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By Keith Griffith | Jun 17, 2024
Wisconsin is one of the key swing states set to decide the November election, along with Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Donald Trump won all but Nevada in 2016, while President Joe Biden carried all but North Carolina in 2020.
To win Wisconsin, Biden will need a strong turnout in Milwaukee, a Democratic stronghold that was crucial in narrowly flipping the state in his favor four years ago. Underscoring the city’s key role in 2024, the Republicans will hold their national convention in Milwaukee next month, where Trump will be officially crowned as the party’s nominee.
Action on affordable housing in Milwaukee is most urgently needed at the city level, rather than from the federal government. But frustration over rent and the rising cost of living could affect voter turnout there in November.
Recent polling in other swing states also suggests that renters, who are more likely to support Biden than homeowners, are far less enthusiastic than homeowners about voting in the upcoming election. The poll conducted by HIT Strategies found that less than 60% of renters say they will “definitely” vote, compared to nearly 80% of homeowners.
The Biden administration points to millions in federal funding that has already flowed to Milwaukee in support of affordable housing during the president’s term, including through the March 2021 stimulus package known as the American Rescue Plan Act.
“To date, the President’s American Rescue Plan has provided over $100 million to provide housing assistance and support affordable housing in Milwaukee. This is in addition to the $90 million we provided to support the Milwaukee Emergency Rental Assistance Program, which helped over 10,000 families stay in their homes,” says White House spokesman Jeremy M. Edwards.
The White House also referred Realtor.com to Biden’s recent proposals to lower housing costs across the country by funding the construction of millions of new homes, offering down payment assistance to first-generation homeowners, and cracking down on “rent gouging by corporate landlords.”
But many of those proposals face an uphill battle in Congress, where Republicans currently control the House. As well, the Biden campaign has its work cut out informing voters about Biden’s plans, which differ sharply from Trump’s comments on housing.
Trump, who first gained fame as a real estate tycoon, has blamed Biden for rising rents and mortgage rates, while simultaneously accusing the Democrat of plotting to “destroy your property values.”
Last week, in a closed-door meeting with House Republicans, Trump reportedly called Milwaukee “horrible.” The Trump campaign denied the report from NBC News, insisting that he had been “explicitly referring to the problems in Milwaukee, specifically violent crime and voter fraud.”
“The contrast in leadership couldn’t be more clear this November for Wisconsinites: Donald Trump just yesterday in Washington promised CEOs tax cuts, and is proudly running to slash affordable housing programs,” said Wisconsin Biden-Harris Press Secretary Timothy White in a statement to Realtor.com.
“Corporations and landlords shouldn’t be seeing record profits while hard-working Americans struggle to pay their bills. That’s why President Biden and Vice President [Kamala] Harris have made tackling corporate greed and lowering costs a priority, and have proposed the boldest housing plan in a generation to lower housing costs, including by boosting housing supply,” said White.
“Wisconsinites deserve a president fighting for them, not themselves. That’s President Biden,” he added.
Why is rent so unaffordable in Milwaukee?
In the city of Milwaukee, 53% of renters are spending more than a third of their income on rent, exceeding the threshold that is considered affordable, according to the Community Development Alliance.
Black and brown residents are the hardest hit. In neighborhoods that are majority Latino, 60% of families are paying unaffordable rent, and for neighborhoods that are mostly Black, the figure rises to 70%.
“The housing market is really challenging for both renters and homeowners in Milwaukee, particularly for Black and brown families,” says Teig Whaley-Smith, chief alliance executive of the CDA. “And it’s largely because local policy is artificially reducing the amount of housing units, and state policies ensuring distortion of the market so that more of those units are rental versus homeownership.”
Whaley-Smith says that, after the 2007 financial crisis triggered a tidal wave of foreclosures in low-income areas, out-of-state investors swooped in, bought properties, and raised rents.
“A home that you could purchase for a mortgage of about $700 a month just seven years ago, now you’re only able to rent that home for $1,400 a month, and that money is being exported out of our economy,” he says.
A 2021 report from the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel stated that the number of single-family homes for rent in the city limits had more than doubled since 2005, to 18,800.
About half were valued at $75,000 or less, and 5,000 of the rental homes were valued at $50,000 or less. At those prices, a typical 30-year mortgage would come with payments less than $550, even at interest rates above 7%. That’s far less than many renters are paying for the homes.
Brown’s rental home is a case in point. Records show a bank foreclosure on the home in 2004, followed by a series of off-market deed transfers between LLCs, ending with the Utah-based company that purchased the home in 2022. The home, which needs major renovations and repairs, was recently put on the market for $54,900 and is pending sale.
Brown, who has stopped paying rent altogether due to the home’s unlivable condition, is uncertain what will happen when the new owners close on the property.
“They buy these houses sight unseen,” she says. “I have no idea what they’re going to do. But regardless of what anybody does, I still have to move out of that house, because that house has to be gutted.”
Editor’s note: This article is part of a special Realtor.com series on the housing market and the swing states in the 2024 presidential election. For additional coverage in this series, click here.
This article has been updated on June 19 with a statement from the White House and additional polling data from HIT Strategies.
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