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WCCF: For starters, how is the Milwaukee Housing Trust Fund structured, e.g. what is (are) the dedicated funding stream(s) supporting it, who decides where the money goes, etc.? BS: The language regarding the structure of the Milwaukee HTF is drawn from three sources: the HTF ordinance; the recommendations of the HTF Task Force; and the substitute resolution creating the HTF. The HTF ordinance says the housing trust fund “is to be funded by sources identified in common council resolution file number 060071, such as start-up funding using general obligation bonds, surplus Potawatomi bingo Casino revenues, post-closure tax incremental district revenues, excess payments in lieu of taxes and other funding sources that may be identified by the common council and the housing trust advisory board.” We still need to identify a good dedicated ongoing source of revenue that is less susceptible to being raided by the mayor and/or Common Council for other City uses. According to the ordinance, the trust fund will be administered by staff from the Community Development Grants Administration (CDGA) division of the City’s Department of Administration. There is a 13-member Housing Trust Fund Advisory Board that includes four common council members (two appointed by the council president, two appointed by the mayor), the city comptroller or designee, a nonprofit developer, a for-profit developer, a representative of a financial institution, and representatives of Continuum of Care, Local Initiatives Support Corporation, Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council, Independence First and Interfaith Conference of Greater Milwaukee. The mayor appoints the chair and vice-chair. Alderman Michael Murphy, who was HTF champion on the Common Council and who took up our HTF Coalition’s banner and spearheaded the effort with his colleagues, is the Chair of the HTF Advisory Board. I am the vice-chair. WCCF: How long did it take to make it happen, and who were the key players in moving the proposal forward? BS: I was familiar with Housing Trust Funds and their benefits and effectiveness through my work when I lived in San Diego. San Diego had established a HTF in 1990, and my position as the housing development director for a community development corporation was funded by the HTF. Then, when I became the director of the Nonprofit Federation for Housing and Community Development, an association serving San Diego County organizations, I spent a great deal of my advocacy work defending the HTF from raids on its funding stream. My 2004 work plan here at the Metro Milwaukee Fair Housing Council included creating a coalition to advocate for the creation of a Milwaukee HTF. In early spring of 2004, I got an email from Mike Soika, someone whose name I was familiar with but I had never met him. He was inviting a big group of community folks to a meeting at the Red Cross, where Mary Brooks from the Center for Community Change would come and describe HTFs and how cities, counties and states across the country have established them. I knew Mary well, and had a great deal of respect for her from my work in San Diego and my participation on the Center for community Change’s national HTF Cluster. I immediately contacted Mike and met with him to let him know of my interest and desire to help in the initiative. At that first meeting at the Red Cross, a sign-up sheet was circulated, asking for folks who were interested in working to establish a HTF here in Milwaukee. A core group of mostly nonprofit staff signed up, and has been active ever since. Another early leader was Marcus White, director of the Interfaith Conference of Milwaukee. Soika, Interfaith Conference--first Marcus White, and then Heather Dummer-Combs, who was brought on to staff the HTF effort--and I were the three main leaders of the HTF Coalition. Most of the coalition’s meetings have taken place at the Interfaith Conference. The HTF Coalition gathered information about the housing needs in Milwaukee, learned about HTFs and their structures in other parts of the country, and by the end of May 2004, had crafted a proposal for how the HTF would be funded, administered, and how the money would be spent. We then set about systematically meeting with each member of the Common Council, trying to bring one or more of their constituents into each meeting, if possible. We also began meeting with others in the community, working to educate church members, developers, lenders, and other professionals who might be able to help with the effort to establish an HTF. On October 13, 2004 we asked Mary Brooks to come back and speak to a larger group of people about HTFs. This time, in addition to nonprofit staff people, in the 100-plus audience were Ald. Michael Murphy, somebody from a the for-profit developer Gorman & Co., and program officers from several local philanthropic foundations. Ald. Murphy immediately recognized the benefits of an HTF, and began helping the coalition in its work. In March of 2005, the coalition planned a big community meeting, again bringing in Mary Brooks, as the national HTF expert, and also presenting our information on the housing needs in Milwaukee and the Coalition’s plan for how a Milwaukee HTF could address those needs. We packed a big meeting room in one of our public housing developments full of about 200 people from a wide range of backgrounds. Our Common Council president welcomed the group. State legislators, realtors, for-profit and nonprofit developers, homeless advocates, and the media all heard about the needs and the HTF proposal to meet the needs, and were asked to sign up to help bring the message to the rest of the Common Council. Coincidentally, and hugely in our favor, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel had been running a series of stories on the challenges of homeless mentally ill people in our community. As it happened, on the morning of that big March meeting, a story ran on the front page of the Journal, and mentioned the meeting and the HTF as one way to deal with the issue of homelessness. Additional important meetings and entities that advanced our cause included a big September 8, 2005 meeting in a central city church, where we brought in nonprofit developers and others to describe how they could use HTF funds if the HTF were created, and again got people to sign up to attend meetings with each of the members of the Common Council. There was a meeting pulling together representatives from almost a dozen financial institutions, to explain to them how an HTF would not only help the community, but would be good for their business and CRA exams as well. WCCF: What role did grassroots advocacy play in bringing about the creating of the Housing Trust Fund? BS: Grassroots advocacy played the central role in bringing about the HTF. Without continued meetings with decision-makers, and the “actions” we tried to have each month, there simply would not be an HTF in Milwaukee today. We kept the issue in the news with frequent press conferences, and did not let the Mayor or Common Council forget that we were still there, still working to get the HTF. WCCF: What obstacles did you and your partners encounter, and how did you overcome them? BS: The main obstacles were our already-strained budget and the fact that many people didn’t believe that addressing housing is an appropriate role for government. They do not understand the links between housing and job creation, tax base increases, and economic development – or the links between having decent, safe affordable housing and achieving educational goals, reducing crime, and revitalizing neighborhoods. We showed, in a variety of ways, how housing is very much linked to job creation and a healthy economy. We also tried to show how the policy-makers simply needed to prioritize the HTF – that where there is a will, there is a way. For example, we did a postcard campaign pointing out that the city borrowed $70 million for its house, meaning City Hall, and asking What about our house? And the press conference and materials that showed how much they had spent on building the baseball stadium, renovating the Milwaukee Theater, and other facilities. WCCF: How do you plan to leverage all of this successful organizing for future advocacy efforts? BS: There is a group working at the statewide level to establish an HTF for the State of Wisconsin. The Milwaukee HTF coalition is currently expanding and working toward the establishment of a Waukesha County HTF and a Milwaukee County HTF. And we are still working to identify a good ongoing, dedicated revenue source for the City of Milwaukee HTF. WCCF: What are the most important lessons you think people in other communities around the state could import and use in their own advocacy efforts, either for affordable housing or in addressing other problems? BS: Show the housing need via real stories, and show the connection to jobs and economic development and really, to all other sectors of a healthy community. Having a variety of voices from a variety of backgrounds and interests helps. Keep the issue alive and in the media by staging frequent actions. Have fun; people will burn out during a prolonged effort like this if they are not having some fun with it.
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