Permitting trends in Oneida County differ from Wisconsin metro

Housing availability is an issue in Wisconsin.

According to a recent report by the Wisconsin Policy Forum, permits issued for multi-family units in the state’s largest cities — Madison and Milwaukee — increased while permits for single-family units have been limited.  

The report prompted The Lakeland Times to contact the Oneida County planning and zoning department and the town of Minocqua. The Times was told the trend reported in metro Wisconsin isn’t being seen up north.

­Looking at Wisconsin overall, since 2021 and “amid the surge in mortgage interest rates and a rise in building costs, the pace of housing permitting has stagnated — declining slightly in 2022 and remaining roughly flat in 2023.”

According to a graph included in the report which incorporates data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Building Permits Survey, permitting for multi–family housing since 2021 in the state has shot up while single-family permitting has only increased “modestly.” 

“Using an average of the most recent three years for which we have data (2021-2023) multi-family housing permits increased 61.3 (percent) on a population adjusted basis, relative to the three years preceding the pandemic (2017-2019),” the policy forum report states. “Single-family permits increased by 21.7 (percent) during this period.”

The research in the report wasn’t  limited to housing permitting though. It also makes mention of availability and prices.

“The data cited here demonstrate that the pace of housing permitting has increased in the last few years relative to the pre-pandemic period, both in Wisconsin and nationally,” the report states. “Yet various indicators suggest that overall housing supply continues to trail demand — perhaps the most significant being the sharp increase in housing prices since 2020.”

In conclusion: the state’s increased multi-family permitting and construction poses issues to meet housing demand by the people of Wisconsin. 

“For prospective homebuyers, meanwhile, the state’s sluggish pace of single-family home permitting suggests that — absent other major changes in housing markets — there may be little relief in store from rising prices,” the report states. “The Harvard University report cites a recent survey by the National Association of Homebuilders that asked builders about their top challenges. High interest rates were the most frequently cited in 2023, followed by the cost and availability of labor, the price of building materials, the cost and availability of lots, and difficulties obtaining zoning or permit approvals.”

The report concludes by offering potential steps local governments and the state could take in order to curb barriers for builders and encourage home construction. It acknowledged, however, that there are problems out of local governments’ control that pose difficulties in making that happen.

Steps for local governments included increasing the number of suitable lots in communities, making zoning codes more flexible and making permit approval processes faster, more predictable or less costly. 

Steps for the state included policies to lower the cost of construction, like tax cuts or incentives, or policies that could promote a larger construction workforce. 

Another step the report suggests the state could take to encourage more home construction is to limit powers of local elected officials when it comes to building or zoning code, though it points out doing that would likely create pushback from local officials and residents who want to maintain local control.

“The rising cost of housing in recent years, both in absolute terms and relative to incomes, is a glaring indicator that the state’s housing inventory remains insufficient to meet demand,” the report states. “Some of the biggest factors at play, such as interest rates and construction costs, largely are beyond the scope of state and local policymakers. This makes it all the more important for them to pull the levers within their reach to make housing more affordable for all Wisconsinites.”

Different story in the Northwoods, different housing problems too

Oneida County planning and zoning director Karl Jennrich told the Times multi-family units usually require conditional use permits (CUP). CUPs, he said, are reviewed by the Oneida County board’s planning and development committee. 

Jennrich said very few CUPs for multi-family units have been reviewed by the committee in the last year. 

“I know there’s one in Woodruff that we’re starting to review, and that’s probably one of the first multi-family developments on sewer and water that we’ve seen in a long time or in a couple of years,” he said. “In Oneida County, what we’re mostly seeing is single-family development … also redevelopment. You know, people buying a lakefront property and tearing down the homes and building new homes. We are seeing a lot of … new divisions of land (also), especially … in Nokomis and Little Rice.”

Developers buying and then subdividing properties is a certain type of development activity the county hardly saw at all around 2007 and 2008, according to Jennrich. However, that has evidently changed.

The last “major” multi-family development Jennrich said he remembers was in the Minocqua area around that 2007 and 2008 timeframe as well. 

“But we really haven’t seen what I call multi-family; either the duplexes, multiple units, we haven’t really seen apartment units,” he said. “We just haven’t seen them for awhile, even though there is a demand for them.”

Minocqua town chairman Mark Hartzheim said he thinks Jennrich’s memory is accurate. 

He added other developments constructed on sewer and water in the town roughly around that time as well were more “luxury” multi-family units and not necessarily units affordable for the broader workforce. 

While Jennrich indicated multi-family development has been scarce, he also noted single-family development has increased year-over-year the last few years. 

According to data compiled by the county’s planning and zoning department, 118 new homes were granted permits in 2023, and so far in 2024, that number is 134. Though, that doesn’t exactly mean those houses will be used for families living in the area full-time. 

Hartzheim said the availability of affordable single-family housing in the area is being impacted largely by businesses purchasing the homes in order to rent them to visitors on a short-term basis.

“A lot of stuff downstate doesn’t always translate up here where our economies are entirely different,” he said. “We’re a tourist economy and a service economy, whereas there’s more of an industrial component to the economies in the southern part of the state. But we haven’t seen a lot of multi-family developments up here. Most everything that’s happening up here right now, unfortunately, we’re seeing a lot of people purchasing single-family homes and turning them into weekly rentals. So they … they’re adding to the housing crisis.”

In 2017, the state legislature enacted laws barring local municipalities from creating certain regulations limiting short-term rentals in residential zoning districts. 

Hartzheim has been vocal in his opposition to this. 

He said there’s nothing the town can do about it “and it’s compounding the availability.”

“So, we haven’t seen a lot of multi-family construction up here as far as apartments,” Hartzheim said. “You know, that’s what we’re trying to spur by creating a tax increment finance district (TIF), which the town is in the process of doing right now.”

He said the plans currently are to maintain a development and business district on State Highway 70 and U.S. Highway 51 north, which has sewer and water, and the TIF would incentivize developers to build residential housing in that district by offering tax incentives to them. 

“We’re trying to spur residential housing with this,” Hartzheim said. “We’re not trying to spur other traditional commercial business like gas stations or that kind of thing. We’ve got people here, we’ve got visitors here in record numbers. Our focus right now is not attracting more visitors, it’s trying to promote housing availability for the workforce to fill the huge gap we have in service jobs.”

Businesses in Minocqua “desperately need labor,” he said, and that’s what the town is trying to help with.

Hartzheim said right now it appears developers and builders aren’t willing to build in the area, even though if affordable multi-family units were built “they would be filled.”

“Ever since COVID, the need for housing is there, but with inflation, the cost of materials and goods has sky-rocketed, the availability of labor for builders has been an issue and interest rates are at historic highs,” he said. “So all those things come together and sort of create a disincentive, or certainly, a more difficult path forward for developers or builders who might otherwise come in here and try to address this huge gap that exists.”

Trevor Greene may be reached via email at [email protected].