The Wisconsin School of Business is launching a new Affordable Housing and Sustainable Development track to complement their real estate masters programs.
The program was ‘soft-launched’ this fall year, with one of the four classes available to students during this fall and another three to be offered in the spring. The full program will officially launch Fall 2024, according to Gary J. Gorman Affordable Housing Professor and professor of real estate and urban land economics Christopher Timmins.
Timmins is the director of the new program, and Paul Aylesworth will serve as associate director.
“This will be a new track, a new specialization track,” Timmins said. “The other ones [tracks], one deals with private equity and the other one deals with ARIETs, so this is sort of different from the other two in a lot of ways … but these four classes will add an expertise in affordab[ility] and sustainab[ility] that the graduates of the track will have that’s different.”
The core classes for the real estate masters programs stay the same, and the track students choose dictates their specialization and what they focus on, according to Timmins.
The track will be 12 credits with four classes, one of which is required for the other tracks, Timmins said. The classes will focus on affordable housing, housing justice with issues related to inequality, discrimination, segregation, housing insecurity, homelessness, eviction and foreclosure, Timmins said. Additional courses will focus on affordability finance, or green and sustainable development, according to Timmins.
Enrollment for these classes will be open to undergraduates after graduate enrollment if there are still spaces available, according to Timmins.
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There will also be an internship aspect to the program next fall, Timmins said.
“We’re getting a lot of good responses back from affordable developers in Madison and nationally, who are interested in taking interns and this will hopefully lead us down the road to career placements, job placements in these firms,” Timmins said.
This semester, it has been difficult to gauge interest because of a scheduling conflict placing another required class at the same time as the affordable housing class this semester, according to Timmins.
“We are trying to get the word out to students here because the students here may be our best pool to recruit from for our first class,” Timmins said. “So I’d say if anybody has a question that they want to know about the program, to please reach out to myself or to Paul … we really do want to try to answer any questions and get the word out. If somebody is debating whether a program like this would be good for them, [we’d] be more than happy to talk to them about it and try to try to help.”
