Fires Follow Foreclosures, Vacant Homes, and Hyper-Inflated City Assessments
Ensconced between Riverwest and Brewers Hill, the southern end of Harambee (just north of North Ave. between MLK and Holton) has seen no real improvement to its health in recent years--just a steady pattern of blight and crime. (More recently, more boardups, foreclosures, fires and copper-stripping.) On paper, the City has gentrified it. Houses with good bones but 25-50 years of neglect are assessed at around $100,000-$150,000. Any of the historic brick buildings is likely to be valued at $250,000 on the low end, even if they're run-down, overgrown, and abandoned on trash-filled, crime-riddled streets. Realtors continue to advertise the area as "Brewers Hill" while various community development organizations concentrate on "Harambee North," a new name coined for everything north of Center St. and west of Holton to I-43.
For the most part, the City seems to be getting far more out of Harambee's southern tip than it puts into it. The most efficient services we get are assessment inflation, tax collection, and fee collection. (New and bigger fees coming soon!) Let's not forget the punitive and arbitrary year-round alternate-side parking rules that get enforced every night, at least since this story--which I was part of--made "the news."
The City's bold Bronzeville plans remain on paper, and former Ald. Michael "Jailed" McGee Jr. did nothing for the area but support some shady "development" that never materialized, or was left incomplete or improperly built. One of these failed development sites was condemned and facing foreclosure on 2nd St. until it recently burned, injuring two firefighters.
Amid the largest concentration of vacant lots in the city and numerous City-owned buildings, crime is a menacing "surround" on the good blocks, which are marked by owner-occupants. Crime is steady on blocks with few owner-occupants where the absentee owners are typically distant--in the suburbs or out of state--and increasingly in foreclosure or facing foreclosure proceedings. Vacancies and boardups are on the rise, as are fires that include suspected arson. The mayor is now launching a partnership to track and supposedly prevent these foreclosures, news that comes shortly after he toured the streets of south Harambee himself.
I went along for the mayor's tour and played partial tour guide for some accompanying TV news teams. I've lived in this area for several years, and along with other residents here, I know more about its life and conditions than anyone on the City payroll is ever likely to attempt to know. I say that despite the fact that a lot of my information comes from the City itself. The City is good at the busywork of creating and sharing data but not at turning it into usable information and actually using it. There are a lot of things that could be done with the City's neighborhood data to actually help neighborhoods, but I'll leave that topic for another day. Suffice it to say that anyone looking at property ownership data in southern Harambee--as I did in 2006--would have seen the foreclosures and fires coming.
The first wave of foreclosures did take out some established residents who fell on hard times, or rather hard times fell hard on them. Some were probably living on equity and credit cards. When the housing market went south, they went upside down, and their houses showed up at the Sheriff's auction. Yet most of the foreclosures in southern Harambee seem to be cropping up for the non-owner-occupied properties, the vast majority of which are owned by suburbanites who often have multiple holdings. Other absentee owners are in remote parts of the city, and some are outside metro-Milwaukee. A few don't live in Wisconsin at all. Of our suburban absentee-owners, a few have moderately prominent careers and families. Some who are not in danger of foreclosure are simply low-level slumlords who average 1-2 evictions per property per year. They never put quality work into their rental properties, nor quality tenants. They are probably waiting for--and also hindering--the day when other people put real value in the area and they can sell out. The condition of nearly all these absentee owners' properties and frequently their court records show them to be people who deserve whatever ill befalls them.
For those who are foreclosed, that will still leave the neighborhood with the fallout from more bank-owned and vacant properties. The banks were slumlord-enablers in this area and can't be expected to do a quality job managing the buildings they inherit. Wauwatosa Savings financed Tim Brophy and other leading losers even after it was clear the loan recipients were losing or already had lost properties at the Sheriff's auction.
At this point the only people buying houses here seem to be the stupidest or most ambitious, aspiring slumlords. Their methods are classic: slap up vinyl siding over uninsulated walls, add a few extra rooms (no permits are pulled for any of this, naturally), and eventually house more occupants than is legally allowed--people who just happen to be there and are never actually on the lease. If there is a lease.
My block has seen this happen with two houses for the past three years. No amount of legitimate complaints to the Department of Neighborhood Services (DNS) has had a deterring effect, even though enough things were reported early enough for preventative measures to be taken. (No doubt the lack of a serious alderman did not help us. McGee never returned my calls or emails, and so far neither has Coggs.)
This morning I again listened to one of the absentee owners outside his latest firetrap explaining to his henchman how to dodge enforcement actions when the DNS inspector arrived at one of his other properties. ("It's best if I'm not there when the inspector comes...hide that stuff in the back of the garage.") The site he was currently working on actually faces the home of our alderwoman, and several of her relatives (including two other elected officials) are absentee-owners of buildings in close proximity. State represenative Leon Young, who last night scored an easy re-election, has not put anything into this neighborhood but campaign signs. (Eugene Kane actually just wrote about this.) Contrary to expressed resident opposition, Ald. Coggs has already approved a zoning change for yet another in-house daycare on her street and license for a decrepit tavern on North Ave. that previously had some incidents involving guns and murder. At one hearing regarding the tavern, as is usual in these cases a string of friends, relatives, and would-be employees testified in favor of the bar, and by connecting their names and addresses with court records, it wasn't surprising to find rapsheets involving drugs, prostitution and a bevy of financial and real-estate related litigation. In hard times, one thing you can do is reopen a bad bar. The similarities with Montal's Lounge--which took several years and homicides to get closed--is notable.
The area from Hubbard to Holton St. on the Coggs end of Harambee remains a source of drug houses, gunfire and gang activity surrounding Oliver Wendell Holmes Elementary--one of those MPS compounds with the Supermax look. (Malcolm X to the north is now closed.) This is the first summer the police have really, visibly worked the area, and while it's been "hot," people are not actually being shot by thugs. Going back to 1999-2000, the Holton St. corridor has improved greatly in that we aren't seeing any or many homicides there most years.
I've never seen a gun homicide myself, I've only heard them while being on the same block or within a block or two away from them. There is always plenty of shooting to hear at night (and sometimes during the day) in Riverwest and Harambee, and the conclusion of New Year's Eve anywhere on the North Side might be a threat to low-flying aircraft. For all that, it's rare to be in earshot of gunfire that actually hits someone, but when it happens, it's amazing how much is communicated so quickly by sound. One nearby homicide I heard very clearly was marked by its intentional sound. Maybe it is more care in aiming, a cold, grave anger, or both, but there was a longer duration between shots and a long pause before the last one. The usual, seemingly random, gratuitous gunfire is typically fast and brief. Screaming has always followed the actual shootings within earshot of my home, and it's obvious if the person screaming is a victim or a witness--pain and even anger as opposed to hysteria. These sounds are the beginning of the community impact that's not on TV shows or movies, and the unfortunate reality is they're drops in the urban bucket.
When I've heard these things take place from my backyard or through an open window, or when there is serious rifle or shotgun fire and squealing tires, I know I'll probably get the story in the newspaper the next day. This happens only rarely, but the fact that it happens at all is unacceptable. It will go on happening at some regular and inevitable rate as long as the environment is consistently favorable for criminals. It all starts with the property owners--and people who want to make a change.
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Still timely
One thing I'd revise, aside from the additional fires happening since Sept. 2008: I don't have to wait for the news anymore for a first report. Residents and people monitoring scanners are exchanging the first reports now on twitter.
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