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Our Mission

Our mission is people who need better housing...our vision is a good home for every one of them...our commitment is working hard to see that they find it.

The core of our mission is the Wisconsin people who need better housing opportunities and stronger communities to live in. People who need better housing are people we all know or see every day, people we work and shop and worship with, people who are our friends or family members. They don't live just in one part of the state or in one kind of place. They live everywhere in Wisconsin -- in large cities, small towns and rural areas. They live across town, around the corner, down the street and right next door.

Who needs housing?

Homeless people - People who make very little money -- or none at all -- and cannot afford any place to live.
People who are almost homeless - People who make so little money and pay so much for housing that they're living on the edge, one lost paycheck or major expense or serious illness away from being homeless.
People without jobs - People who aren't employed because they don't have the skills for jobs that pay a living wage, or because they can't afford child care, or because they lost their jobs and haven't found new ones.
The "working poor" - People who work but still don't make enough money to pay for decent housing.
Women who have never worked or who have jobs that don't pay a living wage, and who find themselves alone and in poverty because of a divorce or the death of a spouse.
Victims of domestic abuse - Women and children who have left intolerable situations but who don't yet make enough money to support themselves.
Older adults living on fixed incomes, who may also need help to live independently.
People with physical disabilities who need housing designed for the way their bodies work.
People with developmental disabilities or mental illnesses who need the right kinds of support services to live independently in the community.

Some are home owners who can't afford to maintain and repair their homes, who are in danger of losing their homes because of rising costs, or who need alternatives because their homes don't fit their lifestyle and needs any more. Some are renters who would like to become home owners for the same reasons that anyone else wants to own a home. Some are people who prefer to be renters but who want decent quality rental housing they can afford.

Some are people whose choices about where and how they can live are constrained by discrimination -- by the fact that some people don't like to live around certain other kinds of people. We usually think of that in terms of racial discrimination, and that is a huge problem by itself. But there is also discrimination because of people's disabilities, or the number of children they have, or how much money they have or even where they get their money.

Some Wisconsin cities have neighborhoods where so many people with low incomes live without decent housing that the problem gets even bigger. People who can afford to live somewhere else leave, because they've lost confidence that the neighborhood will ever be a good place to live again. Both home owners and owners of rental property may stop keeping their houses up, even if they can afford to, because they don't think it's a good investment. Lending institutions and investors are reluctant to put money into these neighborhoods; the housing market doesn't provide good security for loans.

In older suburbs, neighborhoods are not in as bad shape as some central-city neighborhoods, but even there older homes are being left behind. Some of the people who leave grew up in those neighborhoods, but can afford newer, more expensive housing in newer, more expensive suburbs. Some of them can't really afford to move, but feel they have no choice because there's no future in the old neighborhood. The people left behind have less money and are getting older just like the housing; they are less able or less willing to invest in maintaining their homes and rental properties because they too see an uncertain future.

And in some smaller communities and rural areas people are also losing confidence. They believe that prospects for the local economy are poor, the people who can leave do, and again the people left behind don't have as much money to invest in housing.

In all these kinds of communities, the housing problem has become a problem of place as well as a problem for individual people. Solving the problem takes a concentrated, intensive investment of resources in those places to turn the situation around and restore people's confidence.

We have the need. If we have the will to do something about it, what should we do?

We should create opportunities for people to make good housing choices that meet their individual needs -- whether that's home ownership or rental housing free of discrimination and prejudices about where "they" should live. "They" are us.

We should encourage and support rehabilitation of existing housing so we stop throwing away perfectly good homes and neighborhoods that simply need new investment. We should stop replacing them with new homes we really can't afford and building roads we can't afford to get to them.

We should build new homes where that's the best way to meet real housing needs -- where we need a different kind of housing than already exists -- or to revitalize distressed neighborhoods and communities where the housing is beyond saving.

We should preserve the affordability and quality of the housing we have already built for people with lower incomes, so we don't fall behind at the same time we're trying to move ahead, and we should make sure it meets the needs of the people who live in it.

We should hold the government accountable for doing what only the government can do. But we should also support and expand local and statewide partnerships between the public sector and the private sector, to increase private lending and investment in affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization.

We should support and expand the work of community-based nonprofit housing corporations, who have become the backbone of our affordable housing and neighborhood revitalization efforts, so that they can be full and effective partners with the public and private sectors.

The Wisconsin Partnership exists to help make those things happen. With the help of our friends, we'll be around as long as we're needed.

The following are links to our How We Work pages.