More and more, the cost of buying or even renting a home is going up in the metro Milwaukee area and it's also a big issue in Waukesha County.
"I would say it's one of the biggest ones," said Waukesha County Executive Paul Farrow. He joined TMJ4 @TheTable Thursday night to talk about the challenges of finding affordable housing and workforce housing in Waukesha County.
The median price for a home in Waukesha County has hit $455,000. That's compared to about $250,000 in Milwaukee County.
Farrow says Waukesha County was traditionally a place where more people would commute to Milwaukee County for work, but he says that's changing.
"What we're seeing now, and it's across the board, we've got more people coming in, but they want to be here," said Farrow. "We've got great schools, we've got low crime, we've got everything people are looking for except homes, and we got to figure out how to solve that."
That's where the conversation around workforce housing comes into play; another challenge for Waukesha County, says Farrow.
"One of the things that we're looking at doing is trying to find more apartments or more condos and that challenge is the NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) world, the people who say, I don't want that large group of places in my backyard. And so, we're working through it."
Farrow sees progress on that front but doesn't see the housing situation changing soon unless a couple of things change in the next 12 months.
"One is getting more inventory. And I think what we'll see is the market might calm down a little bit if inflation continues to rise, and then you'll get people trying to figure out exactly what do they want to do, and when do they want to pull the trigger on a home."
Watch the full conversation in the video at the top of this article.
Charles Benson and Shannon Sims interview key people in our community during TMJ4's @TheTable segment weeknights at 10 p.m.
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