Driving down Interstate 94 between Milwaukee and Chicago, the area’s recent economic boom is evident. Massive warehouses line the highway, and you’ll pass facilities for major companies such as Amazon, Haribo and Uline. Prominent signs advertise more opportunities for new development in the region’s strategic corridor.

But with all its growth, there’s an unmet need that still lingers for the region: Housing.

Market studies indicate that there’s demand in Kenosha County to develop more than 1,000 housing units per year for the next 10 years, according to city of Kenosha director of city development Tim Casey. Employers flooding the area want to know that there’s housing available for their workforces.

“We need to develop more housing and we need to develop more housing across a range of rent levels to accommodate folks who have a range of incomes,” Casey said.

While the U.S. as a whole faces a housing shortage that’s also felt in other parts of Wisconsin, Kenosha’s situation is unique because the region has been such a magnet for commercial and industrial development. The area particularly needs owner-occupied, single-family homes, and two recently proposed developments could add hundreds. Other projects in the works would also add hundreds of rental units.

PROPOSED HOUSING DEVELOPMENTS IN KENOSHA COUNTY

These are some of the largest single- and multi-family housing developments proposed in the county, but this list is not exhaustive.

The challenges of developing new housing are numerous. Costs continue to rise, and developers and municipalities often clash on the issue of density, or the appropriate number of housing units to build per acre.

But as it works to overcome those obstacles, the county has seen strong collaboration between the planners in its various municipalities, Kenosha County executive Samantha Kerkman said.

“We’re the gateway to Wisconsin on the freshwater coast,” Kerkman said. “We are prime for the economic development side, but we also need the housing side.”

Read more at the Milwaukee Busines Journal.