Milwaukee: The $5,000 House and Other Thoughts

I was having lunch the other day with someone who works in city government, and we were talking about the serious foreclosure problem in Milwaukee. He was lamenting the fact that in some of the poorest sections of the city, the housing market is fundamentally broken. Homes, now owned by the city, can be purchased for as little as $5,000 and yet they still aren’t selling. If you want some sobering evidence of the magnitude of the nation’s housing market collapse and the impact of the Great Recession, check out the listings. They’re stunning, really.

Mayor Tom Barrett estimates the foreclosure crisis has cost Milwaukee $5 billion dollars in assessed value. The city has tried to get a handle on the problem, but it persists, eating away at once-stable neighborhoods. In 2008, the mayor launched the Milwaukee Foreclosure Partnership Initiative, which tries to prevent foreclosures and stabilize neighborhoods.  There’s a branch of city government that directly addresses housing issues. And last week, the mayor announced he would be committing another $2.3 million to address the foreclosure problem. As part of that initiative, scores of empty homes will be torn down because they’re a blight on city neighborhoods. As a longtime Milwaukee resident, I’d be less than honest if I didn’t say the specter of Detroit came to mind when I heard the news.

But the next Detroit is hardly the image thousands of newcomers have of my hometown. After losing 20 per cent of its population from 1960-2000, Milwaukee is growing again. It’s not a population explosion, but it’s growth. Recent census numbers show that from 2010 to 2012, the city added 4,000 residents. What’s most interesting is who’s choosing to live in Milwaukee. Reporting by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (part of a collaboration with Marquette Law School) found that in the last decade, there has been a migration of young people to the city. Many are college graduates. They live downtown, on the city’s east side, and in “hot” neighborhoods like the Third Ward, Walker’s Point, Bay View, Brewers’ Hill and Washington Heights. Their presence has brought a new energy and economic vitality to parts of Milwaukee, with restaurants and shops racing to meet the demands of younger consumers. These newcomers are helping fuel a change in Milwaukee’s risk-averse entrepreneurial culture, and have created a dynamic arts and entertainment scene. Their arrival is also welcome news to established Fortune 500 companies like Northwestern Mutual, which is planning a new skyscraper for its downtown campus, along with hundreds of news jobs.

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Milwaukee: The Most Dangerous Size

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:P14-45_handgun_.jpgLast week, the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics issued a new report compiling nearly two decades of data on gun crime, Firearm Violence, 1993-2011.  No doubt, many readers will pore over the report’s abundant tables and graphs looking for support for their views on gun control.  However, I was most struck by a breakdown of firearm violence based on population size (table 5).  Among the six size-based categories, the most dangerous places were cities of 500,000-999,999 — the category containing Milwaukee (pop. 597,867).  These mid-large cities not only have rates of gun crime that are about four times higher than cities of less than 100,000, but they are also forty-four percent higher than cities of one million or more.

More specifically, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey, there were 4.6 nonfatal firearm victimizations per 1,000 persons age twelve or older in the mid-large cities in 2010 and 2011.  (Nationally, homicides constitute only two percent of all gun-related crimes, so the NCVS numbers would not change much if fatalities were included, too.)  The second-highest rate was 3.9, for cities with 250,000-499,999.

The numbers look very different today than they did in 1996-1997, when the Milwaukee-sized cities were tied for second place with 7.3 victimizations per 1,000, and the medium-sized cities (250,000-499,999) led with 10.3.

I have two reactions to the data.  First, the relationship of community size to gun violence is in some respects predictable, and in others quite puzzling. 

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The Sheriff Must Run the Jail, But How Do You Know Whether a Facility Is a Jail?

Last week, the Circuit Court in Milwaukee County rejected the effort of Sheriff David A. Clarke to maintain control over the County Correctional Facility South.  (Judge Van Grunsven’s ruling is available here.)  Although the CCF-S (formerly known as the House of Corrections) was run for decades by a superintendent who was independent of the Sheriff, the County transferred control over the CCF-S to the Sheriff in 2009 as a result of security concerns at the facility.  However, the new management proved less than satisfactory to some important stakeholders.

Conflict over Clarke’s administration of the CCF-S seems connected to a wider ideological conflict between Clarke and other County leaders over the incarceration of relatively low-risk criminal offenders, with Clarke taking a very critical position regarding various criminal-justice initiatives that might be grouped under the heading “evidence-based decision making.”  (Background on the conflict is here; my critique of some of Clarke’s views is here.)  Clarke has been unsupportive of treatment programs and alternatives to incarceration, and his administration of the CCF-S has apparently reflected this perspective.  Finally, through its 2013 budget, the County Board decided to transfer control of the CCF-S back to a superintendent.  Clarke’s control over the downtown jail, which has been his all along, remains unaffected.

Clarke sued the County in order to block the transfer.  

Continue ReadingThe Sheriff Must Run the Jail, But How Do You Know Whether a Facility Is a Jail?
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