{"id":2552,"date":"2008-12-10T13:00:20","date_gmt":"2008-12-10T18:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/?p=2552"},"modified":"2008-12-10T13:00:20","modified_gmt":"2008-12-10T18:00:20","slug":"responding-to-the-foreclosure-crisis-in-milwaukee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/2008\/12\/responding-to-the-foreclosure-crisis-in-milwaukee\/","title":{"rendered":"Responding to the Foreclosure Crisis in Milwaukee"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Everyone by now knows of the terrible consequences we face stemming from the foreclosure debacle. As part of the $700 billion bailout plan passed by Congress this fall, certain monies were allocated for cities and states to address some of the problems with the foreclosure crisis: increased crime in neighborhoods with a concentration of foreclosed (and oftentimes abandoned\/vacant) properties; a depressed housing market with rapidly declining housing values; and a declining property tax base as a result of the declining home values and reduction in home ownership.<\/p>\n

In order to make recommendations to the City of Milwaukee regarding these problems and on how to spend the $9.2 million allocated to the City in the bailout plan, Mayor Barrett established the Milwaukee Foreclosure Public Initiative (MFPI), a public-private partnership. Our own Assistant Dean for Public Service Dan Idzikowski<\/a> was one of the leaders of the MFPI, serving as a workgroup chair (which oversaw three committees related to the MFPI’s work). In fact, the Mayor specifically recognized and thanked Dan in his press release<\/a> on the final work product of the MFPI. <\/p>\n

Dan asked me to participate in the MFPI, and I was happy to serve. One of the things that struck me during my time working on the MFPI was the sheer enormity of the foreclosure problem here in Milwaukee: to date, there have been more than 1,700 foreclosures, with some 4,000 additional properties at some point in the foreclosure process. While other cities may have it worse, this is still quite a challenge for our City. But I was also struck by the fruitful collaboration by different community stakeholders in the process — non-profit organizations, government agencies, educational institutions (Marquette and UWM, specifically), developers, and banks (yes, even banks, who were very willing to work with everyone to help fix the problem).<\/p>\n

While at times I saw the process through a public choice theory lens, most of the time the process — and the ultimate product reflects this, I would argue — reflected the positive description offered by pluralism of our legislative\/governmental process. By having the different interest groups — or, said another way, community stakeholders — represented and involved in the decision-making process, the result was a set of recommendations that reflected an informed decision-making process that viewed and addressed the problem from the varying perspectives.<\/p>\n

Which recommendations the City adopts remains to be seen. But the experience reflected, at least for me, some of the more positive aspects of our local government decision-making. And, of course, it was nice to see the Marquette University Law School being used as a resource for the community, as evidenced by Dan’s superb leadership in the MFPI.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone by now knows of the terrible consequences we face stemming from the foreclosure debacle. As part of the $700 billion bailout plan passed by Congress this fall, certain monies were allocated for cities and states to address some of the problems with the foreclosure crisis: increased crime in neighborhoods with a concentration of foreclosed […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ocean_post_layout":"","ocean_both_sidebars_style":"","ocean_both_sidebars_content_width":0,"ocean_both_sidebars_sidebars_width":0,"ocean_sidebar":"","ocean_second_sidebar":"","ocean_disable_margins":"enable","ocean_add_body_class":"","ocean_shortcode_before_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_after_top_bar":"","ocean_shortcode_before_header":"","ocean_shortcode_after_header":"","ocean_has_shortcode":"","ocean_shortcode_after_title":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_widgets":"","ocean_shortcode_before_footer_bottom":"","ocean_shortcode_after_footer_bottom":"","ocean_display_top_bar":"default","ocean_display_header":"default","ocean_header_style":"","ocean_center_header_left_menu":"","ocean_custom_header_template":"","ocean_custom_logo":0,"ocean_custom_retina_logo":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_width":0,"ocean_custom_logo_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_tablet_max_height":0,"ocean_custom_logo_mobile_max_height":0,"ocean_header_custom_menu":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_family":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_subset":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_size":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_font_size_unit":"px","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_font_weight_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_tablet":"","ocean_menu_typo_transform_mobile":"","ocean_menu_typo_line_height":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_line_height_unit":"","ocean_menu_typo_spacing":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_tablet":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_mobile":0,"ocean_menu_typo_spacing_unit":"","ocean_menu_link_color":"","ocean_menu_link_color_hover":"","ocean_menu_link_color_active":"","ocean_menu_link_background":"","ocean_menu_link_hover_background":"","ocean_menu_link_active_background":"","ocean_menu_social_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_bg":"","ocean_menu_social_links_color":"","ocean_menu_social_hover_links_color":"","ocean_disable_title":"default","ocean_disable_heading":"default","ocean_post_title":"","ocean_post_subheading":"","ocean_post_title_style":"","ocean_post_title_background_color":"","ocean_post_title_background":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_image_position":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_attachment":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_repeat":"","ocean_post_title_bg_image_size":"","ocean_post_title_height":0,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay":0.5,"ocean_post_title_bg_overlay_color":"","ocean_disable_breadcrumbs":"default","ocean_breadcrumbs_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_separator_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_color":"","ocean_breadcrumbs_links_hover_color":"","ocean_display_footer_widgets":"default","ocean_display_footer_bottom":"default","ocean_custom_footer_template":"","ocean_post_oembed":"","ocean_post_self_hosted_media":"","ocean_post_video_embed":"","ocean_link_format":"","ocean_link_format_target":"self","ocean_quote_format":"","ocean_quote_format_link":"post","ocean_gallery_link_images":"on","ocean_gallery_id":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-milwaukee","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2552\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/law.marquette.edu\/facultyblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}