About a year after it was first launched,
Homes MKE – a city of Milwaukee effort to use $15 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to turn blighted city-owned tax foreclosed homes back into quality homes – has resulted in the full renovation of six homes, two of which that are now occupied by homeowners, city officials said Wednesday.
Another two properties are being rented by tenants who are participating in rent-to-own programs, and two other properties are now on the market. In addition to the finished properties, there are 30 others that are currently undergoing renovations.
To mark the progress in the campaign – just one of many public and private efforts aimed at rebuilding the city’s battered housing stock –
Mayor Cavalier Johnson and fellow city officials, including
Department of Community Development Commissioner Lafayette Crump, and alderpersons
Bob Baumann,
Milele Coggs, and
Russell Stamper, gathered Wednesday on the front walk of a recently transformed home at 3436 N. 13
th St. in the city’s Arlington Heights neighborhood.
Foreclosed upon by the city in 2021, it was sold to Brown Deer-based Top Tier Development, LLC – the development arm of social services agency Servant Manor – for $1 in June of last year. The developer, the city, and its partners poured $162,000 into renovating the three-bedroom, 123-year-old home on the city’s north side.
The home is currently on the market for $129,900.
Quality housing
Working with about 15 partners, the city hopes to renovate and reoccupy about 120 houses through the Homes MKE initiative, Johnson said Wednesday. The city had initially hoped to rehab 150 homes with the ARPA funds, but Johnson said that the renovation costs forced the city to lower those projections.
“No one wants a vacant or boarded up home in their neighborhood, too often they drag down property values and become a magnet for nefarious activity,” Johnson said.
What a buyer gets with the purchase of one the renovated Homes MKE houses, he said, is a property that is move-in ready, with up-to-date mechanicals, a new roof, and a brand-new, lead-free service line for water.
“This is a far cry from the neglected residence that once stood here,” Johnson said of the home at 3436 N. 13
th St. “(These home) are creating stability in our neighborhoods.”
For Bauman, who was one of the architects of the city legislation that helped set aside the $15 million in ARPA funds for Homes MKE, a key goal of the effort is to make homeownership more attainable for neighborhoods across the city.
“When we held initial discussion around how to allocate ARPA dollars, many noted how this was an opportunity to make a generational impact,” Baumann said in a statement. “I thought there were fewer causes more worthwhile to invest in than affordable housing, and I am delighted by the results shown thus far.”
Making an impact
Addressing those gathered, Adrienne Hunter, CEO of
Servant Manor, who now can count developer as a title, said becoming part of the Homes MKE project allows the organization to “extend its continuum of care.”
In addition to the brick-and-mortar work going on at the actual houses, Coggs noted that city staff and partners will be on hand to work with residents in the neighborhood where the rehabilitations are taking place. That work will include keeping residents abreast of the work, but also letting them know about other programs, such as ones that might be available to help them fix up their own properties, or address other issues in the neighborhood, like code violations.
The need for that attention was apparent on Wednesday, where the newly renovated home at 3436 N. 13
th St. stood in stark contrast to two other properties just down the street – one some small home that was boarded up, and a large, vacant Victorian with all of its windows smashed out.
“It is our hope that as we redo houses like this, that we rejuvenate whole neighborhoods,” Coggs said. “And that residents take advantage of all the resources that the city has to offer. And I want to thank Servant Manor for doing such a spectacular job on this home. I know plenty of us have seen flips, where somebody might buy for cheap and put very little into them, and then act like they did a great job. That is not what happened here. I am sure this won’t be on the market for long.”
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