As home prices and rents increase in Dane County and elsewhere, housing policy became a point of debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris on the campaign trail in 2024.
Now, with Trump set to take office, his policies could have major ramifications in the Madison area and, some fear, might fail to address the underlying issues causing housing costs to rise.
Trump’s plans on the issue are less clear than those of Harris, who outlined a wide range of government interventions to boost housing supply, give prospective homebuyers tax credits to help them afford a residence and encourage local governments to remove roadblocks to new development.
The Democratic vice president’s platform was in sharp contrast to Trump’s approaches, which centered on freeing up housing stock by deporting undocumented immigrants, spurring home construction with more favorable interest rates and authorizing more building on public lands.
It’s unclear whether the Trump administration will try to cut federal funding for housing issues. That could mean cities like Madison will have to pony up more of their own limited funding to build affordable housing.
“Regardless of who got elected, we would have said that there’s these deep structural crises in the housing system. And there are some really thorny trade-offs involved,” said Kurt Paulsen, a professor of urban planning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “And you cannot just cut your way to housing affordability.”
Trump’s pick to lead the federal agency tasked with developing housing policy, former NFL player and politician Scott Turner, has some background in housing work.
During Trump’s first term, Turner led the White House Opportunity and Revitalization Council, which targeted investment via a new federal program called Opportunity Zones, for development in low-income areas, including new housing.
Trump and his allies have given onlookers some ideas of what to expect.
Vice President-elect JD Vance has argued that Trump’s pledges of mass deportations of undocumented immigrants will free up housing stock, driving down prices in the process.
Others, including trade associations representing the building industry, have argued the opposite: that mass deportations will reduce the labor necessary to build new houses or apartments.
Wisconsin employers are already projected to need 7,000 more construction workers by the end of next year, even without any other changes in immigration or labor policy.
A team including two UW-Madison researchers found that increased immigration enforcement can decrease construction labor and drive up home prices.
Trump has also floated building more housing on federal lands, although this is unlikely to have a major effect in Wisconsin, a state with relatively little territory controlled by federal agencies.
Affordable housing programs at stake
One potential impact for the city of Madison and other local governments across Wisconsin is the level of support Trump and the newly Republican-controlled Congress will lend to federal programs designed to boost affordable housing development.
Two key federal programs target affordable housing. One provides grants to local governments, who can partner with community groups to buy, build or rehabilitate affordable housing stock for residents to rent or buy.
The second provides funding for affordable housing or anti-poverty work. This type of funding is called block grants, which give local governments much more latitude in deciding how the money is spent.
Trump’s first budget proposal in 2017 would have ended those two programs. They were spared by the Republican-controlled Congress.
“To solve the housing crisis, we really need a massive infusion of federal resources,” Paulsen said. “But those don’t appear to be likely now.”
Some fear the Trump administration won’t be able to do much to stop rising home and rent costs in the Madison area.
President Joe Biden’s administration opted to build on those programs with a flurry of investments in building new housing stock and encouraging the use of green materials in construction.
“I think it’s not unreasonable to think that a lot of these newer programs that have come in the last four years are going to be pared back, if not eliminated,” said Matt Wachter, director of the city of Madison’s Department of Planning and Community and Economic Development. “And then the question is, will we see even further cuts? And it’s too soon to know.”
There were cuts during Trump’s first term, Wachter said. He noted that in the last eight years, the city of Madison is less dependent on those federal programs for supporting affordable housing. Still, a decline in federal support could force the city to pick up even more of the costs while Madison is dealing with a persistent structural deficit.
“We would have to put more money into a project, which means we would get less projects,” Wachter said. “The city has a limitation on how much it can invest into these sorts of things.”
The city relies more heavily on a federal program that allows state and local governments to issue tax credits for creating low-income rental housing.
The Low-Income Housing Tax Credit has historically enjoyed bipartisan support, as it helps communities in Democratic and Republican states alike.
But Trump has also pledged to renew and expand his signature slate of tax cuts from his first term. A lower tax burden for corporations could make credits, which reduce a person or company’s tax bill, less desirable.
Trump has also pledged to bring down interest rates, which would make it easier for developers and home buyers to secure loans. The president doesn’t directly control interest rates, which are set by the Federal Reserve. Trump has argued that bringing down inflation will help interest rates fall, as well.
But if there isn’t enough housing supply, Paulsen cautioned, those efforts won’t matter much.
“If there’s not a lot of new homes built, then more demand just continues (and) the price increases,” he said. “There’s really no magic formula to bring down house prices, other than to build a lot of housing.”
Trump could dump ‘housing first’
Trump has also signaled a new tactic for addressing homelessness, one that likely means a move away from the “housing first” strategy used in Madison and many other cities across the country.
Housing first prioritizes finding a person a permanent home and eliminating barriers to doing so, with rules such as required sobriety. Madison and Dane County have gravitated toward such an approach.
Hundreds of beds await the evening’s influx of people who are homeless looking to stay at Porchlight Inc.’s men’s shelter in Madison.
In a video outlining his views on homelessness, Trump vowed “we will use every tool, lever and authority to get the homeless off our streets.”
He has said this will include banning camping in public, mirroring a policy considered in the state Legislature last year, and relocating people experiencing homelessness into tent cities, with access to medical and mental health care.
“Our once-great cities have become unlivable, unsanitary nightmares, surrendered to the homeless, the drug-addicted, and the violent and dangerously deranged,” Trump said. “We are making many suffer for the whims of a deeply unwell few.”
Michael Basford, director of Wisconsin Interagency Council on Homeless, which coordinates action on homelessness across different state agencies, said Trump’s rhetoric on the issue is “troubling.”
Basford also sees the president-elect’s ideas as wholly insufficient to alleviate the issues causing homelessness.
“Realistically, that approach doesn’t work,” Basford said in an email. “There isn’t a shred of evidence that any state, county, or municipality in America has been able to successfully arrest or ticket away homelessness. What does work is constructing more housing, the ‘Housing First’ approach to ending homelessness, and providing supportive services to sustain people in housing.”
On multiple occasions, Trump proposed eliminating the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, though the agency was saved by Congress.
Basford said he will be “closely monitoring” funding for two key federal programs that help address homelessness. Assistance for state and local governments to combat homelessness flatlined or slightly increased during Trump’s first term.
“It is possible that lack of adequate investment in these areas will force states to invest more in solutions to homelessness rather than wait for the federal government (to) provide needed help,” he said.
