Written by Allison Garfield. Original Article Found Here.

Madison rent prices are soaring at a record pace and residents are feeling the effects ripple through their lives — but the city has concluded the only legal solution to control the increases is to build more housing.

That’s an answer that will take years to show results while tenants face life-changing decisions right now.

Wisconsin state laws prohibit more proactive measures from local governments. And the few support services that exist for housing are already overwhelmed by the amount of need in the city.

For Tammy Rabideau, rent increases mean leaving the city she’s called home for 35 years.

After she was notified rent for her west side apartment would spike $200 a month to $1,450 at the start of her next lease in October, she searched for a more affordable city.

“We are relocating 100% because of the rent,” said Rabideau, who is moving with her partner to Iowa City in August. “Everywhere we looked here was just astronomical. We could afford it, but do we really want to? At what cost?”

While researching the causes and effects of a recent surge in monthly rents, the Cap Times heard from over 100 people with concerns about being priced out of their homes. For some, like Rabideau, it means moving out of town altogether. Others are living from paycheck to paycheck and cutting costs to make ends meet.

The Cap Times contacted over a dozen landlords and property managers in the Madison area for their perspectives, and none replied.

Almost every tenant interviewed said they felt powerless in the situation, including Michelle Allen, a certified nursing assistant and a single mother of four. She is moving out of her apartment on the west side by Elver Park after building management told her in April that her rent would increase by $300 a month at the start of her new lease in June.

“It’s not acceptable,” Allen said. “That’s money I have to prioritize for my children (and) their needs. I don't understand how people are going to be able to keep doing this before there’s nowhere left to stay.”

Many in the city fear just that — not enough room to grow and nowhere for residents to turn.

“When I talk about Madison experiencing a housing crisis, this is what I mean,” said Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway, who made city incentives to develop more rental units a staple of her reelection platform this spring. “We are seeing symptom after symptom of years of failing to produce enough housing and, in some ways, this is the inevitable result.”

Growing outward is not an option, Rhodes-Conway said. She believes every neighborhood in Madison needs to be opened up to more housing. Since January, Madison’s City Council has steadily taken steps to create more density in residential areas, a process that stirred controversy with homeowners fearing they’d lose the character of their neighborhoods.

But those steps are still not enough, Rhodes-Conway said.

“It's a very unsatisfying solution, but at the end of the day, the only solution really is to build more housing,” the mayor said.

A reverse 'Field of Dreams'

Madison is expected to add over 100,000 new residents between now and 2050 — a 37% population boom from the 270,000 who live in the city now — and housing experts project the community will need at least 10,000 new homes every five years to keep up. The development of new housing, specifically affordable homes, has not matched the need, much less the pace suggested by those projections.

The resulting rent increases are economics 101, said Kurt Paulsen, a professor of urban planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. When demand exceeds supply, prices go up.

“It’s a story of too many people chasing too few units,” he said. “And like any region, we face a real choice: Either we build lots of housing where people want to live, or we don’t build a lot of housing.”

He calls it “the reverse ‘Field of Dreams.’”

“If you don’t build it, people will still come,” Paulsen said. 

A national study from Apartment List in March found that rent prices in Madison have jumped 14.1% over the past year and 30.4% since March 2020. It was the fastest-rising rent of any major city in the United States, the study reported. The average one-bedroom apartment in January 2017 rented for $873. In April 2023, that number clocks in at $1,322.

The increases are the result of the rising costs of buying land, building homes and operating apartment buildings — including property taxes and utilities — and an imbalance between the supply of and demand for housing, said Bill Connors, the executive director of Smart Growth Greater Madison Inc, a nonprofit group that represents local real estate development.

“The only solution is to encourage the construction of many more housing units every year all over the Madison area and for local governments to stop adding costs to constructing and operating housing,” Connors said.

Even though Madison last year approved a record number of new homes — 4,076 multifamily units and 150 single-family houses — actual construction can take years to complete. And outside of development, there are not many options to remedy the high-rent situation, said Matt Wachter, the director of the city’s Department of Planning, Community & Economic Development.

Nor are there many options for renters to find a cheaper place to live in Madison.

At the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023, the city’s vacancy rate — the percentage of available units that are unoccupied — was 2.5%, which Wachter called “really, really low.” A healthy vacancy rate is around 5%, according to planning division staff.

“The city is actively working to ensure people aren't displaced from their neighborhoods. The way we do that is to make sure we're adding more housing and adding a wide variety of housing and a wide variety of price points,” Wachter said.

“It’s a lot of units. It’s a lot of people to house.”

While cities in other states have enacted measures such as rent control and income-based zoning mandates to keep costs down for residents, Wisconsin statutes prohibit those steps.

State law says local municipalities cannot regulate the amount of rent or fees charged for housing or enforce “inclusionary zoning,” which requires a certain percentage of housing be available to low- and moderate-income families.

“We don't have a hammer — we don’t have a blunt tool like rent control,” Wachter said. “We don't have a mechanism to directly affect the rents being charged in the market. A lot of that power falls (to) the state.”

Rhodes-Conway said she wishes the city had more ability to intervene.

“Unfortunately, we've been broadly preempted by the state Legislature from protecting tenants,” Rhodes-Conway said. “It's very, very frustrating … but I do think that if tenants are in a position to push back, they certainly can ask their landlords for more information about why prices are going up.”

Still, she said, “there is very little that we can do to hold landlords accountable if they are increasing rent disproportionate to their costs.”

Power balance shifts to landlords

Paulsen, the UW urban planning expert, said city and county officials are doing “everything they technically can” to ease the housing shortage, but compared to the need, “it seems like a drop in the bucket.”

He comes back to the overall theme that market conditions are the driving factor: “I know people want to look for a villain and a hero and a morality play, but the fluctuations in rents are really driven by vacancies, which reflects both new supply coming online and the demand for people to live here because of job growth and income growth.”

Right now, it’s a landlord’s market. Even units with record high rents are being snatched up.

“When vacancy rates are less than 3%, landlords have pricing power and tenants don't have a lot of choice. When vacancy rates are 7%, the story's flipped,” Paulsen said. “I hate to say it because it sounds cruel, but housing is a business — you can't operate a business at a loss and expect to survive.”

Chris Mokler is the director of legislative affairs for the Wisconsin Real Estate Investors Association, formerly the Wisconsin Apartment Association, and helps advocate for landlords and property managers.

“Costs are significantly up… and a landlord cannot operate negatively. They have to operate in the positive. Otherwise, why would they do it? Why would they risk their families?” Mokler asked. “The landlord risks his family, his money, his credit, to buy some type of building and they can charge what they want to charge. That's their business.” 

But to residents, it can feel unjust. Allen, the nursing assistant who’s moving, said there are landlords who do care, but most don't, in her experience.

“People are taking over buildings, not thinking about the people that live there and how much they can afford. You have landlords that are very selfish and that are very greedy,” Allen said. “There is definitely an imbalance.”

To Mokler, the solution is to shop around: “There are good landlords out there that raise their rents to market rates so they can afford to pay their bills, and we suggest that tenants seek those out.”

For Allen, that’s easier said than done.

It took her months to find an affordable apartment within Madison Metropolitan School District boundaries so her children could stay in their schools.

“It’s really difficult trying to find a three-bedroom apartment in Madison. Even for a two-bedroom, being a family of five. We don't qualify for most low-income two-bedrooms,” Allen said. “A lot of people were telling me I would have to go outside of Madison to find something.”

Poor timing as emergency rental assistance ends

Temporary programs assisted people with rent throughout the pandemic, but many of those are coming to an end.

The nation’s Supreme Court struck down the national eviction moratorium in September 2021, causing a flood of evictions across the country, including in Wisconsin. At the same time, the City Council approved Dane Core 2.0 with the aim of keeping local housing assistance alive.

But not all renters were eligible.

Allen didn’t qualify for Dane County’s emergency rental assistance program, Dane Core 2.0, which provided funds from the U.S. Department of Treasury to those struggling to pay rent during the COVID outbreak. She said it wouldn’t have mattered even if she did.

“Not only is our rent going up, but people who get rent assistance, (our building) doesn't want to take that,” Allen said. Landlords are required to fill out applications for their tenants receiving assistance and that process can take months, especially if landlords are resistant to waiting for their payments.

Dane Core launched in 2021 first through the Tenant Resource Center and later expanded to include Urban Triage and Community Action Coalition for South Central Wisconsin. The program distributed over $75 million in direct financial assistance benefits to more than 19,000 renter households. The money could go toward rent, utilities and internet payments.

But the program will permanently stop accepting applications on May 31 because funds are depleted. Core was funded by the Federal Emergency Rental Assistance Program, and the state version of the program ended Jan. 31.

It’s not great timing, said Hannah Renfro, the interim executive director of the Tenant Resource Center, a local nonprofit dedicated to providing housing support.

“We are definitely seeing a lot of people seeing their rent increase by $300 a month. … There are a lot of folks who certainly can't afford that kind of increase,” Renfro said. “It is really difficult. We are way short (on) the number of units needed for affordable units. It puts people in really hard positions where they will sometimes agree to that increase, because what's the alternative?”

The Tenant Resource Center will continue to provide services to renters and landlords in eviction court, offering legal representation and mediation through the Eviction Diversion and Defense Partnership. The program is aimed at increasing access to legal representation and other housing support and court navigation services. The center also offers counseling on rental rights, including information about how to break a lease and the eviction process.

Renfro said that even though tenants could theoretically move when their lease expires, or question their landlords about the higher rate, the most vulnerable people are afraid of being forced out.

“There aren't a lot of options for tenants to fight back,” Renfro said. 

And there are few avenues for support in Madison outside of the Tenant Resource Center. The majority of resources that the city of Madison provides online directs residents there. The Homeless Services Consortium of Dane County has an outdated list of subsidized housing options and vacancies from December 2021, as does the Dane County Housing Authority from October 2022.

Housing Navigation Services through Catholic Charities of Madison has created its own platform to search for an affordable unit and provides services to individuals and families experiencing housing insecurity and homelessness.

Allen said that for her family, the Tenant Resource Center and lists of available housing were nice —  but not enough.

“So many places have a waiting list, so that really doesn't help,” Allen said. “Most low-income housing has a two-year waitlist and there are people who have been on it for a very long time and still can't get it.

“I think if there were more people who could actually offer help with housing, that would probably be a good idea.”

A 'golden ticket' if you can get it

Rhodes-Conway is aware that there is much more work to be done, specifically on subsidized housing.

“We need more formally subsidized affordable housing. We're working on that. We have big projects in the pipeline and that will help,” Rhodes-Conway said, explaining the city is producing a wider range of options for those between 40% and 60% of the area median income, which was $70,000 for a household between 2017 and 2021, according to the most recent census data.

But the mayor said the city isn't producing enough housing for people who are at 30% or lower of the area median income.

“We are looking at housing availability, particularly for the lowest income. That is a pretty significant piece that we have to figure out how to address,” Rhodes-Conway said.

Sami Smith — a social worker with EmployAbility, a social services agency that provides low-income housing support to people with mental health diagnoses — works to find subsidized housing for her clients but said the wait times are brutal.

“Subsidized housing is like the golden ticket, but for a three-bedroom (apartment) there is a four-year waitlist,” Smith said. “It’s completely unreasonable.”

While the city’s Community Development Authority offers public housing where tenants are given the option of paying either an income-based rent or a flat rent, it also has a more competitive housing lottery called Section 8 which pays a portion of the rent for about 1,600 low-income households in the city. Smith said even that program is random and those funds can take time to come through to tenants.

“People can’t afford to live anymore. I know myself — I was homeless all of 2019 because I couldn’t get a place because of my credit,” Smith said.

EmployAbility only has two housing specialists right now, according to Smith, and she’d like to see more investment into housing programs like hers.

Can people fight a rent increase? No.

When it comes to legal steps to fight a rent increase, there are none. It’s a frustration for Jason Greller, a local real estate lawyer whose clients include tenants as well as landlords.

He’s been getting five or six calls a day since the start of the year from tenants who are surprised with rent increases, he said. Greller tells all the callers the same thing: Landlords have the unilateral right to increase the rent and there are no limits on that.

“A tenant doesn't have legal remedies, so there's nothing I can do to help them,” Greller said. “As an attorney, it's frustrating. If we want to get involved in any of these matters, we just become part of the problem because we charge money and there's very little that I can do to help.”

While Dane Core may have provided some relief to tenants during the pandemic, Mokler, with the Wisconsin Real Estate Investors Association, contended it harmed those in charge of rentals. When the tables were turned and landlords were hurting from eviction moratoriums, he said, no one seemed to care.

“A lot of landlords are still digging out from COVID. We had the state of Wisconsin tell tenants that they could stay in their homes, that they wouldn't be evicted and they didn't necessarily have to pay rent,” Mokler said. “Later on, they backed it up with emergency rental assistance programs, but landlords didn't get the money when they needed it. And sometimes it's withheld money that they (tenants) were perfectly able to pay.”

It wasn't that long ago that landlords were having a difficult time renting their apartments, particularly downtown during the early days of the pandemic, Greller said. With an excess of vacancies, tenants had more bargaining power.

“Things have flipped over on its head in a very, very short period of time,” Greller said.

With Dane Core ending, the Tenant Resource Center is expanding its hours starting the week of May 29. Its office at 1202 Williamson St. will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Thursday.

Nonetheless, Renfro said the center could “always use more funds” to hire more housing counselors and more mediators.

“We know that there are going to be a lot of folks that have questions,” Renfro said. “We are making sure we’re accessible to everyone.”

No longer at the 'forefront of tenants' rights'

To put it bluntly, real estate lawyer Greller said cities either “grow or die.” Madison should be happy it’s growing, but it’s coming at a painful cost. And, at least to Greller, one need only look back a decade or so to figure out why.

Wisconsin was the first state to consider the inhabitability of properties as a right for tenants,  Greller said, and consequently “stood at the forefront of tenants’ rights.”

If a space was untenantable — including lack of running water, non-working plumbing or sewage systems, no electricity or bad wiring — the landlord had to pay for repairs and tenants wouldn’t need to pay rent during that time.

“We were very progressive, and eight years of the Walker administration and Republican Legislature changed the playing field enormously,” Greller said. “There are very few tenants’ rights lawyers in the state anymore.”

Wisconsin laws were originally designed to protect the tenants and acknowledged the unequal bargaining power between them and landlords, he said.

“We knew tenants didn't have the same financial resources that landlords had and we (helped) through fee shifting,” Greller said, which put power with tenants so that if their property manager didn’t comply with the law, they could be paid double the damages and attorneys fees.

But during Republican former Gov. Scott Walker’s administration from 2011 to 2019, a lot of laws that protected tenants were taken off the books, Greller explained. Because of that, municipalities had their hands tied.

Now, state law says any cited problems must impact health and safety, and landlords can challenge rent withholding in court. It’s also easier for a landlord to shift the costs to the tenant. On top of that, laws were also changed under Walker so they no longer include what Greller called “the magic word” — “shall.”

“Now they use the word ‘may,’ and what that means to somebody who's thinking about taking on one of these cases as a tenant rights attorney, it means you may get paid. You may not. It’s up to the judge,” Greller said, whereas it used to be a guarantee. “This is no longer an attractive area of practice for a lot of young lawyers, and, of course, a lot of these tenants can't afford to pay the bill anyway.”

Carol J., 73, remembers a time when she felt like she had protections and power when it came to her housing. Now, she feels entirely different. She didn’t want to use her last name for fear of retaliation from her apartment complex.

Carol lives in a 55-and-over housing complex in the Atwood neighborhood where rent has steadily risen over the past several years. In July 2020, she paid $1,300 a month. As of June 1 this year, she’ll need to pay $1,525.

A 17.3% increase in three years may not seem like an excessive amount, but for seniors who are living off of retirement plans and social security with fixed income, Carol said, it’s “really bad.”

Carol and some of her neighbors, like Barbara Wright, can’t rent income-restricted apartments because of the financial safety nets they’ve spent years building. Wright said she and the entire senior community are “stuck” and simultaneously “not taken seriously.”

“If my rent is increased right now, I have nowhere to go. The apartments in Madison… there's nothing. And the ones they're building, I can't get into,” Carol said. “In my mind, it's discriminatory. I’m really angry.”

Carol worked for 28 years as a teacher and is still working full time for a nonprofit to afford her apartment.

“I can't afford living anywhere without working full time at 73. People talk about helping the most vulnerable population…and I feel that my section of the populace is becoming that because we don’t have anywhere else to go,” Carol said. “I have a daughter, she doesn’t want me to move in with her, so what am I going to do? Pitch a tent somewhere?”

Wright, 70, organized a meeting with residents, management and their alder, Marsha Rummel, to address the situation in April. It didn’t go well, Wright said.

“I feel like I need to be careful what I say. Some of the apartment residents thought that I was going to be evicted if I spoke out, and I said, ‘I have a lease and I have a lawyer,’” Wright said. “If the manager had his way, I'm sure he would have done something because he was steamed we dared to say anything.”

The property management company did not respond to multiple inquiries from The Cap Times.

“It's not like we have anywhere else to go,” Wright said. “The options are all pretty bleak.”

And unlike some, Wright and Carol don’t want to leave their building. They have built a community in a quiet and walkable part of the city.

“We have most everything that you would want,” Wright said. “But people like our property manager, they don't care. They don't want to preserve that. And the mayor, she talks a good game, but whether or not she's able to stand up against the developers is a whole other question.”

'Pushing-on-all-fronts effort'

While Rhodes-Conway said it can be frustrating to be stuck in a housing hole, she sees it as motivating to find new options for everyone. She said the city has “mastered” using state and federal tax credits to create affordable housing.

Her office is looking into how the city can expand housing cooperatives, work more with a land trust model (where homeowners purchase their house but not the land, which is instead leased by a community land trust nonprofit), find opportunities in cohousing and build affordable condos.

“This is really a pushing-on-all-fronts effort to understand the dynamics of the housing market, the dynamics of residential construction to incentivize the kind of housing construction that we want to see here,” Rhodes-Conway said.

She emphasized that the city is not the only actor and said it's important for the private sector to be involved.

“Obviously landlords need to be able to pay their bills and keep up their property, but I would hope that, particularly in the market that we're in now, that landlords would be sensitive to what tenants are going through and trying to help folks stay housed,” Rhodes-Conway said.

But for Rabideau, who's already packing up to move to Iowa, it’s too little, too late. The freelance writer said she has a better understanding of housing hardships than most people. She and her daughter were evicted in 2013 on New Year’s Eve and experienced homelessness for months afterward.

“I am not new to living on the edge and the difficulties that can come with (housing). I just don’t agree with what’s happening here,” Rabideau said. “I have a love-hate relationship with this city because we claim to be so progressive but there are so many areas that it’s just lip service. I see it across the board and housing is just one aspect.

“In regards to the policies we have in place, to diversity and being inclusive, I think it's a bunch of bullshit.”