Affordable family housing conference set

This year’s Wisconsin housing conference will ask the question “Affordable Single Family Housing: Progress or Pipe Dream?” It will be held Wednesday-Thursday, May 21-22, at the Fluno Center for Executive Education.

Two thought-provoking and insightful keynote speakers will offer their perspectives on affordable single-family housing: Eric Belsky, executive director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University; and Thomas Nutt-Powell, a founder of Capital Needs Unlimited, and a nationally recognized expert in housing, planning and development.

National attention has been focused on housing affordability as an important component of household welfare. However, most of this attention has been relegated to the multifamily sector of the market. In fact, single-family detached housing makes up a significant proportion of the affordable housing inventory, and the majority of such housing is in smaller towns and cities and rural areas.

“This conference focuses on this neglected area of the market,” explains Kerry Vandell, director of the Center for Urban Land Economics Research.

Federal, state and local policy initiatives will be examined, as well as constraints upon affordability that regulatory policies and marketplace dynamics impose. The conference also will examine issues and sectors of particular importance to the affordable single-family market: accessibility to special-needs populations, and manufactured and modular housing.

The conference is co-sponsored by the UW–Madison Center for Urban Land Economics Research, Wisconsin Housing and Economic Development Authority, and the Wisconsin Department of Housing and Intergovernmental Relations.

To receive a conference brochure or for information, contact Lee Gottschalk at 265-2032, lgottschalk@bus.wisc.edu, or visit http://www.bus.wisc.edu/realestate/culer/calendar.htm.