Every family deserves a fair shot at owning a home. But right now in Madison, affordable single-family starter homes are being stripped off the market by real estate insiders—including networks of local attorneys and agents—who are forming boutique LLCs to out-cash regular buyers.

They are exploiting recent local zoning rollbacks to turn modest homes into high-density, multi-address commercial rental compounds by stacking duplexes and non-owner-occupied Accessory Dwelling Units (ADUs) on a single lot.

To bypass single-family zoning, these developers are converting properties into small group homes, cynically using vulnerable populations as a legal and political shield for corporate profit. When neighbors stand up to protect local homeownership, our local officials dismiss our valid economic concerns as "NIMBYism."

Let us be entirely clear: Our community has proudly welcomed and supported legitimate community care facilities for decades. We do not oppose group homes. We oppose predatory real estate syndicates weaponizing housing protections to maximize corporate yield at the expense of working-class families.

Because these boutique syndicates operate via small, hyper-local LLCs, they completely fly under the 15- or 50-home thresholds of current federal legislation, like the Stop Predatory Investing Act.

We are calling on Senator Tammy Baldwin to close this critical loophole in federal housing bills to ensure tax and ownership crackdowns capture these micro-LLCs, not just Wall Street giants. We also call on the Madison Common Council to reinstate owner-occupancy protections on neighborhood housing.

Don't let real estate insiders commercialize our neighborhoods and price families out of the American Dream.