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CONLEY COMMENTARY (WSAU) – Here’s a general rule of thumb for budgeting your housing costs. You should spend no more than one-third to one-quarter of your monthly income on your rent or your mortgage. If you overspend on housing, you won’t have enough for food, or your car payment, or other bills.
So – if you were to move into a two or three-bedroom apartment at the new Foundry on Third – the rent is between $2,500 and $3,000 a month, your annual income is between $110,000 and $125,000 a year. In other words, you’re somewhere between upper middle class and wealthy.
Tom Kilian wrote a thoughtful op-ed in the Wausau Pilot and Review. He asks, why in the world should a city like Wausau, with a severe affordable housing problem, be subsidizing upscale apartments for its richest residents?
I know what the response from City Hall will be: the city reached assessment agreements with the developers. In a few years the new buildings like RiverLife, the Foundry on Third, and the Westside Commons will go onto the tax base. And that’s all well and good. I’m in favor of growing the tax base. But the city’s new, and correct, policy should be that we only use public money for the types of housing the city needs – affordable housing – well, those buildings would be taxable too.
Mr. Kilian points out a great irony of Wausau’s misguided development priorities. The next building at the Foundry on Third development, will have a private swimming pool for wealthy renters to use. And yet whenever Wausau has a tight budget year, the city debates whether to shut down one of its public swimming pools. So the rich people get their pool, the commoners in town get less.
I’ve changed my thinking about how the city’s development money should be used. Developers, bring only your affordable housing proposals to City Hall. I’m against public money for any other types of apartments.
Chris Conley
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