City updates Housing Forward plan, unveils public housing tracker showing units under construction

Madison planning officials on Feb. 25 reviewed the city’s Housing Forward strategy and demonstrated a new public housing tracker intended to show progress toward a five‑year production goal and a long‑term affordability target.

Director Matt Wachter and planner Heather Stauder told the Common Council the goal is to add 15,000 housing units over five years, including about 3,700 long‑term affordable units (defined by staff as housing restricted for 30 to 40 years). The tracker, now public, plots monthly completions, projects under construction and a map of affordable housing developments and their income levels.

Wachter said the 15,000‑unit target combines projected household growth and a goal to raise vacancy rates to a healthy level. “Our relatively conservative projections are that we’ll be adding 10,000 new households over that time,” Wachter said. “Because Madison has one of the lowest vacancy rates in the country, to push that up to a healthy five to six percent vacancy, we’re aiming for 15,000 units.”

Stauder walked council members through the tracker’s three pages — the landing page showing total progress, an affordable‑housing page with projects and a decade‑view map that includes demolitions. She showed that, at the time of the presentation, more than 4,400 units were under construction and just over 100 were completed in the most recent month shown.

Wachter and Stauder summarized recent accomplishments tied to Housing Forward: roughly $59 million of city funds leveraged more than $200 million of tax‑credit and other resources to create more than 2,500 new rental homes (about 1,700 of them income‑restricted); retained and repurposed city‑ and CDA‑owned sites for affordable and mixed‑income projects; and a variety of programs for home repairs, down‑payment assistance and eviction prevention that helped thousands of households during and after the pandemic.

Council members asked for finer grained breakdowns by unit type (single‑family vs. multifamily), for bedroom/bed counts (particularly for student beds) and for demographic cross‑tabs where possible. Planning staff said building‑permit records provide unit counts and that some assessor records or project files contain bedroom counts, but bedroom and bed counts are not consistently available in an easily queryable form and staff will investigate adding more detail in future tracker updates.

Wachter said the city will continue to pursue TIF and other tools to support affordable units and noted a multi‑year pipeline that includes phases of the Triangle redevelopment and other city‑led projects. Council members asked staff to return with reporting on implementation, especially how funded projects hold affordability over 30–40 years and how land‑trust partnerships will be used for long‑term affordability.

Planning staff said the tracker is intended to make the city’s housing goals public and to provide a simple way for residents, developers and community partners to follow progress.