We often hear that all politics are local. This idiom can take on a lot of different meanings, but in the real estate world, it has a tangible effect on your work each day. In fact, the decisions made at town, village, city or county council or board meetings have the most dramatic effect on property rights.

While local governments have a significant impact on property rights through zoning, lot sizes and comprehensive plans, local governments control the housing supply in many ways through the approval of developments from subdivisions to single-family homes to multifamily properties. For this reason, the WRA’s board of directors decided that one of the WRA’s strategic initiatives in 2024 is local advocacy.

In Madison, the WRA has an active advocacy team working on many of these issues at a statewide level, and many of our local associations have an excellent resource known as a Government Affairs Director (GAD) as the first line of advocacy defense pertaining to local units of government. GADs watch the activities of counties, towns, villages and cities within their region and monitor how their proposals and activities may impact your business, property rights and the industry as a whole.

Until January 2024, however, only 80% of our membership was covered by a GAD, leaving 20% — or more than 3,000 WRA members — without GAD representation. Since local governments have the greatest day-to-day impacts, the WRA board wanted to make sure all areas of the state are represented with some sort of GAD services, and so the Government Affairs Director Services for All Program was created.

While this program does not offer all the services a local GAD performs, it does utilize the WRA’s expertise through local government monitoring, grant writing, call to action support and implementation, local election mobilization, communications and media support. The WRA’s staff member dedicated to GAD Services for All works with your local board to build rapid response teams to allow for quick responses when an ordinance is proposed that is adverse to our industry’s priorities and interests. The rapid response team will be provided a legal analysis of the ordinance and talking points to help combat these issues at the local level. 

While this program is in its infancy, it is meant to be an adjunct to the already amazing services your local association provides for you. We look forward to a great year of growth with this program, and if you see a way that it may be expanded or changed to help further our priorities in the future, please reach out.