For decades, manufactured home builders have been working to shed the old image of boxy trailer homes reserved for the outskirts of cities and suburbia. Now, a small change in federal regulations could open the door for architecture welcomed in more neighborhoods.

This summer’s sweeping housing bill, the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, removed a 1974 mandate that required every manufactured home to be built on a nonremovable steel frame, known as a chassis. Experts and home producers think the change could help unlock thousands more affordable housing options around the country.

But first, experts say, states have to examine outdated regulations that are blocking the manufactured home industry’s potential. The Pew Charitable Trusts’ housing initiative estimates that 30 states might need to change their regulations to align with the new federal law.

Unlocking manufactured homes from chassis will allow manufactured homes to become multi-family developments, said Stephanie Hawke, associate research director of land use and supply at the Terner Center for Housing Innovation at the University of California, Berkeley.

They’ll be cheaper for builders, she noted, and they’ll be easier to stack into two-story and multi-family homes.

“First of all, you were putting a very heavy, expensive thing on the bottom of these homes that is not needed and it is not used, and it’s made out of steel,” Hawke said. “If you’ve got this heavy piece of steel on the bottom of a home, stacking it becomes more difficult.”

Manufactured homes are built entirely in a factory, regulated by U.S. Housing and Urban Development codes, and then trucked to a home site. 

They cost 50% less per square foot than homes built on a site, according to the Manufactured Housing Institute, an industry group. And experts say dropping the chassis could drive down costs by $5,000 to $10,000 per home.

“There’s really the opportunity to stack these manufactured homes to make multi-family developments,” Hawke said. “So it’s unlocking this thing which was primarily used for single-family and it’s making it much more accessible for a multi-family developer, which is great because manufactured housing is far and away the least expensive non-subsidized housing supply in the United States.” 

In a 2026 earnings call, UMH Properties, a publicly traded real estate company that owns and develops manufactured-home communities, said the chassis rule change will allow it to put two-story manufactured homes on existing lots. The company also is considering designs that could combine two stories with duplex units, allowing for smaller, more affordable apartment rentals. 

“You build 2,000 square feet of homes instead of 1,000 square feet on the same piece of land. It’s a very, very important development,” said Eugene Landy, founder and chairman of UMH Properties, on the earnings call. “This is a change that’s gonna help every manufactured home community out in the country.”

Another benefit to removing the chassis, according to Mark Brunner, president of the Manufactured & Modular Home Association of Minnesota, is that manufactured homes can blend more seamlessly into subdivisions because they won’t look too different from other homes.

Under the new law, states are required to certify before July 11, 2027 — or 2028 if their legislatures meet biennially — that they will treat all manufactured homes the same regardless of whether the homes have a chassis or not. So far, at least three states — North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas — have modernized the definition of a manufactured home to align automatically with code updates from HUD.

“If you are not essentially in compliance with this new regulatory framework, then you’re really limited both in using manufactured homes and making them, which is obviously an economic driver for a state,” Hawke said. “North Carolina did an incorporation by reference, essentially saying, ‘We are just going to define this like HUD defines it. Go see HUD’s definition.’ It’s a lot simpler.” 

From temporary housing to mobile home parks

Rachel Siegel, a researcher and policy expert for Pew’s housing initiative, said her research has found that more than 30 states are going to need to update their definition of manufactured housing to remove language about a required chassis.

HUD certification now requires equal treatment of homes with and without chassis, and changes to state laws may not be as easy as striking a few words, she said. References to permanent chassis can appear throughout state statutes in various manufactured home policies.

“States vary completely across the country on how they treat manufactured housing,” Siegel said. “This requirement of permanent chassis is really pervasive.”

A Stateline review found use of the “permanent chassis” language currently written on manufactured housing laws include Virginia, Maine, New York, Missouri, South Carolina, Washington, Nevada and Maryland.

Following World War II, a shift in how mobile homes were being used began forming. No longer reserved as temporary housing, mobile homes were designed to be increasingly more permanent. Mobile home communities sprang up, though many were zoned into rural or suburban areas on a city’s edge.

For decades, manufactured homes — called mobile homes until the early 1970s — have been built in factories and trucked to their new locale. Many were unloaded into mobile home communities, specialized zoning districts where residents own their house but rent the land underneath. 

They are far cheaper than site-built houses: The average sales price of a new manufactured home rose from $81,900 in 2019 to $127,200 in 2025, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Manufactured Housing Survey. 

Those factory-built sales have slowed since a late 1990s boom as fewer manufactured home communities have been built since 2000, a trend largely attributed to restrictive zoning and rising land costs. Still, an estimated 20 million people live in one, most of them on acreage owned by a landlord. 

In the past, a home attached to a trailer or visibly hoisted a few feet off the ground were tells of manufactured housing when they first popped up in neighborhoods. But many modern ones are virtually unrecognizable from site-built homes.

“They have the same walls, ceiling, sheetrock, windows and shingles,” said Dustin Brakemeier, who owns and operates manufactured home communities in Minnesota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. “One’s built in a factory, one’s built outside. They’re the same.’” 

Changing zoning, mortgage rules

Pennsylvania Republican state Rep. Dan Moul, who owns a manufactured home park in Oxford Township in Adams County, recalled in an interview that zoning restrictions kept him from expanding the community into an adjoining parcel a few years ago. The township said the land was zoned exclusively for detached single-family residential housing. 

“The bottom line is they look at mobile home communities as that’s where the poor riffraff lives, and we don’t want any more riffraff,” Moul said. 

One of the big domino effects from the removal of the chassis requirement could be state banning or overriding restrictive local zoning policies that targeted manufactured homes. 

In an analysis of over 6,700 zoning districts in Texas, the National Zoning Atlas found 33% of localities have explicit restrictions on manufactured housing and 11% allowed them via special hearing or permit, but not by-right. 

Last year, Kentucky and Texas banned local ordinances that would unreasonably restrict where manufactured homes could be placed. Kentucky also insisted that local governments cannot impose design standards for manufactured homes that are  higher than those for non-manufactured homes. 

Alex Rodino, a real estate agent in Savannah, Georgia, who sells manufactured homes, said the stigma isn’t just among local governments and stodgy neighborhood groups. Some buyers, he said, are confusing modern manufactured housing with the image of older mobile homes.

“I think (that perception) is slowly changing as construction quality improves and traditional housing becomes less affordable,” said Rodino.

Siegel, of Pew, said that because states must align their manufactured housing laws with HUD’s definition by 2027 – there’s an opportunity for states to take a holistic look at their regulations, including whether states can make it easier to define manufactured homes as “real estate.”

Siegel said states also should revisit laws that classify manufactured homes as personal property — like cars. 

“If you own property that’s personal property instead of real estate, you’re not eligible to get a mortgage,” Siegel said. “That’s not about a person’s financial status or financial credibility, and it’s not even about the quality of the home. It’s just this titling component.”

A Pew analysis touting the potential for manufactured homes shows that a typical $100,000 mortgage for a manufactured home would save a borrower roughly $49,000 over the life of the loan when compared with “home-only” or personal property loans, which are the only options now. 

Some states already are taking action: Laws in Georgia, Maine and New York have made it easier for some manufactured homeowners to convert their homes to real property and gain access to mortgage financing.

“If we’re going to title manufactured homes without a chassis the same way as we’re titling manufactured homes with a chassis, let’s make sure that that process is as streamlined and makes the most sense for what these modern homes are today,” Siegel said.

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org.

 

Single-family home completions remain stuck at early pandemic levels as of September as costs, labor supply shortages and high interest take a toll on home builders, especially in the Northeast and South. 

Apartment building was a more mixed picture, down nationally but up sharply in the Midwest (53%) and West (18%). 

New single–family homes dropped to an annual rate of 840,000, the lowest since May 2020, according to new U.S. Census Bureau survey results released Oct. 20. 

Single-family home completions fell in every region, especially in the Northeast (-17%) and South (-15%).  

Builders of single-family homes are stymied by rising mortgage rates, costs for energy and materials, and worsening labor supply, according to an October survey by the National Association of Home Builders. 

More than a third of home builders said immigration enforcement activity caused construction delays and discouraged legal workers from reporting for work, said  Bill Owens, chairman of the home builders group, in a statement. 

Buyer interest in new homes has fallen as costs rise, NAHB chief economist Robert Dietz said, and 43% of builders cut prices in October, the largest share in recent years. 

“Housing remains squeezed by supply-side constraints and significant affordability challenges,” Dietz said in a statement. 

New apartments came in at an annual rate of 339,000, an increase from August’s 295,000, which was the lowest since 2022. Apartment completions were down 64% in the Northeast and 37% in the South. 

Stateline reporter Tim Henderson can be reached at thenderson@stateline.org.

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Imagine a parent who gets public help in finding an apartment. Rent takes most of the paycheck, leaving little for groceries. Meanwhile, child care remains out of reach. The family has a home, but keeping it remains uncertain. That family’s situation raises a question Wisconsin should ask more often: Do people receive enough help, soon enough, to avoid serious and foreseeable harm?

Wisconsin government is good at counting what programs do — dollars awarded, contracts executed, people served, rides scheduled and referrals issued. Those numbers matter, but they cannot answer a more important question: Did people receive help they could actually use?

The state’s 2025 Interagency Council on Homelessness report shows why. The Emergency Solutions, Housing Assistance and Homelessness Prevention program executed 26 contracts worth $6 million. Homeless Case Management Services served 1,476 people — seemingly impressive outputs. Meanwhile, Wisconsin’s January 2025 point-in-time count found 5,225 people in emergency shelters, transitional housing, safe havens or unsheltered locations — the highest total since 2016. Public schools served 20,195 students experiencing homelessness in 2023-24, the most since the 2013-14 school year. 

To be sure, those figures don’t prove the programs failed. Need may simply have outpaced available assistance, and many people may be safer because the programs existed. But they show why contracts, referrals and clients served cannot tell us whether people ultimately found stable housing. The same report offers a better model: Wisconsin’s Recovery Voucher Program tracked clients who moved into permanent housing, not just those issued vouchers. 

Process measures show effort. Outcome measures show progress.

We see a similar story with child care assistance. In June 2026, Wisconsin Shares reported issuing $44.75 million in subsidies to 40,678 children. Yet the Department of Children and Families’ 2026 Market Rate Survey found that the maximum Wisconsin Shares rate covered the full price of just 60% of the state’s child care slots — below the state and federal benchmark of 75%. Program spending and enrollment can increase while many families still cannot afford available care.

DCF notes that “affordable” here means the maximum subsidy rate meets or exceeds the provider’s price, not that families themselves can afford child care. Like every program measure, it reveals one piece of the picture — not whether the underlying need has been met.   

Wisconsin should judge programs by a simple standard: Did they help people avoid serious, foreseeable harm and live a minimally healthy, safe and functional life? A need is met only when support is adequate, safe, affordable, reachable, timely, reliable and usable.

Those standards should have practical meaning. Adequate means the amount and quality fit the need. Reachable means hours, distance, transportation, language, disability access and paperwork do not make a service functionally unavailable. Timely means help arrives before delays predictably worsen risk. Reliable and usable mean support lasts and fits people’s real circumstances.

Start small. 

When someone leaves a publicly funded housing program, ask what support they actually received, what is still missing and what could put their housing at risk. Then check back after 30 and 90 days to see what worked — and what didn’t.

Keep the questions short. Let people decline follow-up. Explain how their answers will be used. Share the overall results by county and program without identifying individuals.

If paperwork blocks access, make it easier. If there are no affordable apartments, name that problem clearly. We cannot refer someone into housing that does not exist.

Wisconsin already has pieces of the needed machinery. The Department of Workforce Development’s Self-Sufficiency Standard estimates the income needed to meet basic needs by county and household type for more than 700 family types. Agencies already report performance data. What’s missing is a common way to determine whether those services actually meet basic needs.

Referrals don’t guarantee access. Program activities don’t guarantee needs are met. Until Wisconsin measures that gap, it cannot know whether its programs truly succeed.

Reed Lokken is a Madison resident developing practical public policy tools focused on health span, basic needs and access to support.

Guest opinion: Wisconsin should measure whether service programs meet basic needs 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.

Condominiums can be a more affordable path to homeownership, but developers say policy and economic challenges make new construction difficult.

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The Trump administration has cut funding for a federal rural housing program in half nationwide and by 85% in Wisconsin, ignoring the $1 billion congressional appropriation for the program, Sen. Tammy Baldwin said Monday.

“The Trump administration has the money, but they are making an active choice not to use it and not to invest in rural America,” Baldwin said in a statement issued by her office.

In a statement posted Tuesday and shared with the Wisconsin Examiner Wednesday morning, the U.S. Department of Agriculture tied the shortfall in donations to the “unexpected federal government shutdown that paused operations for several weeks” in late 2025 and defended its performance in carrying out the loan program.

At issue is funding for the USDA Single Family Housing Direct Home Loans program. The program has typically provided financing for about 5,500 mortgages per year for low- and very-low-income residents in rural areas.

Congress rejected a Trump administration proposal to eliminate the program in 2026, according to Senate Appropriations Committee Democrats, and instead approved $1 billion for the program.

By the end of the 2026 fiscal year Sept. 30, however, the administration had spent $518 million, according to the Democrats. Of the remaining funds, $230 million expired with the end of the fiscal year, unable to be lent.  Another $250 million of the appropriation can still be used in the new fiscal year.

In a statement Tuesday, USDA said it provided “$571 million in loans, about 76% of available funds, to help 2,115 families buy homes. The average loan amount was $269,000.”

The loans were made over the course of a nine-month period, USDA said, and “a full 12 months of operations would have reached $762 million.”

The $250 million to be carried over “will be used in FY 2027 to continue supporting homeownership in rural communities,” USDA said.

Senate Democrats also stated that the Trump administration has added “harmful red tape” making loan applications harder.

The USDA statement said the program “strengthened credit screening” and “improved financial literacy support for applicants,” reducing first-year delinquency rates for the loans to less than 2.9%. The agency said it was able to reduce the time it took to assess whether borrowers were eligible to 64 days.

A chart distributed by Baldwin’s office showed that while in past years Wisconsin accounted for an average of more than $13 million in loans annually, that plummeted to $1.98 million in 2026. Both Wisconsin and Connecticut had the steepest drop in loans compared with their past year averages — 85%.

“The price of housing is crushing families and is putting the dream of homeownership further and further out of reach,” Baldwin said. “Instead of helping these folks afford the roof over their heads, the Trump Administration is making matters worse by slashing resources that help working families in our rural communities afford a home.”

 

Home affordability is at record lows in Wisconsin and home sales have taken a hit, according to an August report from the Wisconsin Realtor’s Association. A UW-Madison housing expert says inventory is to blame.

The post Can’t afford a home in Wisconsin? Here’s why. appeared first on WPR.

WE BUY HOUSES. CASH 4 HOMES. FA$T CA$H.

The signs, text messages and mailers promise cash, quick sales and a seamless means of unloading unwanted homes. 

But advocates say the business of buying homes for cash can confuse vulnerable homeowners and rob them of home equity. And now, many states are cracking down. 

Wholesalers often solicit directly, calling or door knocking looking for sales. But they’re best known by the signs lining curbs and utility poles.

Real estate wholesaling operates distinctly from the traditional real estate market of listings, showings and agents. Wholesalers look to get unlisted homes under contract at a discount and then sell or assign that contract to another speculator before finalizing the property transfer — acting as a middleman and pocketing a profit along the way. The end buyer may flip the house for a profit or hold it as a rental property, but critics say the process can deprive owners of realizing the full value of their homes.

A growing number of state lawmakers worry that buyers don’t fully understand the wholesaling process or even who will end up owning their home at the end of the sale. Lawmakers and regulators, backed by organized real estate trade groups and consumer advocacy organizations, are pushing for more limits on the practice. At least 15 states have recently approved new regulations of wholesalers.

Those include Missouri, where Republican state Rep. Chris Brown sponsored the House version of a  law enacted earlier this year requiring wholesalers to give sellers a written disclosure at least 14 days before closing, the final step in the property transaction. The disclosure informs homeowners that the wholesaler may offer below market value and reassign the contract to another buyer. It also encourages sellers to contact an attorney before finalizing a deal. 

Brown, who holds an inactive real estate license and is married to an active agent, said the law doesn’t ban wholesaling altogether. 

“We’re just trying to make sure that there’s transparency there, and that the seller of the property is in fact educated and fully informed as to what the wholesaler plans to do with the property,” Brown told Stateline. “That’s all it is.”

He said wholesalers often target people facing financial problems or who own homes with major issues. 

“And they’re just looking to unload it, and they don’t really at times understand the value of the property,” he said. “So unfortunately, some of these wholesalers become a little bit predatory in nature and then people just lose a lot of equity in their house.”

Critics argue that wholesalers target minority, low-income and older homeowners who may not appreciate the full value of their home. Terrell Walls, president of the Greater Kansas City Association of Real Estate Brokers, a group representing Black real estate professionals, in a statement called predatory wholesaling the “modern-day cousin” of redlining and other practices that historically denied Black families homeownership and wealth.

No state has outright banned wholesaling. But new regulations in Maryland, Ohio, Oklahoma and Texas require disclosure from wholesalers to sellers. Other states, including Illinois, South Carolina and Rhode Island, have required many wholesalers to hold real estate licenses — bringing them under the watch of state regulators.

“Legislators are responding maybe a little too aggressively, but not by much,” said Jeff Watson, general counsel for the National Real Estate Investors Association, which represents 43,000 house flippers and landlords. 

‘Stop trying to hide’

Watson said many wholesalers are effectively acting as real estate agents without the same licensing and consumer protection rules. Many wholesalers solicit homeowners directly and then market the home to other investors or buyers once they’ve secured a contract. 

“There is a small percentage of wholesalers, in my opinion, that do the business correctly,” Watson said. “They are honest, ethical capitalists. They can buy houses that real estate agents refuse to look at let alone list … Unfortunately, they’re not the majority.”

He said wholesalers can play an important role by helping to find buyers for some of the most distressed homes. 

For instance, out-of-state heirs or relatives may want to unload a home quickly after a relative dies or ages out of a house. When those homes are unkempt, have animal infestations or major maintenance needs, owners can secure a quick sale without going through the traditional real estate market. 

“Ethical wholesalers can do tremendous things for them,” he said. 

Wholesalers have publicly acknowledged that their industry is changing. 

Following the enactment of an Oklahoma law last year requiring new disclosures, real estate investor Jerry Norton said wholesalers would have to start doing a better job explaining wholesaling and the value it can provide to owners of distressed homes.

Norton, who could not be reached for comment, says he has made millions flipping and wholesaling homes. He offers paid real estate investment education and runs the popular YouTube channel Flipping Mastery TV. On his show last year, he recounted how he was working to tell sellers how wholesaling works and how they make money off the transactions.  

“This is the new way to wholesale. Stop trying to hide what you’re doing,” he said. “Address the elephant in the room. Remember, at the end of the day, the seller wants to work with someone they trust. Honesty is the pinnacle of trust. Be honest and you’ll actually do more business, not less business.”

Consumer confusion

The AARP has pushed model legislation across several states addressing real estate wholesaling. It would require wholesaler licensing, appraisals, cancellation rights and limits on aggressive marketing tactics.

Jenn Jones, AARP’s vice president for retirement security and livable communities, said the organization’s aim is twofold: it wants to ensure older adults can safely age at home and it wants to protect the wealth of homeowners.

“For a lot of older adults, their retirement security, their financial security is in that house,” she said. “That was supposed to be the American dream: You become a homeowner and that asset builds equity, and that is the thing that gives you some comfort in your later years. It’s also the thing that you have that you can pass on to your kids.”

Jones said sellers should know that wholesalers may not be the end buyer of their property, should have the time for an independent home valuation and should be allowed to cancel a contract if they change their minds.  

She pointed to the Oklahoma neighborhood where her mother lives. Jones’ mother told her about neighbors quickly selling their homes for $20,000 or less in cash — despite actual property values that are much higher. Her mother, who is in her late seventies, often receives calls and unsolicited visits from people looking to buy her house.

“We could probably all point to a story that we’ve heard or an experience that we’ve had,” Jones said. “This is about making sure that people understand fully the decision that they’re making, and they don’t end up in a situation where they are potentially jeopardizing either their own financial security or that of their kids because they were pressured to sell.”

Experts and lawmakers said recent measures targeting wholesalers have proved largely bipartisan and faced little pushback from the industry.

Rhode Island state Sen. Robert Britto, a Democrat, said a new law he sponsored this year faced “literally no opposition.” It requires wholesalers to possess a state-issued real estate license, which he hopes will put legitimate businesses under state supervision and push bad actors out of the industry.

“I’d think there would be more opposition, but I guess those actors didn’t want to really and truly expose themselves,” he said. “It was a catch-22 for them … Do I complain about it, but if I complain about it, am I showing my true colors?”

That measure was pushed by the Rhode Island Association of Realtors, which represents nearly 6,000 members across the state.

“Real estate professionals are licensed for a really good reason and sometimes the consumers would assume they were talking to a real estate professional,” said Rebekah Wagoner, associate counsel for the trade group. 

Wagoner said wholesaling isn’t inherently unlawful or predatory and can play a role in selling distressed properties. 

“Our issue is the transparency,” she said. “It’s that a lot of the consumers didn’t understand the transaction.”

Without state licensing, she said wholesalers face no accountability if consumers feel wronged.

“We want them to have a regulatory framework that means that if something happens, the consumer is protected,” she said. 

Stateline reporter Kevin Hardy can be reached at khardy@stateline.org.

A notice on the front of the buildings says it was "illegally occupied and unfit for human habitation." An emergency order said an inspection found "conditions that violate" Milwaukee ordinances and the building is a "hazard to the safety and welfare of the occupants or the public."

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A plan to build homes and multifamily units on the site of a closed college campus in Waukesha is moving forward.

The post Housing planned for site of closed UW-Milwaukee campus in Waukesha  appeared first on WPR.

Giese Elementary School in Racine opened in 1965, but was torn down in 2022. The land has been vacant ever since.

The post Racine wants to build 34 homes on vacant school lot and help city and school employees buy them appeared first on WPR.

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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.

Local officials, housing advocates and economists say those cost increases — fueled by tight supply and high demand — have made it harder for young families to purchase their first home and for renters to make ends meet.

Northeast Wisconsin is home to Green Bay and the Fox Valley. It’s a mix of medium-sized cities and rural communities. Wisconsin Realtors Association data shows median home prices in the region climbed from $145,000 in July 2016 to $331,000 in July 2026.

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David Clark, an economist for the Wisconsin Realtors Association, said home prices across the state didn’t rise very fast for much of the 2010s, and neither did housing supply. 

He said a surge of millennials entered the housing market when mortgage rates fell below 3% in 2020 while many baby boomers remained in their existing homes, contributing to a supply and demand imbalance and rising prices. While homebuilding has picked up in recent years, he said supply remains limited.

“We’ve got tight inventory statewide, and that same statewide picture is pretty similar to the circumstances in the northeast region,” Clark said.

Local officials and advocates say tight inventory in the owner-occupied housing market has led some residents interested in purchasing a home to continue renting, putting upward pressure on those prices as well.

“There are bottlenecks everywhere,” said Mindy Howell, housing services lead case manager for The Salvation Army-Fox Cities. “Housing is more expensive, so more people are renting.”

She said that’s meant people with moderate incomes are competing with lower-income residents for available rental units, saying it’s “very hard to find affordable housing.”

Beyond supply and demand, property managers say rising costs from insurance, property taxes and repairs all factor into rent prices.

“We’ve tracked five years of financial data across more than 5,000 rental units: Operating costs rose 34.2% from 2019 to 2023,” said Rick Van Der Leest, president of the Apartment Association of Northeast Wisconsin and Fox Valley Apartment Association.

Fair market rents in Green Bay and Appleton, the region’s two largest cities, also rose over the same period, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. 

The fair market rent for a two-bedroom apartment in Appleton increased from $718 in 2016 to $810 in 2020 and $1,236 in 2026, federal data shows. Those rents in Green Bay increased from $756 in 2016 to $822 in 2020 and $1,164 in 2026.

Amber Edwards is a community organizer for JOSHUA, a faith-based nonprofit in Green Bay that works on housing and other social issues. She said rising costs and tight supply have been hard on residents of all backgrounds.

“There are people that I know that have really good jobs, stable careers that are struggling to find housing in their 40s because it is so tight and difficult to obtain, and difficult to maintain,” she said.

Green Bay and Appleton each need to build thousands of housing units, a mix of single-family and rentals, in the coming years to keep pace with projected housing demand, according to recent housing reports.

A 2025 housing market study from the city found Green Bay needed to build 2,100 rental units and 2,159 owner-occupied units by 2040 under a conservative growth scenario and 4,575 rental units and 5,072 owner-occupied units under a high-growth scenario.

“We need everything, from low income to high income, small apartments to large,” said Green Bay Mayor Eric Genrich. “That’s been our focus is just to do whatever we possibly can to partner with high-quality developers to make this happen for the residents here.”

Genrich said the number of units per year built within the city has increased from an average of 144 units per year from 2015 to 2019 to an average of 368 units from 2023 to 2025.

He said private developments, in which the city played no role, did contribute to that increase. But he also said the city has tried to use a variety of tools from crafting more flexible zoning codes to using tax increment financing to encourage development.

Meanwhile, the city of Appleton needed to build 3,981 single-family, 442 two-family and 158 multi-family units between 2019 and 2040 to accommodate population growth projections, according to a 2024 housing affordability report from the city.

Appleton Mayor Jake Woodford said the city was currently working its way through zoning code revisions aimed at promoting duplex development and other zoning designations. He said the city has also worked to “streamline” the development process itself, but he said there isn’t a silver bullet that will solve the issue.

“I think the underlying issue of the cost of building housing is a huge factor,” he said. “Land availability to some extent, but cost of construction is a big challenge.”

Due to high construction costs, he said, a newly built home that may be considered a “starter home” based on its size and number of bedrooms is likely to cost $400,000 or more, which is “unattainable” for many first-time buyers.

“Housing is becoming less affordable, and that presents a real challenge for our communities,” he said. “Because here in the city of Appleton, if people cannot afford to live in this community, how do we expect to have a thriving local economy?”

To address the issue, local leaders and housing advocates said they would like to see state leaders invest in expanding low-interest loan programs for affordable housing developers and first-time homebuyers and create more tools to help housing developments make financial sense for builders.

This story was produced as part of the NEW (Northeast Wisconsin) News Lab, a consortium of five news outlets.

Housing costs have risen sharply in northeast Wisconsin over the last decade 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.

In its latest effort to overhaul federal homelessness funding, the Trump administration is proposing to provide more money to localities that prioritize treatment-first policies such as sober living, more cooperation with law enforcement and more temporary and transitional housing. 

It’s a reversal from a decade-long federal approach known as Housing First that sought to permanently house people experiencing homelessness without requiring sobriety or participation in treatment programs as a condition.

The Trump administration has been attempting to overhaul federal funding for homelessness programs in this direction over the past two years but had suffered defeats in court that stalled its efforts to do so in 2025 and 2026.

In a notice posted in the Federal Register on Sept. 11, the Department of Housing and Urban Development argued that current policies aren’t working and said some states and localities have already shifted toward a treatment-based approach to homelessness. The agency will take public comments through Oct. 13.

Under the proposal, the department would change the bonuses it gives to state and local areas that participate in the Continuum of Care program, a federal grant initiative to fight homelessness. The department would incentivize efforts to provide transitional housing with services “concentrating on improving employment income and meeting behavioral healthcare needs.” It would also incentivize addiction treatment and recovery services, sober housing and partnerships with law enforcement.

HUD pointed to policies in Anchorage, Alaska; Houston; Portland, Oregon; and San Francisco as evidence that states and cities are already shifting their homelessness responses toward public camping restrictions with emphasis on treatment and recovery as a condition to housing support.

That shift was made possible by the U.S. Supreme Court’s City of Grants Pass v. Johnson decision in 2024, which allowed local governments to enforce public camping bans. Since then, more than 350 cities and 14 states have adopted laws or measures to crack down on street homelessness. 

HUD had tried twice previously to change the application process for grants along similar lines, but a federal court ruled against the attempts, saying they violated required procedures. 

One lawsuit against HUD’s efforts was brought by a coalition of 22 states and the District of Columbia, while another was filed by local governments and homelessness organizations, including the National Alliance to End Homelessness and the National Low Income Housing Coalition. 

State officials joining the lawsuit were from Arizona, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington and Wisconsin, plus the District of Columbia. 

The Obama administration made Housing First initiatives the predominant federal homelessness policy. The Trump administration argues that it hasn’t worked and that chronic homelessness has increased since 2013. 

But housing advocacy groups say that Housing First initiatives are a proven, bipartisan strategy that can lead to better outcomes and reduce taxpayer spending on emergency services and the criminal legal system.

The National Low Income Housing Coalition pointed to a 2020 review of 26 studies that found Housing First programs decreased homelessness by 88% and improved housing stability by 41% compared with Treatment First programs. 

Stateline reporter Robbie Sequeira can be reached at rsequeira@stateline.org. 

Reading Time: 8 minutes

Click here to read highlights from the story

• James Gray, Estelle Moncada and their three children have been homeless for the past five years. 
• Federal data shows that 561 Wisconsin families with children were homeless in 2025, but because of the way homelessness is counted, the figure could be much higher. 
• They sleep in their vehicle at Safe Place Parking hosted by Wise Women Gathering Place in Green Bay. 
• Annette Rivera also uses Safe Place Parking and told Wisconsin Watch what it was like to park elsewhere when the safe parking lot was closed. 
• Despite the challenges they’ve faced, Gray, Moncada and Rivera maintain hope that their situations will turn around, and they’ll find stable housing.

Like any other family, James Gray and Estelle Moncada love to play with their kids at the park. Their twin girls, Maewahniw and Mataeqsak, are 5 years old and chase each other around, falling down in the grass laughing with their 3-year-old brother, Mahwaew. 

But the park isn’t just a place they visit — it’s also their home. 

The family spends most days hopping between parks, sleeping on a mattress in their van at night. Their five years of homelessness have taken them to hotels, shelters and parking lots around rural northeast Wisconsin, northern Michigan and finally Green Bay, where they hope to stay while their kids go to Starr Elementary School.

According to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, in 2025 over 5,200 people in Wisconsin experienced homelessness, which has risen 16% over the past five years. Of those, nearly 1,900 were people in families with children – accounting for 561 families. 

Because of the way homelessness is counted, that number could actually be much higher. Volunteers have to search for unsheltered people on a single night in January and confirm each person is homeless to add them to the point in time count. The process means it’s often hard to see the “hidden homeless” population living in their vehicles. 

The count indirectly ties to the amount of federal funding each region receives for homeless support services — which means there simply aren’t enough resources for homelessness service organizations to provide for the entire homeless population. People like Gray and Moncada have spent years on the waitlist for housing programs meant to help homeless families. 

Adding to funding uncertainty, the Trump administration announced major changes to federal homelessness grants and an overhaul of the Head Start early childhood education program for low-income families, where Gray and Moncada sent their twin daughters and enrolled their son this year. 

Trying to find housing, work while raising children

The family became homeless during the COVID-19 pandemic, around the time when their twins were born. When the anti-poverty nonprofit Newcap opened a shelter in Shawano, they were one of the first families accepted and stayed there for almost two years. Gray and Moncada said a Newcap employee made false promises about securing them a rental apartment that never came through. 

Navigating a system with limited resources while taking care of young children can force families to make hard decisions. They eventually ended up at Abundant Life Mission, a shelter in Menominee, Michigan, near the Wisconsin border, but Gray said he left because he didn’t want the kids to interact with people staying there who struggled with addiction. 

That meant going back to living in their car and waiting to be pulled from the waitlist for housing programs. A system called Coordinated Entry prioritizes and matches people with housing resources based on their level of need. 

“You feel hopeless, you know what I mean?” Gray said. 

Newcap called once a month to ask where the family slept the previous night, part of the process of Coordinated Entry, which the organization led for 10 northeast Wisconsin counties before officials filed for bankruptcy this year. Newcap staff did not contact Gray to tell him the nonprofit closed, even though all of his mail had been going to the Newcap office in Green Bay. 

Every weekday for a year, Gray and Moncada drove their daughters to and from the Oneida Nation’s Three Sisters location for Head Start, no matter where they had slept the previous night. 

“I think it’s hard for people to understand that I’m over here taking care of three kids, you know what I mean?” he said. “If I had known I’d be taking care of three kids at this age, I would have done some things a little different in my past, too.” 

Both Moncada and Gray have to balance the struggles of raising three children without stable housing and securing the employment needed to financially support them. Through the Oneida Nation and Northeast Wisconsin Technical College, Gray earned a traffic control certificate and began working for ANASA Traffic Control Services. But the job required him to drive long distances without reimbursement, knowing his kids needed the car to sleep at night.

“They would never assign me a job in Green Bay,” Gray said. “It was always Sheboygan, Manitowoc, Milwaukee or in Sturgeon Bay, and I’d say, ‘I can’t go to these places, I don’t have gas.’”

So Gray would get marked down for calling in to work, and the next day, he’d be asked to work again in a different city. He was eventually fired in April. 

“It’s like, nothing has changed since yesterday. I still have no gas … But I didn’t tell them my situation, that my family needed my car, because I was embarrassed to tell them,” he said. 

Searching for a new job was hard since he couldn’t find people to look after the kids so he could go to a job interview. Moncada was working at Burger King at the time.  

“I’m worried about them during the day: where they’re going, if they have gas, if they have food. It’s such a struggle, and it’s a lot of stress on him,” Moncada said. 

After a few months of searching, Gray recently got a job as a forklift operator in Appleton. The family is trying to work out how they’ll balance Gray commuting to Appleton for third shift while still sending the kids to Starr Elementary School and Green Bay’s Head Start program. 

“It’s so hard to have that stability with employment when you don’t have a stable place to live,” Moncada said. “You don’t have gas to go to work the next day because you’re out riding around because you got nowhere to go.”

Safe Place Parking offers ‘peace of mind’

Programs like Safe Place Parking, hosted by Wise Women Gathering Place, provide a potential solution — a reliable place for people living in their cars to park at night without fear of being woken up and asked to leave. Gray and Moncada park there almost every night. 

Beverly Scow is the executive director of Wise Women Gathering Place, a nonprofit that provides Native American culturally specific services related to domestic violence and historical trauma. Even though they only account for 1.1% of the U.S. population, Native Americans make up 3.8% of the unsheltered homeless population.

“Part of our resilience is as Native Americans, there was a lot of harm done to our communities, our people, and we survived,” Scow said. “And some of the survival patterns were unhealthy, and some of them were beautiful, right? The culture helped us keep strong and healthy, and so we’ve got a mix of those that have echoed forward.” 

The organization originally created Safe Place Parking in response to unhoused people not being able to stay with friends or family during COVID-era social distancing.

“We knew about the hidden homeless who were couch surfing, and most landlord guest policies are up to two weeks,” Scow said. “People would stay under the radar and couch surf between friends and family (for) about two weeks, which totally collided with our understanding of COVID transmission at the time.”

Scow soon realized there was a legitimate need for Safe Place Parking to continue for the many people who live out of their cars. The organization now provides portable toilets, electrical outlets, Wi-Fi, heated blankets in the winter and fans in the summer for up to 46 cars each night. 

“There’s a lot of people who are living in their cars and deal with the anxiety of being shooed off a residential street or shooed off a business parking lot, and at Safe Parking, they could have  peace of mind to know I belong here, this is my place where I can get a restful night’s sleep,” Scow said. 

Last year, Scow said she found out Wise Women’s insurance wouldn’t cover the Safe Place Parking program. The organization had to close the parking lot for four months while searching for an insurance company that would cover the scope of the parking lot for the homeless. 

Eventually, Scow found one, but it was five times the price of what Wise Women had been paying. To make things worse, the organization lost two major grants while the parking lot was closed. So the community raised $60,000 in individual donations so the parking lot could reopen in December 2025. 

“We saw how important it was to the parkers,” Scow said. “They were so appreciative … and it was such a gap. There’s no one else doing it, so it was important to us to keep it going.” 

Annette Rivera can attest to that. She lost her housing in 2024 while Safe Place Parking was temporarily closed. She worked out an arrangement to park at the YMCA at night, but said police came to her car twice in the middle of the night. 

“Once you’re in that situation, you don’t sleep 100%,” she said. “You’ve got to sleep with one eye open and one closed, if anything.”

She stopped taking her nighttime medicine so she would be alert. Rivera still wakes up every hour or two at night to adjust her sleeping position in the cramped car. 

“It’s uncomfortable,” she said. “You’re not sleeping stretched out. I sleep (in) like a fetus position or an L. Especially at a certain age, it hurts.” 

She’s been using Safe Parking for two years now. At 57 years old, she doesn’t meet the age requirement for most subsidized housing for older adults. 

Holding out hope

Still, Rivera is grateful for Safe Place Parking and sees her situation as temporary. 

“God is good,” she said. “It could be worse.”

Rivera can also relate to Moncada and Gray’s challenges in raising young children while grappling with the daily realities of sleeping in a car. She spends her days watching her three grandchildren while her daughter works as a dental assistant. At Safe Place Parking, Rivera feels for the parents she sees and once spoke to Moncada. 

“I was wondering, hoping, praying,” Rivera said. “I told her, I said, ‘I really hope you find a place for the kids.’” 

Moncada said she tries to give the kids the best life she can. They play with kites, go swimming, play baseball and forage for mushrooms. Along the way, she tries to teach them about the natural world. 

“They’re really, really into bugs,” she said. “So, if we go somewhere, they’re over there lifting up rocks and stuff, trying to find whatever millipedes, centipedes, everything … they’re so fascinated by everything, and curious to learn about so many things.” 

Moncada, a member of the Oneida Nation, dreams of one day owning land on the reservation and building a house. She thought about advocating for herself through the General Tribal Council, but she worries about speaking in front of thousands of others who might need help more than her. 

“That’s all I want, it’s all I dream about,” Moncada said. “I imagine what it would be like if we did have our house finally, and how that life would be, if our relationship would be better, or how happy our kids would be, what they would be doing, where they would put things, you know?”

She feels hopeful that one day, it’ll happen. In the meantime, she wants to be there for her kids while she and Gray work toward getting their own place and not having to rely on anyone.

“I can imagine us getting there. I have a whole vision of it, and I can almost feel the happiness in me when I think about it,” she said. “That’s a good thing, and I don’t want anything to ever take that away.” 

Green Bay’s ‘hidden homeless’ maintain hope while living in their vehicles 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.

St. Camillus is a large, up-scale campus with more than 600 older adults who come and go from their own apartments. Marquette students live in their own apartments next to residents in the independent living space.

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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.

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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.

Home renovations

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.

Reasons for Hope MKE Fund

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.

Other projects

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.”

Reflections

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.

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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.