Sheboygan Housing Study Shows Critical Need for Affordable Rentals and Homes

It’s hard to find a home to buy or an apartment to rent in Sheboygan.  That’s the gist of a report commissioned by the City presented to Sheboygan’s Common Council last week by Redevelopment Resources of Madison.  The report that looks at housing needs through the year 2032 details the increasing difficulty of finding affordable housing, and provides guidance to help solve the problem.

The report shows only 34 affordable rental units were available as of this January, a supply it called “critical”.  The analysis shows that if an unmarried childcare worker, home health aide, or a short-order cook were each looking for a one-bedroom apartment to rent in Sheboygan, they’d have to either rent an unaffordable unit or be shut out of the market, and the future isn’t looking better.

By 2032, the number of households in the city is projected to grow by between 1,320 to 2,740.  Much of that growth is attributed to plans by major local employers to add hundreds of new jobs.

The report recommends that a mix of new market-rate, owner-occupied and rental housing be made a top priority, increasing the density downtown through new multi-family construction and redevelopment, and using underutilized surface parking lots as prime real estate.  Beyond the downtown, the report says that there’s a “missing middle” of affordable housing that could be addressed through the addition of townhomes, duplexes, triplexes and fourplexes among the denser housing options.

The full report can be found here.