Wisconsin
Hundreds of new houses a year planned in La Crosse to meet growing housing demands
The city of La Crosse needs more housing. How much more? According to one consultant, La Crosse might require about 200 new housing units a year to keep up with a rising demand.
The city’s economic and community development commission is looking at a recent study of housing in La Crosse. Des Moines consultant Charlie Cowell tells the commission that La Crosse represents 43 per cent of the county population, but only has 30 per cent of the housing.
Cowell says that reflects the trend of building more new housing in suburban areas, such as Onalaska and Holmen.
A report to the commission says La Crosse has gone from building about 120 new housing units a year in the past decade, to adding about 200 units per year.
“We’ve had a technical committee as a part of this, that served as kind of our advisory committee made up of members of the community, Habitat for Humanity, La Crosse Area Builders Association, a lot of realtors,” says city planner Andrea Trane.
City leaders have several housing goals, such as increasing the housing supply to lower income residents, redeveloping underused property, and getting more families with children into affordable homes.
Bob N.
July 25, 2024 at 6:36 am
It may be too late for all that. The exodus from La Crosse to neighboring communities has been in full force for years. Onalaska, nearly built out, has about 20 thousand residents and is adding on to schools. La Crosse is closing schools. Businesses, always ahead of government in anticipating growth, have located along the La Crosse/Onalaska line. Likewise for Holmen, up to 11 thousand people and houses going up all over. An express highway 53 connects. West Salem has a newly constructed highway 16 to commute to La Crosse and is looking at a large housing development at Lake Neshonoc.
A recent letter to the Tribune from a returning La Crosse resident pointing out the city’s deterioration in his years of living elsewhere was spot on. The South Side, once the “nicer” part of town, has a number of run-down areas. The downtown is dumpy. The traffic pattern is poor with commuting traffic, lacking a beltline, running through neighborhoods. 4th and Jackson, where low income apartments are being constructed, is a bad area, neighboring Viterbo. Building lots of cheap apartments with high concentrations of people with problems isn’t a good answer. Ousting the homeless and cleaning up the town would be a good start. But, I think, the people in charge are not up to making the necessary decisions. They really want to take the next 5 years to write the biggest welfare program ever, consisting of free dwellings, free money, free food, free counseling, we’ve ever seen. Liberal leadership, or what passes for it, causes cities to deteriorate. La Crosse is no exception.
Bob N.
July 25, 2024 at 1:23 pm
The New York Times
BREAKING NEWS
Gov. Gavin Newsom will order California officials to start removing homeless encampments after a recent Supreme Court ruling.
Thursday, July 25, 2024 10:04 AM ET
The directive is the nation’s most sweeping response to the justices’ decision last month giving local leaders greater authority to remove homeless campers
walden
July 25, 2024 at 1:54 pm
Bob, it sounds like you have put more thought into the so-called housing crises than anyone at City Hall.
I agree and don’t see how adding more and more high-density, low-income housing improves the City of La Crosse. More of the same just might get you more of the same. The downtown of La Crosse has degenerated over the last 10 years and is almost unrecognizable. Every week I drive through and see a different broken store-front window. I don’t know how the merchants survive.