Wisconsin Voters Seethe Over Out-of-Control Housing Prices
WSJ
By Rachel Wolfe
and Andrew Restuccia
Updated Aug. 2, 2024 11:35 am ET
MILWAUKEE—Not even Midwestern manners can disguise Wisconsinites’ anger over
how high housing prices have climbed.
With
median sale prices up 8% in the past year, according to Redfin, Wisconsin is the unhappy winner of the biggest price jump among the presidential battleground states. Prices are up here at double the U.S. average.
Some voters here said their frustration over housing could determine how they will vote in November’s election. That is a headwind Vice President
Kamala Harris, the expected Democratic nominee, will have to contend with in Wisconsin and in other battleground states, as her rival
Donald Trump tries to link her to President Biden’s stewardship of the country.
In the Milwaukee metro area, residents spoke of feeling a dual cost-of-living and identity crisis in a city that has long prided itself on affordability, especially compared with its down-lake cousin, Chicago.
“I always thought we were a more reasonable place to live,” said Kayla Lange, who grew up in the nearby suburb of Kenosha and lives with a roommate in an apartment downtown. The 24-year-old says her $45,000 salary as an IT recruiter leaves nothing left over after paying for rent, food and installments on her student loans.
“It’s gotten out of control, and I blame the people in charge,” she said.
The housing issue shows how Harris has her work cut out for her, particularly in Wisconsin given how fast housing costs here are rising. Wisconsin was the first state Harris visited after she announced her intentions to replace Biden on the ticket. A recent Fox News poll found Harris and Trump tied in the state.
A July Wall Street Journal poll showed that voters rank housing as their second biggest concern when it comes to high prices—behind only groceries. That is a shift from a November 2021 Journal poll, which found that housing was ranked below the cost of groceries, gas and utility bills.
The frustration over housing helps explain why voters feel so pessimistic about an economy that by many measures is good. Biden, like any president, is limited in his ability to significantly lower housing prices, since housing costs are influenced by interest rates and the supply of and demand for homes. Both factors are largely out of his control.
“People are voting based on their sense of how they’re doing financially, and the degree to which they feel like they have opportunity in their lives is closely linked to their housing,” said David Dworkin, president of the National Housing Conference, an affordable housing advocacy organization.
Can’t afford to buy
Looking at average yearly salaries across dozens of industries in the Milwaukee metro area, the National Housing Conference found that around a third of occupations paid workers enough to purchase a home with 10% down in 2020. Only 6% allow them to afford the same today.
“A few years ago, it was really realistic to afford to buy something while making $50,000,” said John Johnson, a Marquette University Law School research fellow studying local politics, housing and demographic trends. “Not anymore.”
A protracted house hunt was enough to make Nahona Moore, 28, plan to change her lifelong record of voting for Democrats.
Moore, a self-employed makeup artist living on the border of Milwaukee and Wauwatosa, said she blamed both Biden and Harris for “not making anything better.”
She added: “When Trump was still president, if we were making what we make now, we would be set.”
With a household income of $54,000, factoring in her husband Daron Moore’s salary as a nonprofit program manager, the couple had been looking at houses in the $160,000 range. Unlike when they first poked around a few years ago, they said very little was available within their budget. After a monthslong search, including rejected offers, they landed one they really wanted.
But they said scars from the search are sticking with them, and they no longer plan to vote in November. “Based on our housing search, we got lucky, but other people are struggling,” Nahona said. She doesn’t think either candidate will improve the situation.
The Moores got help in their transition to homeownership from Acts Housing, a local nonprofit that has connected thousands of low- and middle-income renters with home-buying resources such as financial planning and loan assistance since its inception in 1992.
The group’s president, Michael Gosman, said 2024 has been one of the toughest years in the organization’s history. Transactions are down 10% from the same period last year.
“There’s so much more pressure,” Gosman said.
Recently, Dawn Horne was at the Acts office to sign closing paperwork on a house in the city for her and her five children. The 39-year-old said the challenges she faced during the house hunt and recent rent hikes will be on her mind when she goes to vote in November. She didn’t vote in 2020 but backed Hillary Clinton in 2016. Now she is leaning toward voting for Trump this fall.
“My dollar went further when Trump was president,” said Horne, who runs a small jewelry business. “I don’t know what to expect from Kamala.”
Before he dropped out of the race, Biden and his top advisers had privately zeroed in on housing costs as one of the president’s most serious economic vulnerabilities heading into the election. Now Harris is set to campaign on much of the agenda Biden’s team had laid out.
The president has proposed housing reforms, such as creating a new $10,000 tax credit for first-time home buyers and providing as much as $25,000 in down-payment assistance for first-generation home buyers. Biden last month called for legislation that would withhold key tax breaks from landlords who control properties with more than 50 units if they don’t agree to limit rent increases to a maximum of 5%. None of those items stand to pass in the Republican-controlled House. The administration has also taken several
executive actions.
In 2012, when Harris was California’s attorney general, she
negotiated a settlement with big mortgage companies to give relief to struggling homeowners. In her campaign speeches since Biden dropped out, Harris frequently brings up housing, saying she hopes to build a future where every person can afford to buy a home.
“Vice President Harris will continue the fight for affordable housing for all Americans as president,” Harris campaign spokesman Charles Lutvak said.
The administration has also made some moves using executive actions, such as creating a program to save homeowners thousands of dollars in closing costs on certain mortgage refinancings. The Bureau of Land Management is moving closer to selling public land to local governments in Nevada for the construction of new affordable housing.
Trump hasn’t put forward a detailed housing plan, but the Republican platform that GOP officials approved ahead of the convention called for opening up swaths of federal land for new-home construction and providing tax incentives to ease homeownership. A Trump campaign spokeswoman didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Can’t afford to upgrade
Holly and Santiago Speranza, a husband-and-wife team of real-estate agents, have seen a lot in their 20 years in the industry. But they say that few years have been worse for their buyers than this one.
“You compile limited inventory with a competitive landscape and high interest rates and people are going to get burned out,” Santiago said.
The biggest drop-off in business has come from families that can’t trade up from starter homes, they said.
Santiago’s sister, Fernanda Speranza, falls into that category. She and her fiancé, Scott Scholtens, don’t know how much longer they can squeeze into two bedrooms with two teenagers. But they are loath to give up a $632 monthly mortgage, especially after facing repeated disappointments while looking at homes on and off for the past three years.
“We got frustrated with the situation and having to spend so much time and not finding what we were looking for,” said Fernanda, who is 48 and works in customer service. “It should not be this hard when we have two good incomes.”
She doesn’t think either presidential candidate will improve the situation. After voting for Biden in 2020, she hasn’t decided what she will do in the fall, though she said housing isn’t her only voting concern.
Can’t afford to rent
Kayla Lange, Mitchell Roehl and Hannah Noel became friends while studying communications at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. The city’s comparatively low cost of living was one of the main reasons they all decided to stay put.
With each making around $50,000 a year, they weren’t expecting to struggle to afford groceries and rent.
“I’m scared about the future,” said Noel, 24, who moved into her mom’s apartment a year ago when a breakup left her unable to afford rent on her own. Roehl said he regrets paying $1,700 a month for a downtown studio.
In college, they each paid around $600 a month for housing across town.
Noel and Roehl plan to vote for Harris because of her record on social issues such as LGBTQ rights. “It feels like we finally have someone who is able to stand up for young people,” Roehl said. “I feel a new sense of hope and excitement about the election.”
Lange says she doesn’t like Trump or Harris.
Across town, residents living in housing subsidized by the Department of Housing and Urban Development are facing the prospect of never being able to leave spots that were supposed to be temporary.
Joseph and Melissa Pinto, both special-education teachers, make around $50,000 a year combined and were saving up to buy a house until the pandemic hit.
When Joseph moved to the U.S. from Puerto Rico, he said he didn’t expect to have to live in affordable housing while working full time. “I don’t want to retire and live in these conditions,” he said.
Joseph voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, but wrote in his own name in the last presidential election. The 43-year-old said he would likely do the same in November unless one of the nominees has concrete plans to do more to help the working class, which he said he hasn’t seen so far.
“It’s hard now to save money to build a down payment when I need to use that money to survive,” he said.
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