This post originally appeared at https://www.badgerinstitute.org/emergency-responders-cant-find-a-place-to-live-close-to-where-they-save-lives/

Continuing a series on housing in the Badger State, Out of reach: Wisconsin’s housing crisis and hope for the American Dream.

Door County is among spots where housing is beyond reach

Sturgeon Bay — Aaron LeClair admits that he and his wife, Tara, just got lucky to find a home they could afford when he came back to Door County in 2004.

He wishes all the emergency medical services staff who work for him — and can’t afford to live anywhere in Door County — had the same kind of luck.

“They can’t afford to live where they work,” he says. “It’s changed. A starter house that used to be $100,000 is $200,000 and it needs a lot of work, if you can find one. They aren’t the kind of homes you can raise a family in. Of the 13 who live outside the county, I’d say four of them have stopped looking for a home. They have zero interest in trying.”

LeClair’s home is one of the few old homes remaining in his neighborhood that hasn’t been razed and replaced with something bigger and grander. “I see people walking outside and I don’t know them,” he says. “I really like to know my neighbors.”

Today their home in Jacksonport is worth several times what they paid for it. They couldn’t hope to sell it and buy something comparable and remain in LeClair’s hometown. Zillow is currently listing three homes for sale in town, all of them under 2,000 square feet, none of them with a view of Lake Michigan and all of them over $700,000.

LeClair, 45, takes his sense of community seriously, if modestly. He is the Door County emergency services director and serves on the county Highway Safety Commission, the Land Information Council and the Local Emergency Planning Committee. Six years out of Sevastopol High School, he was elected to the Jacksonport Town Board and served for six years.

The community he serves has changed dramatically from the days when his parents first built a motel in Jacksonport in 1984. Their success — expansion and purchases of other cottages and creating a private Lake Michigan beach resort — mirrors what has happened to the little towns and villages along the Green Bay and Lake Michigan shores.

After taking a dip in 2014-15, the county’s equalized value crept up to $7.4 billion in 2020, the year an international health emergency was declared. In 2022, the equalized value jumped to $8.4 billion and in a single year increased to $9.9 billion, according to county records. This year the equalized value is estimated at $13.2 billion, according to county records.

“In 2020, when people thought it was the end, they started looking for places to get away. People from Chicago thought the home prices here were crazy cheap. And people figured out that with remote work they might be able to enjoy life a little more. This is a pretty good place to do it,” Le Clair says.

Unlike some Door County locals who bristle at the change and the higher costs that go with it, “I have a different view of what the increase in my property taxes does for me,” LeClair says. “I think it’s good.”

Property taxes help make it possible for Door County Emergency Services to keep pace with the expectations of homeowners who may live in Door County only in the summer but expect first-rate public services when they’re there.

The directors of what was then called the Door County Ambulance Service set expectations high when they created what was thought to be the first rural paramedic team in the country in 1980.

Old standard: 15 miles

With full time jobs in the field hard to get, LeClair worked and trained with a private EMS company in the Town of Brookfield, when he met Tara. It was her suggestion to move back to Jacksonport. “That’s what wives do, make you better,” he says.

When LeClair started with Door County, EMS required all staff to live no more than 15 miles from the county’s south border and to settle in Door County within four months of being hired.

By the time LeClair was doing the hiring, he and the county realized those requirements would make some hiring impossible. Today, 13 of the 30 full time staff, who live at the EMS station in Sturgeon Bay while on their 48-hours shifts, live outside of Door County, most of them well beyond the old 15-mile limit. Two of them live in Appleton, LeClair says.

Connor Perry counts himself among those who haven’t stopped trying, but who aren’t optimistic about finding an affordable, livable home in Door County. Popular tourist destinations like Egg Harbor, Sister Bay and Baileys Harbor are out of the question. But Perry has scoured listings in inland towns like Brussels, Gardner and Forestville without luck.

“If you want to start a family, which we do, a house like that would be $400,000, $500,000 just to start,” Perry said. “We just can’t afford it right now.”

Perry, who grew up in Greenfield, has been a paramedic since 2015, working for a private ambulance service in Green Bay. He started part time in Door County in 2020 and was promoted to full time in 2022.

Perry met his wife, Marissa, as these things sometimes happen, at Green Bay’s Bellin Hospital, where she worked as a nurse in the intensive care unit. They married in 2020 and, through a family friend, found a modest home in De Pere, 50 miles from Sturgeon Bay. 

Nearly all the full time hires in 2022 had some kind of home affordability problem, Perry says. “I know talking to Aaron, he knew how difficult the housing situation was. I think it was at that point that he kind of lifted that residency requirement.”

Home buyers in Green Bay and all of Brown County, too, are feeling the pinch from rising home prices, Perry said. And the affordability problem in Door County goes far beyond public services, like law enforcement, fire protection, teaching and emergency medical services.

“I’ve gotten to know a lot of people running businesses in Door County who can’t keep employees because they don’t have a place to live,” he says. “That is an ongoing challenge.”

Getting worse

The housing shortage in Door County is worse than many realize. The median home sale price of $426,643 over the last three months is the fourth highest for any county in Wisconsin, according to data developed by the Badger Institute.

Still, the last time the Door County Economic Development Corp. commissioned an analysis of its housing was 2019, a year before COVID. To illustrate how distorted the home market has gotten since then, the study estimated a need of nearly 1,100 affordable housing units of any kind. The study judged affordable to be between $60,000 and $124,900.

There is nothing in the economic makeup of Door County to suggest that the demand for expensive homes and the price of those homes will not increase. That market will continue to drive up the cost of construction materials and labor, further discouraging the market for “affordable” housing, LeClair says.

Other than easing his staff’s residency rules and hanging on to his rarity of a house, LeClair is asking for no government solutions to what he says is a matter left to the market.

“It’s a supply and demand thing,” LeClair says. “For the last few years, you’ve had people paying more than what something’s worth. The middle class can’t compete. I don’t know if that’s going to change.”

Mark Lisheron is the Managing Editor of the Badger Institute.

Any use or reproduction of Badger Institute articles or photographs requires prior written permission. To request permission to post articles on a website or print copies for distribution, contact Badger Institute President Mike Nichols at mike@badgerinstitute.org or 262-389-8239.

Coming as part of our housing series: How Wisconsin can make sure the market works efficiently and quickly for developers and middle-earners.

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