Affordable Housing Is a really Big Deal

By Sam Parnitzke, Habitat Lakeside marketing intern 

If you’ve driven in downtown Sheboygan after dark recently or kept up with city matters on social media, you might have encountered the discussion around homelessness. In our city, like thousands of cities across the United States, people live on the streets because their income, coupled with the lack of affordable housing, prevents them from keeping a roof over their heads.

The Homeless Management Information System (HMIS), a tool provided by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, reports that there were 457 people in shelter this past year, with a total of 23,262 shelter nights, for the Lakeshore Coalition District, which includes Sheboygan, Manitowoc, Kewaunee, and Door counties. Sheboygan itself sees about 280 people obtaining services from various homeless programs a year.

Data also suggest that this number is growing every year. The numbers here and nationwide are difficult to track, however, mostly because homelessness falls into three basic categories: People who are literally homeless and who must resort to temporary shelter; those at risk, meaning they are within 14 days of losing their residence; and those who are homeless because they are runaways or fleeing domestic abuse.

The real stories of homelessness and unstable housing are chronicled There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America (Crown 2025), by journalist Brian Goldstone. Over 350 meticulously researched and movingly written pages, Goldstone explores the United States’ affordable housing crisis thought the lenses of five homeless families living in Atlanta, Ga. The families portrayed in this book are the “invisible” homeless who live not on the streets, but in extended-stay hotels, on the floors of relatives’ apartments, or in their cars. They cobble whatever kind of shelter they can because even working several jobs is not enough to rent a decent, affordable apartment in a safe neighborhood.

Indeed, the adults in these families, all of which contain children, have at least one job. Indeed, 40 percent of the people living on the streets and about 50 percent of those living in shelters have formal employment, according to Goldstone’s research. Why can’t they afford rent? One reason: Rent increases have outpaced wage increases by 325 percent since 1985. Nowhere in the United States can a person making minimum wage afford a two-bedroom apartment that doesn’t eat up the bulk of their income, according to research by the National Low Income Housing Coalition. In Wisconsin, the so-called “housing wage” is $20.32 an hour and the minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.

The rent increases have created a demand for affordable housing that far exceeds the supply. In the United States, there are 34 affordable apartments for every 100 families that need one, which adds up to a 7.3 million shortage of affordable rentals.

Homelessness is by no means an easy problem to solve. It takes a sustained commitment to ending the circumstances, including unstable, unaffordable housing, that harm members of our community. The Lakeshore Community Action Program in Sheboygan lists 97 different programs that offer outreach to people that fit in any of the three homelessness categories. These programs offer people a chance to fight back against and reverse their housing situations.

Tackling homelessness means addressing the problem at its roots. Habitat Lakeside’s affordable housing programs aim to provide decent, stable, and affordable shelter for as many people as possible. Every house built, dollar raised or hour volunteered supports the future where everyone in Sheboygan Country can have a place they call home. The state of homelessness is challenging, but our determination to end it is even stronger.