Milwaukee’s First Co-Housing Development Moves Ahead

Milwaukee’s first co-housing development could be coming to the Riverwest neighborhood. Developers say they hope to address the city’s legacy of racial and economic segregation and incorporate environmental and economic sustainability throughout the project.

The $18 million, 39-unit development, River Trail Commons, took a step forward in February with the purchase of the project site for $1.4 million, developer documents show. 

The site, located at 2730 Humbolt Blvd. and the two adjacent lots, currently consists of two single-family homes and a vacant commercial building, formerly Big Daddy’s BBQ and Soul Food.

With a combination of market-based and affordable units, developers are hoping to create an economically integrated community and, thus, a racially integrated community. 

“The focus of the whole thing is bridging the racial home equity gap,” said Nola Hitchcock Cross, who is part of the development team.

Milwaukee consistently ranks among the nation’s most segregated cities and metro areas, being labeled the nation’s most segregated metro area by the Brookings Institute in 2019. 

‘Not everyone needs their own lawnmower’

Renderings show a row of townhomes along Humbolt with a three-story residential building at the back of the property, creating a courtyard with green space and a community garden.

The community will feature a 4,000-square-foot common house which will include amenities for residents, with the guiding mantra “we don’t all need our own lawnmower,” Hitchcock Cross said.

While each housing unit will have its own kitchen and dining space, the common house will include a communal kitchen and dining area for residents to prepare and eat communal meals, likely happening on Sundays. The common house will also be used for residents to pool things like books or tools—things that many people have in their own homes, but don’t use every day.

“Some of the common areas that would be included would be, say, a workshop: everybody moves in, they have their tools and kind of pool all of that, so you got one stupendous workshop,” Hitchcock Cross said. 

The development is designed to invite social interaction, something that Hitchcock Cross said is lost in the way typical neighborhoods and multi-family buildings are designed.

“One needs to go to the common house for a lot of reasons and thereby run into people,” Hitchcock Cross explained. “So you want your mail you go to the common house, you want to do your laundry, you go to the common house, when it’s Sunday dinner, you go to the common house. [There are] Infinite reasons to go to the common house so that people run into each other.”

Designing in a way that incentivizes people to go to interact with their neighbors can create a more socially connected community and invite people to work together on things like child or elder care, carpooling (perhaps in the community’s shared electric vehicle), or even civic engagement, according to Hitchcock Cross.

“It takes a village,” she said. “There are kind of infinite ways to save on a budget when you can cooperate, as in this community.” 

Atop the common house will be a usable green roof overlooking Gordon Park, the Milwaukee River and the Oak Leaf and Beerline Trails. 

Vince Bushell intends to buy one of the units in River Trail Commons. He’s lived in Riverwest since 1980 and worked with the River Revitalization Foundation, leading hundreds of hikes on the trails behind this property.

“If I get one of these units and it looks out towards the back trail, I will be looking at that tree and trees that I planted over 15 years ago,” he said.

In addition to the community garden, River Trail Commons will de-emphasize cars to promote biking and public transit use and include solar panels on the roofs in order to make the development more environmentally friendly, Hitchcock Cross said.

“I’m really part of this community,” said Bushell, who publishes the Riverwest Currents monthly newspaper.  “I see my role as being engaged in community and concepts that are more socially engaging in blending rather than isolating.”

First housing of its kind in Milwaukee

According to research done by the developers, there are more than 180 co-housing communities across the country, with five already in Madison. This will be Milwaukee’s first co-housing development. 

Caitlin Fox, a student at UW-Madison, has lived in one of these communities, called New Wine Cooperative, since August.

“It’s really hard to find affordable housing in Madison,” Fox said. “I was living with one roommate for a while and I just didn’t really like living in an apartment. I felt pretty disconnected with my roommate, and I was just trying to find other options.”

New Wine, which is on the isthmus in downtown Madison, is an old Victorian home with eight people who live there, a combination of couples and single people. Fox, 21, is the youngest one living there. 

“I think like the main idea is you can just like get a lot farther with a community behind you,” she said. “I think it’s just really hard to like be living alone like as a very like a 20-year-old and trying to do like all those things by yourself when you just transitioned from living with your parents.”

Fox said that most of her housemates in New Wine are in their thirties, but according to Hitchcock Cross, many co-housing communities are populated with retirees, who tend to be white and upper middle class.

This is something River Trail Commons hopes to avoid by focusing on affordability to attract people of different backgrounds. 

“The diversity of the residents that appeals to me and we’re not all supposed to be old in [River Trail Commons],” Bushell, 74, said. “I would prefer as I get older to live in a more mixed facility that probably would be easier to take care of the property itself or not have the responsibility of maintaining the entire property myself and sharing that responsibility and sharing the cultural community aspects of living in an intentional community.”

Affordability and housing

In addition to pooling resources to create an affordable living environment, River Trail Commons is designed to be an affordable alternative to renting, developer documents say.

Developer documents show housing units that range from 400-square-foot studios to 1,450-square-foot, four-bedroom units. 

The plans are for 13 of the 39 units to be sold at market rate; Hitchcock Cross and her husband intend to buy one of these, she said.

Another 13 units are to be sold at below-market prices to income-qualified buyers. When those buyers re-sell their condos, deed restrictions will limit the sale prices to continue the discount for the next owners. 

“You can get your family wealth, home equity, but then when it’s resold it would have to be resold to a qualified person at [for example] four-fifths of the then value because that it was bought at four-fifths of the value original value,” Hitchcock Cross said.

The other batch of 13 units would be provided to income-qualified residents through a housing cooperative, where residents buy shares in a cooperative that owns the units, rather than paying a mortgage or rent. 

“In this particular project, if we’re able to achieve the goals of having a multitude of income levels and cultural experiences coming together and living closely, could be an example for how would the city as a whole could work better for having a more peaceful, satisfying and fulfilling habitat,” Bushell said.

Hitchcock Cross said that the project is on track to be completed by spring 2025.