Improving Housing Seen As Key To Addressing Worker Shortage In La Crosse Area

There are many factors contributing to the workforce shortage in Wisconsin, but government officials, nonprofits and businesses in the La Crosse area have their eyes on one area in particular: a lack of affordable housing.

The 7 Rivers Alliance — which deals with workforce issues in western Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa — recently released a report that pointed to a lack of affordable housing as one of the main hurdles to attracting more employees to the area. Access to child care and transportation were also listed as a concern.

..."We’ve got about 22,000 housing units in the city right now, but we’ve only got a 2 to 2.5 percent vacancy rate. That’s only freeing up about 400 units every year," said Jason Gilman, the La Crosse director of planning and development. "If you need to have 2,000 people come on to the labor market annually, and you think of the population per household of about 2.2 (people), that means we’re going to have to have about 1,000 housing units available annually if we’re going to attract and backfill that many employees."...

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Ken Notes: You do not need a survey. You need, we need, low cost high quality homes. Problem is it is more profitable to build fewer high cost high profit homes. I dare someone to address this issue. This would be a great challenge for the new Governor to throw at the legislature. Business would support him, cities would embrace him, and NO -- would not be an option...