due to financial or housing reasons are no exception,” Viars said. People are “heartbroken” when they have to surrender a beloved pet because they have nowhere to go with them, he added.
Pets are more often than not a member of the family, according to Door County veterinarian Dr. Sherry Billett.
In her practice at Peninsula Veterinary Hospital, Billett said she has seen firsthand the “substantial and oftentimes quite devastating” emotional impact of having to give up a beloved pet, but it is not a very common occurrence among her patients.
Most of the pet owners she encounters refuse to give up a pet and continue to search for housing, she said, even if it means moving out of Door County.
“This is not hard to understand since, in the vast majority of cases, pets are members of the family, so it makes sense that the same loving dedication be extended to them as well as human family members,” Billett said in an email.
She is aware of cases where a pet owner has to move to an assisted living or similar facility that will not allow pets, and others where individuals and families have difficulty finding any housing that will allow pets even with a deposit.
Billett also sees the numerous benefits of caring for pets that extend beyond emotional well-being, she said.
“Pets provide many people with the type of loving daily caretaking interactions that help prevent loneliness, that promote responsibility, that provide a reason to care for their own personal health in order to be able to take care of their pets, and that facilitate meeting other people when out on a walk or at a park,” she said.
Officials say this is particularly important in a community with one of the largest aging populations in the state and which has identified loneliness and isolation as one of the top community health concerns.
Aging and Disability Resource Director Jennifer Fitzgerald said she has also seen firsthand how pets help alleviate isolation and improve quality of life for both pets and the ADRC’s consumers. This becomes especially important when older adults lose a spouse, she added.
ADRC clients encounter housing challenges involving pets, according to Fitzgerald, but the agency does not get directly involved. Rather, it provides people with a housing list as a resource, she said.
The Door County Economic Development Corporation keeps an inventory of available rental properties in the county, although it is not exhaustive, according to Executive Director Michelle Lawrie. However, the inventory can provide a snapshot of what pet owners encounter when looking for a place to live.
The list contains 42 properties, and 21 of them explicitly identify themselves as pet-friendly. The rest do not specify whether they allow pets.
Rebecca Willoughby is the property manager for SCS Sturgeon Bay Estates, a market rate housing development. All of the properties owned by SCS are pet-friendly, she said, but they have restrictions against certain breeds.
A $250 deposit is required for pets, as well as a $50 per pet per month fee, Willoughby said. ESA and service animal owners are not charged additional fees or deposits.
The deposit and fees are to offset the costs of pet damage, she said, such as cats or dogs urinating or defecating indoors, or scratching things. Cat urine can be especially difficult to remove, she said. Renters sometimes do not pick up after their pets outdoors, which leads to more labor for maintenance services, Willoughby added.
The tight rental market in Door County does not factor into the policy, she said, and renter eligibility hinges on things like income qualifications and other leasing criteria.
Dog-related liability is a real insurance concern as well, according to Andrew Franken, president of the Wisconsin Insurance Alliance.
Insurance costs for property owners can be impacted by the presence of a dog, Franken said, and all companies handle the issue differently.
Nationally, dog bites are the number one claim under homeowner’s insurance. In Door County, there were approximately 63 dog bites reported to the Door County Department of Health and Human Services in 2025, according to data provided by county staff.
When a dog bites someone a second time in Wisconsin, there is an automatic “double damage” law. It means the dog owner can be liable for twice the amount of damages if the owner knew about the first bite.
Pet-friendly rental housing often specifies what types of dogs can live at a property.
Larger dogs are disproportionately affected by restrictions, Viars said. Fifty-pound weight limits are common, and some insurers and rental companies do not allow specific breeds. Pit bull terriers, Doberman pinschers and Rottweilers are often the focus of these types of restrictions, according to rental industry sources.
The Humane Society has stopped labeling dogs by breed, according to Viars, because breed identification can be inaccurate.
“When we used to assign a breed, it was often a guess proven wrong by DNA tests,” Viars said. “We focus on the personality and attributes of each individual dog during adoption counseling.”
Knock contacted Door County rental properties represented in DCEDC’s inventory to find out more pet policy details, and they ran a gamut of restrictions, with several mentioning breed and weight limits.
Among Door County property listings, the following pet policies were indicated:
A renter with two dogs might be looking at an extra $100 per month in pet rent. That’s $1,200 a year before any deposit. Landlords say the fees correlate directly to expected costs brought on by animals.
The Humane Society said more pet-friendly affordable housing would result in fewer surrenders. The problem is not only a Door County one, according to Viars, but state and nationwide.
Many of the people in Grey’s apartment complex are older adults — she herself is 69 — and she knows at least a dozen residents who would take a cat. One of her neighbors, who just turned 80, moved into the complex after a divorce, she said. She used to own cats and she adores them, Grey said.
“It’s just sad. She’s someone who is lonely, who would benefit from having pets,” she said.
Emily Small is a reporter for Door County Knock and a Report for America corps member. Contact her at esmall@doorcountyknock.org.
Pets can make finding a home harder in Door County’s housing market 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.
For the first time in its history, the Medical College of Wisconsin will have on-campus student housing.
The post Medical College of Wisconsin adding student housing for the first time in school’s history appeared first on WPR.
A residential duplex set for construction in Chicago. The 21st Century Road to Housing Act is being hailed for allowing municipalities to do more, such as construct affordable housing, with federal grant money. (Photo by Robbie Sequeira/Stateline)
Championed as one of the most consequential and bipartisan federal housing laws in decades, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act enacted this month makes significant changes across federal housing policy.
Included in the 139-page law are a host of provisions that will restrict some institutional investors from buying homes, ease rules for manufactured housing and expand assistance for veterans. But some of its most notable provisions give local governments greater flexibility in using federal grants while introducing new financial rewards and penalties tied to housing production.
This is especially important because states and cities — not the federal government — control most housing choices through zoning and land use regulations. So the law tries a new approach to nudge cities toward more housing.
The law allows certain federal block-grant funding to pay for new affordable housing construction, which previously had been forbidden. And for the first time, it provides incentives and penalties for cities to build faster.
“The federal government is going to give you a whole lot of carrots, a whole lot of support, and just a couple sticks, in order to encourage these communities to start building more housing,” said Ben Harrold, senior manager of public policy at the National Apartment Association.
The measure made it through a divided Congress in part because it “doesn’t actually come with a ton of new money for these programs,” said Andy Winkler, the managing director of housing and infrastructure policy at the Bipartisan Policy Center.
“There’s not one huge idea that’s going to change the dynamics of the housing market, but there are tons of small bills and provisions and programs that collectively really could have an impact.”
The most immediate impact of the law could be making existing federal housing dollars easier to use for municipalities.
Mark Kudlowitz, senior policy director for the Local Initiatives Support Corporation — a national nonprofit that finances affordable housing and other projects in urban and rural communities — said localities can now make decisions on where to spend existing federal dollars to increase supply. They also can start readying their local policies for potential funds from new incentive-laden programs.
“When we make it easier for the jurisdictions to deploy the funding, it’s doing everyone a favor, from the jurisdictions that have to manage these dollars to the federal government and then the developers that are ultimately receiving it,” said Kudlowitz. “It’s just decreasing costs and creating more efficiencies within the process.”
Although Hartford, Connecticut, Democratic Mayor Arunan Arulampalam wishes the law contained more new funding for programs, he praises a $200 million annual competitive grant program for municipalities that increase housing supply. He also welcomes a pilot grant project to help more municipalities convert vacant and abandoned buildings into housing.
“The thing that this bill actually does is make existing federal dollars more efficient and maybe more useful,” Arulampalam said.
The new Innovation Fund will reward communities that demonstrate increases in housing supply with $200 million in annual competitive grants from fiscal 2027 through 2031. The housing increases can come from local governments and tribes reducing parking requirements, revising minimum lot sizes and building height, creating incentives for dense development, changing zoning laws, streamlining regulatory and environmental requirements, or eliminating restrictions on accessory dwelling units.
“The Innovation Fund for flexible spending, which I think is the core of what the federal government should be doing for communities like Hartford that are actually building housing, it’s an exciting program,” Arulampalam said.
The new law also makes significant changes to the Community Development Block Grant program that could make it easier to use the money to build affordable housing. The CDBG program helps states, cities and counties finance improvements to housing, but funds also can be used for infrastructure, economic development and other projects that are geared toward low and moderate-income residents.
The new law now allows some grants to be used for construction. And it will reduce the money given to cities that don’t meet certain construction thresholds.
Under the CDBG State Program, states receive federal money and distribute grants to eligible smaller communities. Jenna Pomponi, director of advocacy and federal programs at the Council of State Community Development Agencies, said cities under 50,000 residents and counties with fewer than 200,000 residents, known as non-entitlement communities, especially rely on state agencies to conduct environmental reviews and administer complicated federal requirements.
“In a lot of small communities, they don’t have the capacity to do all the compliance work that’s required for a government to review, so the state agencies do that for them,” Pomponi said.
The new law now allows the construction of affordable housing to be eligible for CDBG grants, capped at 20% of the amount allocated to a recipient. Before the law, CDBG funds were used for public facilities and infrastructure, rehabilitation of existing housing, public services and economic development. Congress provided $3.3 billion for the CDBG program in fiscal year 2026.
“It streamlines some really outdated requirements that were adding administrative burdens onto administering these grants, so I think essentially it’ll just make the money that we have go further in communities,” Pomponi said. “In the past, folks mostly used CDBG just to repair older homes, but now they can construct new affordable housing.”
Under the law’s Build Now provision, which applies to cities and urban counties receiving CDBG entitlement funding, funding will be based on the rate at which housing has grown. Recipients at or above the median growth rate will receive bonuses, while recipients below the median generally will face a 10% reduction.
Exemptions apply to municipalities that meet its thresholds for both lower rents and home values, places where rental vacancy rates are above the national average, areas recently impacted by a major disaster or emergency declaration within the previous three years, and those that lack legal authority to update zoning or permitting ordinances.
“This is the first time to my knowledge that the federal government will condition resources on the actual construction of new homes,” said David Garcia, deputy director of policy at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation. “So this goes even a step further from other programs, which provide money to cities and states to just do reforms. This is actually tying money to outcomes.”
Garcia said that the Build Now provision and changes to CDBG funding will make cities, notably bigger and high-cost cities, motivated to do what’s necessary to get housing production moving and avoid any loss of funding.
Ultimately, zoning can only go so far, as Garcia noted that economic conditions and the price of building could still make construction very costly.
“Cities don’t control interest rates, they don’t control tariffs, they don’t control the labor pool … so there may be instances where you actually have cities working in really good faith to try and get more homes out of the ground, but the broader economic conditions are just not in their favor.”
Before the law passed, six organizations representing states, counties and local development agencies urged Congress to remove the Build Now provision, warning that tying CDBG dollars to short-term housing growth could make funding less predictable and that the metrics used to gauge growth could be slow and misleading.
“The idea was to put the squeeze on local governments to play ball, so to speak, as far as, looking at some of their zoning reform or their local housing strategies,” said Jared Grigas, associate legislative director for community, economic and workforce development at the National Association of Counties, which signed the letter.
These funding conditions don’t factor in until fiscal year 2029 and remain in effect through fiscal year 2043.
Grigas said the final version of the law, with the three-year implementation window and exemptions, made the provision more agreeable.
“That gives us three years to get the word out to our folks that, ‘Hey, you might find yourself in this new universe where this might impact your CDBG allocations,’” Grigas said. “And here’s how you can plan ahead.”
Federal funding for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development staffing was reduced by 24% in fiscal year 2026. And the guidance and implementation of at least 35 new or updated programs and regulations from the new law will be assigned to HUD — including the Innovation Fund and the Build Now provisions, according to the Urban Institute.
Winkler, from the Bipartisan Policy Center, said the “next battle” in the realization of the ROAD Act is swift implementation of the new law from HUD to the local agencies.
Some are skeptical that HUD — without new funding for staffing — can manage the workload that comes with such an expansive to-do list.
“A lot of this will hinge on HUD’s ability to implement this law,” Pomponi said. “Some of us are concerned because HUD cut back so much of their staff last year when the administration changed over, and now they’re being handed this huge law to implement.”
Arulampalam, the Connecticut mayor, said Hartford will continue pursuing options such as office conversions and vacant lot development while waiting to see whether Congress funds the law’s new programs.
“We are coming up with as many creative solutions as we can to solving the housing crisis,” he said. “The thing that limits us the most is the dollars we can put into it.”
Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.
This story was originally produced by Stateline, which is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network which includes Wisconsin Examiner, and is supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity.
It’s been more than three months since the anti-poverty nonprofit Newcap closed, laying off 90 employees and leaving more than 100 low-income households on the brink of homelessness. For Shawano County residents, that means losing their only year-round homeless shelter.
At Safe Haven domestic abuse shelter in Shawano, Executive Director Mindy Lohff started getting dozens more crisis calls and observing more unsheltered people on the streets or in wooded areas.
“We’ve seen an increase in our shelter stays directly, we’ve seen an increase in the calls for looking for shelter,” Lohff said. “Unfortunately, if they aren’t actively fleeing domestic violence or sexual violence, they’re not eligible (to) stay here, and there’s nowhere for them to go in Shawano County.”
It’s not just that Lohff has nowhere to direct unsheltered people in Shawano. Newcap was a leading provider of homeless services for 10 counties — including Brown, Florence, Marinette, Menominee, Oconto, Shawano, Forest, Langlade, Oneida and Vilas. In 2025, Newcap had the capacity to provide nearly 250 beds across those counties, from emergency shelter to permanent housing.
These mostly rural counties have been rocked by Newcap’s abrupt closure March 31, which came amid financial challenges and leadership changes. Former CEO Cheryl Detrick was placed on leave shortly before the nonprofit closed its doors and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, revealing that it owed nearly $4 million to creditors.
The nonprofit’s closure reveals how the loss of a single agency can have a staggering effect, especially in rural areas where resources for the unhoused are already few and far between. As a federally designated regional leader — or Community Action Agency — Newcap held the keys to funding for many programs and can’t be easily replaced by a single organization.
Shawano Area Matthew 25 is a seasonal overnight homeless shelter open from Oct. 15 to May 15. Newcap’s closure means Shawano County residents no longer have a homeless shelter to turn to during warmer months. Newcap also led Shawano’s homeless coalition, meaning it controlled state funding for SAM25. Executive Director Kendra Brusewitz said she’s still waiting on $12,000 in funds.
Over the summer, SAM25’s resource center is still open, providing food, showers, laundry and other assistance.
“We just continue to see an increase in the numbers coming through our resource center,” Brusewitz said. “Not having a place to refer people, families to in the area during the summer months is challenging.”
Without Newcap, nonprofit leaders realized there was no longer a way for Shawano County residents to access Coordinated Entry – a prioritization list that matches people with housing resources throughout the state based on their eligibility.
Safe Haven and SAM25 teamed up with Shawano Area United Way to form a coalition, educating local officials on housing needs and brainstorming solutions. Brusewitz and Lohff took charge of signing people up for Coordinated Entry.
“We’ve actually had clients getting pulled for the housing assistance because they wanted to move to other counties, so that’s been great,” Lohff said.
They’ve also applied for grants to fund a housing coordinator for Shawano County and collaborated with Bonduel middle and high schools to make hygiene kits. The coalition’s efforts aren’t funded, nor are they part of anyone’s job description. But Shawano community leaders feel it’s necessary.
“A lot of us have lived here, grown up here, and we’re so passionate about it, so some of (the work) may be slightly out of the scope, but it’s so important,” Lohff said.
Newcap’s grants allowed victims of domestic violence in Shawano and neighboring counties to obtain permanent housing, which is vital since Safe Haven is an emergency shelter, Lohff said. So far, no agency has been identified to permanently take on the grant.
“The financial assistance for them to be able to obtain the housing has vanished,” Lohff said. “Within the realm of domestic violence, so many of our clients experience financial abuse … and that’s one of the reasons why they don’t leave that abusive relationship, is because their abuser holds finances over their head.”
Rainbow House, a domestic violence shelter serving Marinette and Oconto counties, was similarly left as one of the area’s only providers after Newcap closed. Executive Director Courtney Olson told Wisconsin Watch she’s received a “steady increase” in calls since then.
Like Safe Haven, Rainbow House cannot respond to general calls for housing. As it is, its waiting list for domestic violence clients continues to grow, which means ensuring their safety in other ways.
“In response to these long waits, we are working hard to keep survivors safe in their own homes whenever possible,” Olson wrote in an email. “That means offering more on the security side (cameras, cell phones, panic alarms, lock replacements, temporary restraining orders) and working with landlords to remove the person causing harm from a lease rather than displacing the survivor.”
Regional Continuum of Care programs distribute federal funding for homeless shelters. Milwaukee, Dane and Racine counties have their own CoCs, while the Balance of State CoC oversees the rest of Wisconsin through regional coalitions.
Although based in Brown County, Newcap also served as the lead agency for the Wisconsin Balance of State’s Northeast Coalition — in Florence, Marinette, Menominee, Oconto and Shawano counties — and the NWISH Coalition – made up of Forest, Langlade, Oneida, and Vilas counties.
The loss of Newcap comes at a time when national funding for Continuum of Care programs is already uncertain. President Donald Trump’s proposed 2027 fiscal year budget would eliminate the Continuum of Care program, reducing all homeless assistance funding by $400 million.
Meanwhile, the 2026 budget will require the Wisconsin Balance of State to compete with Continuum of Care programs nationwide for a greater portion of funding based on the Trump administration’s priorities. An estimated 1,287 people could lose their housing in Wisconsin, according to the National Alliance to End Homelessness.
The Balance of State is acting as a temporary lead for the Northeast and NWISH coalitions, ensuring the “point-in-time” homeless count happens – an essential step to securing federal funding – and filling vacant board positions.
Balance of State homeless systems manager Ryan Graham said they’re essentially starting from square one, and they won’t be able to replace Newcap easily.
“Now, it’s about, ‘How do we rebuild some kind of homeless response in that area?’ because the agency that pretty much did all of that and provided the capacity to do it is no longer there,” Graham said. “They were the coalition lead, they were the point-in-time lead, they were the state funding lead.”
Graham has been impressed by organizations like Safe Haven and SAM25 stepping up, but finding an organization qualified to take on Newcap’s responsibilities is still hard.
“It’s going to be a long, slow road, “ Graham said. “Hopefully, it won’t be too slow, but we’re really starting from scratch in a lot of areas, especially in the Northeast and NWISH Coalition, as far as building a homeless response system.”
Even in Brown County, where organizations do exist to take on Newcap’s clients, it’s still not that simple.
When Newcap closed, the 134 households that depended on federally funded programs were immediately put at risk of homelessness. Public officials advocated to get four federal grants transferred to local organizations and waited nearly a month after Newcap’s closure to receive confirmation from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
House of Hope in Green Bay will take on three of the four grants, but Director of Community Engagement Beth Hudak said it’s collaborating with multiple Brown County agencies to manage cases for Newcap’s former clients.
“One of the biggest lessons we learned … is that when one agency holds all of the funding – does all of the work – when something happens, our community is devastated by it,” Hudak said. “What we really want to make sure we’re emphasizing in the future is having many, many more organizations involved in all of this work.”
House of Hope’s primary mission is to serve homeless youth — not to provide permanent housing for adults, which some of the grants stipulate. But according to Hudak, HUD said House of Hope was the only agency qualified to take on the grants.
“I don’t think we really had an option … HUD said that it was either us or the contracts would go to other parts of the state,” Hudak said.
House of Hope will personally take over a $440,000 grant for youth rapid rehousing in Brown County. Through working with other agencies, it hopes to find subrecipients for a $1.1 million permanent supportive housing grant for individuals in Brown County.
The third grant was specifically designated for supportive housing in rural northeast Wisconsin. Hudak said House of Hope is working closely with the Balance of State’s Northeast and NWISH coalitions even though they have yet to receive access to the grant funds.
Foundations Health & Wholeness, also based in Green Bay and primarily serving youth, will take on the fourth direct federal grant from Newcap, which provides nearly $300,000 for a youth mobile outreach program.
Jackie Baumgart, director of Foundations Youth Services, said the grant fits into the work they’re already doing: engaging with homeless youth where they’re at since their access to transportation is often limited.
“Why we were approached for this is because we do community-based services, and we don’t have specific offices where everybody works,” Baumgart said. “So our staff are out in the community … Our hope is to have a counselor go out and do a mental health check-in with young people that wouldn’t otherwise be able to access these services.”
The organization will also take over Coordinated Entry for the NWISH and Northeast coalitions, filling another gap left by Newcap. Baumgart said her nonprofit plans to operate with more transparency and collaboration with other organizations.
“My vision for what to do versus what has been done is to change it up a little bit and make it a more publicly known list for housing … I really want to make sure that we are teaching other organizations how to use it, when to use it, how to take people off of it, when to put people on, so that it’s not us doing all the work,” she said.
In Green Bay, Newcap’s closure has made way for a unique new homeless shelter that takes in people who have been banned from other shelters in Brown County. Although controversial, Safe Haven Hope Center received a permit in May to use one of Newcap’s former buildings to shelter 19 individuals.
Safe Haven technically rents the property from Newcap, which means Executive Director Cathi Oreto isn’t sure if it will be able to keep the property as Newcap liquidates its assets. But for now, she’s moving forward with a harm-reduction approach, offering a community-centered shelter with an extremely forgiving policy.
“We know that we’re going to have to ask people to leave, but when we ask them to leave, we’re going to ask them — and we have asked them — to leave for today and come back tomorrow,” Oreto said. “It doesn’t matter if it’s the first time, 10th time, or one millionth time, our exit strategy is the same.”
Meanwhile, a Brown County coalition is making sure the point-in-time count still happens on the night of July 22. Although Newcap led the point-in-time count for the past five years, Hudak said some Brown County Homeless and Housing Coalition members have participated for decades.
“I think we have it pretty well handled,” Hudak said. “One of the biggest issues that we’re coming across is just sort of a lack of data transfer, so some of the more in-depth information that Newcap had, we don’t necessarily have access to because of how quickly they closed.”
In the future, Hudak said they’ll make sure the entire coalition has access to PIT documentation, instead of just one organization. It’s part of a broader effort to build interdependence between local anti-poverty nonprofits to minimize the impact of one closing.
That network includes community members, too. Hudak said volunteers are always needed, and anyone who cares about homelessness can provide a fresh perspective. The NWISH and Northeast coalitions are also looking for members.
“All of our coalitions are always looking for more people to be in and support the work, and you don’t have to be a service provider to do that … Having outside perspectives is hugely, hugely important for making sure that we’re doing the best work that we can for the people that we serve,” she said.
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‘There’s nowhere for them to go’: Newcap closure leaves northeast Wisconsin counties scrambling to prevent more homelessness 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.
President Donald Trump faces a decision by 12:01 a.m. Saturday, July 11, on a bipartisan housing bill passed by large majorities in Congress. In this photo, Trump attends a meeting at the G7 Summit on June 17, 2026 in Evian-les-Bains, France. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
President Donald Trump is running out of time to decide what to do with a bipartisan bill meant to lower housing costs by making it easier to build.
If Trump does not sign the measure, it would become law at 12:01 a.m. Saturday under a provision of the Constitution that gives the president 10 days, excluding Sundays, to sign or veto a bill. Trump has said he would not sign the bill to pressure the U.S. Senate to pass an unrelated election security measure he considers a higher priority.
The constitutional provision does not apply if Congress is adjourned, resulting in what is called a pocket veto, but the current July Fourth recess does not count as an adjournment, experts agree.
“This would be considered a recess so the bill will become law without signature 10 days after presentment,” Jason Roberts, a political scientist at the University of North Carolina, wrote in an email to States Newsroom.
The White House has not publicly communicated its legal position and spokespeople did not return a message seeking comment Wednesday.
Trump has vetoed only two other bills passed by the GOP-controlled Congress during his second term. Both were noncontroversial and targeted to local projects in Florida and Colorado.
Groups representing a vast array of housing interests, from low-income renters to bankers, have endorsed the wide-ranging legislation that packages together numerous bills affecting every corner of the industry.
“Housing affordability is a huge problem for almost everybody,” Alys Cohen, the director of federal housing advocacy at the National Consumer Law Center, said in an interview. “And so there’s broad consensus that Congress needs to do something about that, period. So, as a result, they have a lot of different stakeholders coming together to really get something done.”
The bill, called the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, generally seeks to lower housing costs by expanding the supply, while also adjusting loan programs backed by the federal government.
Estimates of the number of housing units needed to meet demand vary, but it is “probably” near 4 million units, Kristen Klurfield, an associate director for housing policy at the Washington, D.C.-based Bipartisan Policy Center, said.
The package includes an assortment of smaller bills to update regulations on manufactured homes, loosen requirements for home construction and adjust a rural loan program to help lower income people qualify for and keep mortgages. The wide scope of the bill gives every segment of the policy space a reason to support it.
“In general it modernizes federal programs,” Klurfield said. “It incentivizes pro-housing policies locally, streamlines regulations that have been hindering housing production and really expands options for affordable housing financing. And so we think that the bill tackles the problem from these several angles, and that’s really what it’s going to take to chart a path forward.”
As the package was gaining momentum in Congress last month, White House staff said Trump supported it. After it passed both chambers of Congress with broad bipartisan votes, he was set to sign it at a high-profile ceremony at the Capitol.
But the president changed course and canceled the signing ceremony at the last minute in a protest of Congress’ failure to pass an election security measure, the SAVE America Act, he considers a top priority.
Since the Senate passed the housing measure, 85-5, and the House cleared it, 358-32, in June, Trump has disparaged the bill as “a big yawn” and “unimportant” compared to the election bill.
That bill would introduce a series of restrictions on voting, especially vote-by-mail, and would require voters to provide photo ID to cast ballots. Critics say it raises new barriers to voting while attempting to limit noncitizen voting, which is exceedingly rare. The GOP-controlled House has passed a version of the SAVE America Act, but it does not have the 60 votes needed to advance in the Senate.
Trump has not commented on the bill in several days and spent Wednesday attending a NATO conference in Turkey.
Madison's Common Council recently OK'd an agreement, authorizing the city to spend $4.3 million to acquire four parcels of land.
The post Madison is buying part of an old farm with the goal of building more housing appeared first on WPR.
A sweeping bipartisan housing bill passed through Congress earlier this week, with provisions aimed at making it easier to build new houses and rezone communities.
The post Sweeping federal housing bill won’t be a magic bullet for Wisconsin affordability, experts say appeared first on WPR.
Green Bay leaders are moving toward creating a registry of vacant buildings and charging fees in the hope of encouraging redevelopment.
The post Green Bay looks to create policy addressing vacant buildings through registry, fees appeared first on WPR.
On Monday, June 1, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, better known as HUD, released its Notice of Funding Opportunity Continuum of Care Competition for Fiscal Year 2026.
Brown County is part of the Balance of State CoC, the Continuum of Care that makes up the majority of the state outside of Milwaukee, Dane and Racine counties, which have their own CoCs. A Continuum of Care is a regional nonprofit or government entity that helps coordinate and distribute funding to homeless and housing providers.
Homelessness fell 3.1% nationwide based on the January 2025 Point in Time count, according to the 2025 Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress (Part 1). This trend is seen locally: In Brown County there was an 8% decrease in homelessness from 453 in 2025 to 416 in 2026 on the night of the Point in Time count.
More people than ever before are receiving housing services nationally: 642,451, an increase of 4%, according to the annual report. However, over the course of 2024, 912,807 people entered homelessness for the first time.
Service providers are tasked to meet the needs of an increasingly vulnerable population, including the chronically homeless. Chronic homelessness is defined as an individual with a disability who has been continuously homeless for one year or more or has had at least four episodes of homelessness in the last three years where the combined length of time spent homeless on those occasions is at least 12 months. In particular, chronic homelessness continues to be a challenge for CoCs with funding for Permanent Supportive Housing. Organizations nationwide have Permanent Supportive Housing beds available for, at most, 32% of the chronically homeless population, according to the AHAR report. In Brown County nearly 19% of our homeless population meets the chronically homeless designation and 69% have a disability.
HUD has designated $4.04 billion in funding for CoCs to apply for in fiscal year 2026, more than previous HUD notices. However, this notice redirects CoC programming away from Permanent Supportive Housing and toward Transitional Housing programming, with addiction and mental health treatment as an objective for housing services.
In the notice, HUD tells us that “Housing First” programming has failed, pointing to the 27% increase in homelessness since 2013 when “Housing First” was introduced. In that time, funding for “permanent beds” has increased 150.9% and CoC funding has increased 111%.
From 2013 to 2026 rental costs in Wisconsin have increased nearly 78%, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau and Zillow, with spikes in post-COVID rental markets in midsize Wisconsin cities such as Green Bay and Appleton being hit the hardest.
The minimum wage has not changed in the state of Wisconsin since 2009, and according to data from the National Low Income Housing Coalition this leaves rental options out of reach for many in the state of Wisconsin. In Brown County, an estimated 35% of the population, or 39,000 people, are renters, coalition data shows. This means a minimum wage worker in Brown County needs to work 104 hours a week to afford a modest one-bedroom rental.
With direction from the HUD notice, CoCs will need to meet a new set of requirements that are beyond the scope of nonprofit service providers in our community. This includes increasing the wages of program participants and required mental health and addiction treatment. This is not something that can be done at a CoC level alone. Brown County service providers are working diligently to meet the needs of those in our community who are experiencing homelessness by offering opportunities for permanent housing, transitional housing and emergency shelter. They are not built to respond to a stagnant minimum wage, a housing market devoid of options and a mental health epidemic.
The current CoC project is not perfect, but it does not exist in a perfect environment. For Permanent Supportive Housing programs with full funding to succeed, we need to create that. The HUD notice puts the responsibility of making the perfect environment and running the perfect program on the regional housing coalitions, and if you are unable to meet that, too bad.
Housing is the responsibility of our community and the people who live here. This “pay-to-play” model is harmful to our CoCs, community nonprofits and especially harmful to the neighbors they serve.
We don’t fix our current homelessness crisis by punishing the helpers.
We fix the problem by addressing the root causes:
And this is just the start. We need to increase access points for mental health and addiction treatment by expanding public health care; treating these not as the cause of homelessness but as a health crisis.
It’s not an easy pill to swallow, and addressing the root causes will require hard work and time. But we live in a community that cares and has the resources to make an impact by working together and helping our neighbors.
Josh Benti is the homeless initiative project director for the Greater Green Bay Blueprint to Prevent and End Homelessness, an initiative of the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation that creates pathways to prevent and end homelessness in the region.
Guest commentaries reflect the views of their authors and are independent of the nonpartisan, in-depth reporting produced by Wisconsin Watch’s newsroom staff. Want to join the Wisconversion? See our guidelines for submissions.
Guest opinion: New federal funding guidelines fail to address root causes of homelessness 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.
After 35 years renting her home, a leaky and unkept roof forced Farina Brooks and her husband to move into a hotel.
It wasn’t a rash decision. For three years, Brooks said, she pleaded with the property management company to fix the roof as water damage spread and conditions inside the home worsened.
City inspectors eventually came, issuing citations and fines. Still, she said, little changed.
“We kept getting the runaround,” Brooks said.
Eventually, she and her husband entered Milwaukee’s rent abatement program. Even that failed to improve conditions, she said.
Now, she said, the couple is burning through their savings to pay for a hotel room while searching for stable housing in an increasingly expensive rental market.
Brooks said the situation was not always this way.
“For the 30 years or so (the landlord) was good, you know, she handled things,” she said.
But in recent years, she said she learned the woman had developed dementia and was placed under a conservatorship, a change Brooks believes coincided with the property’s decline.
Her story reflects a growing frustration shared by many Milwaukee tenants confronting deteriorating housing conditions and asking a question that local officials hear constantly: Why can’t the city force landlords to fix problems with their properties?
According to Milwaukee City Attorney Evan Goyke, the answer lies in a complicated mix of state law, property rights and limited local authority that has steadily narrowed the city’s oversight powers on rental housing during the past decade.
The city has powers to do certain things, but not others, Goyke said.
“The federal government can limit what states can do, and the states can limit what municipal governments can do.”
State Sen. Dora Drake said Wisconsin law requires landlords to maintain rental properties, including making necessary structural and plumbing repairs and complying with local housing codes. But, she said, tenants often face barriers when conditions deteriorate.
“Under most circumstances, a tenant may not refuse to pay rent entirely unless the conditions are so poor as to force a tenant to move out,” Drake said. “If the conditions in the rental premises are poor where the tenant’s health or safety is affected, or the tenant is unable to use part of the premises, the tenant is entitled to reduce the amount of rent proportionately.”
Much of Milwaukee’s housing enforcement is controlled by Wisconsin state law, particularly by legislation passed between 2013 and 2017 that limited how municipalities regulate rental housing.
One major change, specifically state statute 66.0104, pushed cities into complaint-driven inspection systems – meaning inspectors cannot proactively inspect properties for violations unless someone files a complaint.
“The Department of Neighborhood Services can’t just walk up and down the street and say, ‘That house, that house, that house,’ ” Goyke said.
Instead, the city relies heavily on tenants and neighbors to report unsafe conditions to the Department of Neighborhood Services.
Drake said the current system leaves too many renters vulnerable before problems are addressed.
“We need more accountability measures and preventative measures and standards to prevent those situations from getting so bad with tenants,” she said.
When tenants report unsafe conditions, Department of Neighborhood Services inspectors investigate and may issue written orders that require repairs within a specified time frame.
If the violations are not addressed, the city can issue citations and pursue penalties in municipal court. Unpaid judgments can eventually become liens on the property.
But that process can take a long time, especially for a city balancing thousands of complaints with limited staff and funding, according to Goyke.
He said many residents get frustrated because they expect immediate intervention.
The city can escalate serious or repeated violations into lawsuits in Milwaukee County Circuit Court. In extreme cases, courts can appoint a receiver to take over management of a property.
Under receivership, a court-appointed manager can collect rent and use it to make repairs if a landlord has failed to maintain safe conditions.
“It’s a very heavy hammer for the landlord,” Goyke said. “Somebody else is going to step in and fix (the properties) for you.”
Housing advocates have long argued that complaint-driven enforcement creates another problem: potential retaliation or displacement of tenants.
Many tenants won’t report poor conditions out of fear.
Goyke said those fears are real, particularly for tenants living in severely deteriorated buildings who worry they could lose housing if the property is condemned.
“I feel terrible that people are placed in a position where they feel they need to live in unsafe conditions because it does beat living outside,” he said.
He encouraged tenants to report violations to DNS and to explore programs such as rent withholding and rent abatement.
Under Milwaukee’s rent withholding program, tenants continue paying rent, but the money is held by the Department of Neighborhood Services until repairs are completed. Rent abatement, meanwhile, allows tenants to reduce rent payments when serious conditions affect habitability.
Legal and service organizations, including the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee, Legal Action of Wisconsin and Community Advocates, can help tenants understand their rights and options.
Residents also frequently question why landlords with poor track records are still able to purchase additional properties, Goyke said.
Goyke said cities generally cannot interfere in private property transactions unless the city has a legal interest in the property, such as unpaid taxes or code enforcement judgments.
“If we do not have an interest in the property, we can’t stop it,” he said.
That limitation stems from long-standing American property rights protections, he added.
“It is not a shortcoming of some ordinance that could be tweaked,” Goyke said. “That question goes to core property rights in America.”
Drake said she has co-authored proposals aimed at expanding rent abatement protections and shielding renters from landlord retaliation.
“We know it happens,” Drake said. “Whether it’s Berrada or other properties that are known to have these stories, those are things that we can do.”
Berrada Properties owns more than 8,000 units and has been named in lawsuits by both tenants and the city attorney.
Drake also said the state should expand access to legal representation for tenants facing eviction or living in unsafe housing.
“We can create an office of civil legal aid to provide a right to appointment of counsel at the state’s expense for tenants in eviction actions,” she said.
Brooks said she was pushed to leave her home by her daughter and several local community leaders.
“They told me you cannot live here,” she said. “The final straw for me was when water started coming in through the light fixtures.”
Brooks said community leader Ajamou Butler shared a post about her situation that garnered support from the community and helped pay for her first several days in the hotel.
She said local leaders including Butler, Vaun Mayes and state Rep. Sequanna Taylor have supported her through the move. Metcalfe Park Community Bridges and Community Advocates have supported her search for accountability and a new home.
“It was hard accepting help, but it reminded me of how the community shows up,” Brooks said. “This made me worry for the people that don’t know who to call or have people to show up.”
Goyke encouraged residents to vote and stay engaged politically and also emphasized on-the-ground organizing and collective action to address housing issues.
He pointed to local organizations like Common Ground, the Community Development Alliance and the RON Coalition as examples of groups working to improve housing conditions.
“There’s a lot more that people can do individually that make an impact,” he said.
Goyke described a boarded-up house on his own block that has sat vacant for years, saying neighbors could potentially organize fundraising efforts to help support redevelopment.
“Don’t wait for somebody else to solve your problems,” he said. “There’s a ton of energy in trying to figure out how to do this, and it’s a great time for people to get involved.”
Drake said stronger tenant protections are part of the Wisconsin Legislative Black Caucus agenda this year.
“We know that at the state level, we need to do more to ensure that we’re protecting tenants’ rights,” she said.
Policies make it harder for Milwaukee tenants to demand repairs 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.
Milwaukee’s homelessness crisis is growing more visible, but advocates say there are still signs of progress.
A few years ago, Milwaukee leaders said the city was on track to end family homelessness. Since then, the number of people who are homeless has grown. Organizations on the front lines and others working on the issue still say Milwaukee has quietly become an example of how coordinated prevention efforts can work during a larger national crisis.
“When we talk about ending family homelessness, it doesn’t mean no family will ever experience homelessness,” said Krystina Kohler, impact manager at United Way of Greater Milwaukee & Waukesha County. “It means we’ve built a system that can respond quickly, prevent homelessness when possible, and rapidly connect families back to stable housing.”
Data collected through the Milwaukee Coalition on Housing and Homelessness shows more people are entering Milwaukee’s homeless service programs than exit it.
The 765 people who entered homeless service programs in 2025 had been without stable housing for an average of 88 days; 77% were homeless for the first time.
Ten percent became homeless again within a year.
According to David Nelson, chair of the Milwaukee Coalition on Housing and Homelessness, the totals include people living in shelters and those sleeping in cars, abandoned buildings or other places not meant for habitation.
“On any given day, we have 750 shelter beds in our city,” Nelson said. “Beginning in November through the end of March, we have an additional approximate 250 shelter beds, which (are) our winter warming rooms.”
Even with the extra capacity, he said beds are almost always full.
Nelson said official homelessness figures fail to capture the full scope of housing instability because many people who temporarily stay with friends or relatives are not counted until those arrangements end.
“What we don’t count (are) people who are doubling up,” he explained. “If you let me stay on your couch through the winter, it’s not counted as homelessness. But the minute you say, ‘You gotta go,’ suddenly I become homeless.”
Sister MacCanon Brown is president and CEO of MacCanon Brown Homeless Sanctuary. She said her organization’s welcome center at 2461 W. Center St., which distributes clothing, food and household necessities and offers showers to people in need, saw 4,600 people in 2025.
Most people leaving homeless service programs have no documented housing destination, making it difficult to know whether they are securing stable housing or eventually returning to homelessness, Nelson said. The percentage of people transitioning into permanent or temporary housing remains mostly unchanged.
Nelson said the end of pandemic-era federal housing assistance contributed to the rise in homelessness.
“During the Biden-Harris administration, we were sheltering people in hotels, and that was paid for by the federal government,” he said. “That funding is no longer there, and so you can see this gradual increase and then the spike in the number of people having to go back to homelessness.”
Other economic pressures are pushing more residents toward instability, especially low-income renters already struggling with rising housing costs.
“The people who are most squeezed are the people who are most vulnerable,” Nelson said. “Those at the lower ends of the economic spectrum are sometimes paying 50% and 60% of their income just to keep an apartment.”
People over 65 are now the fastest-growing age group entering Milwaukee’s homeless services system.
“It’s the fastest growing population in the country,” Nelson said. “If they go on Social Security, they are suddenly on a fixed income. The numbers don’t meet.”
Kohler said senior homelessness is becoming a major concern for local providers.
“Older adults experiencing homelessness for the first time in their lives is something that should never happen in our community,” she said. “They’re often widowed, on fixed incomes and one emergency away from losing housing.”
NNS has reported on housing crises among younger adults and families and seniors recently.
Kohler said she hopes homelessness initiatives expand beyond families to include seniors, single adults and people exiting facilities.
Nelson added that eviction records can trap people in long-term instability.
“The eviction stays on their record for a long time,” Nelson said. “Landlords can use CCAP and see there was a legal proceeding against them. Suddenly they’re charged first, last and middle month’s rent.”
Brown said that many of the housing unstable people she sees were renters.
“The lack of landlord regulation, the evictions and the prices have a lot to do with increased homelessness,” she said. “Some type of landlord regulation is crucial in keeping people housed.”
There have been assumptions by some that homelessness may be tied to migration from outside the city. But nearly everyone enrolled in Milwaukee’s homeless services programs during 2024 and 2025 was from Milwaukee County, according to local data.
Kohler said Milwaukee’s prevention efforts increasingly focus on helping families before they lose housing entirely.
“We’re trying to get ahead of the trauma of homelessness,” she said. “Sometimes a family just needs help with a car repair, utility bill or mediation with a landlord before a housing crisis begins.”
She pointed to partnerships with schools and even animal welfare organizations as part of Milwaukee’s early intervention strategy.
“If a family is surrendering a pet because of housing instability, we can now connect them to services immediately,” Kohler said. “That’s a unique approach here.”
Though homelessness overall has risen, Kohler said Milwaukee has seen family homelessness remain relatively stable, or even decline, compared with many similar cities nationwide.
“Nationwide, family homelessness has increased dramatically, but Milwaukee is one of the only peer cities that has stayed relatively flat or even slightly decreased,” she said. “That’s because of intentional investments in prevention services and rapid rehousing.”
Organizations across the city continue working together through the Milwaukee Coalition on Housing and Homelessness, which includes nonprofits, universities, faith organizations, outreach teams and local government agencies coordinating resources and services.
“We have a really rich and robust system in our city,” Nelson said. “Homelessness is not a choice. It’s not something people choose to be in.”
Kohler said Milwaukee’s coordinated response system has become a model for other communities.
“Right now, there are no families on the literal homelessness list searching for shelter,” she said. “If a family is identified as needing emergency shelter, they should have immediate access to beds.”
She said Milwaukee’s collaborative approach deserves more recognition.
“The providers here are doing amazing work,” Kohler said. “Other communities are reaching out to Milwaukee to model what we’re doing.”
Kohler said Milwaukee’s response shows progress is possible even during a growing national housing crisis.
“Milwaukee is actually an example of success inside a larger crisis,” she said. “There’s still tremendous need, but we’ve shown that prevention and rapid response can work.”
She encouraged residents facing housing instability to seek help early by calling 211 and connecting with local support services before a crisis escalates.
“Keep calling and keep advocating for yourself,” Kohler said. “Sometimes resources open up quickly, and that early connection can prevent homelessness entirely.”
Jonathan Aguilar is a visual journalist at Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service who is supported through a partnership between CatchLight Local and Report for America.
Milwaukee homelessness rises despite some prevention successes 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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