City presents 'Housing Forward' strategy and public housing tracker with 15,000‑unit five‑year target

Director Matt Wachter and DPCED presented “Housing Forward” and a public housing tracker to the Common Council on Feb. 25, laying out the city’s five‑year goals, recent investments and an interactive dashboard tracking progress and affordable housing commitments.

The goals: the city set a stretch target of creating 15,000 new housing units over five years to restore a healthier vacancy rate, and to deliver roughly 3,750 units that will remain affordable for long terms (defined on the tracker as 30 years, with a city target of 40 years when feasible).

Key accomplishments and pipeline items the city described: - City investments: $12 million in TIF and $47 million in affordable housing fund commitments have supported the creation of more than 2,500 rental homes, roughly 1,700 of which include long‑term affordability covenants. Those local investments leveraged more than $200 million of federal/state tax credit financing in recent years, staff said. - Deep affordability: about 185 units in recent projects serve households at or below 30% of area median income. - Public land projects: the Community Development Authority is reconstructing public housing at the Triangle and building mixed‑income housing; the Braden Lot and other land‑banked parcels in South Madison are planned for future affordable housing development. - Homelessness and shelters: the city assembled more than $25 million of combined city, county and federal funds for a new men’s shelter under construction and aims to have it operating in early 2026; the city extended campground (Dairy Drive) support through summer 2025 and is pursuing property to site a women and family shelter. - Household assistance: federal rapid‑response rental and eviction prevention programs helped nearly 11,000 households stay housed during COVID and afterward, staff said.

The city also showed an interactive public “housing tracker” that displays monthly completions, units under construction, and a map of sites. The dashboard breaks out units with long‑term affordability covenants and allows users to inspect developments by year and by affordability level. Staff said the feed is based on building permit and assessor data and will be updated monthly; they acknowledged limits, including that the dashboard currently tabulates units rather than bedrooms or beds (an important distinction for student housing), and that older accessory‑dwelling‑unit conversions may be harder to detect historically.

Why it matters: the presentation is intended to put a transparent metric behind the city’s housing goals and make it easier for policymakers and the public to see how many units are completed, under construction, and committed to long‑term affordability. Staff emphasized that the 15,000‑unit target is intentionally ambitious: recent five‑year periods had delivered 11,000–12,000 units, so the target is reachable but will require sustained action across financing, zoning and development practice.

What happens next: staff said they will publish the tracker publicly and run requests for proposals against forthcoming affordable housing fund allocations, with roughly $32 million programmed in the next two years for affordable housing. They also plan targeted state advocacy for more condominium and homeownership options (a frequent market constraint), expanded energy‑efficiency work to lower operating costs for low‑income renters, and additional phases of CDA projects.

Ending: Council members praised the tracker’s visuals and asked for future additions—including bedroom counts and clearer breakdowns by building size—and discussed how to use the tool to measure the impact of policy and zoning changes adopted the same night.