The City Attorney Seems to Finally Have Grown a Spine!
On March 26th, the Milwaukee City Attorney Office sued Highgrove Holdings, one of Milwaukee’s most notorious out of state slumlords. The legal complaint, surprisingly does not mince words and alleges that “Highgrove prioritizes investor returns over payment of property taxes, abatement of nuisances, correction of Building Code violations, or rehabilitation of properties” and that their business practices constitute a public nuisance. Something that we all have known about landlords since well, forever, but it is a pleasant surprise to see this language coming from the city accompanying concrete actions as well.
For those who are unaware, Highgrove (and related LLCs) was recently in the news for a fire at their properties. They manage 425 rental units in Milwaukee, predominantly concentrated on the city’s north side. As of January, only 218 of the units were occupied, and those that are occupied have horrendous conditions. Since 2017, Highgrove has received 4,380 code violations - that’s around 125 violations for every 100 units per year for you math lovers out there. And there is more, the company also owes the city more than $570,000 in delinquent taxes. If Highgrove is unable to pay their taxes and repair their properties, these properties may be placed into what is called a ‘receivership.’ Basically, the city would seize the properties and appoint an outside entity (usually a law firm or non-profit) to manage the property and bring it up to code.
While it is reassuring that the city is finally going after a slumlord with concrete actions that will undoubtedly hurt their bottom line and, more importantly, help their tenets have dignified living conditions, it goes without saying that Highgrove is one of the lowest of lowest hanging fruit for the city to go after and it still had to be dragged kicking and screaming to this point. The city did not just suddenly decide that it actually did care about the living conditions of folks who live here. This lawsuit is the result of years of on the ground organizing by Common Ground and Tenets United who have been meticulously documenting Highgrove’s horrendous conditions and organizing tenets. The name Common Ground may sound familiar to some, we have previously covered how they also sued the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee for their abysmal living conditions.
Given the previous success of the lawsuit against another notorious Milwaukee slumlord, Youssef “Joe” Berrada, it seems the city is finally ready to step up and take part in this fight. We just may need to push them along the way. Milwaukee’s City Attorney Evan Goyke is a former public defender and Wisconsin Assembly representative. We know he knows the far reaching harm that unstable housing conditions cause. During his time in the Wisconsin Assembly, he advocated for reforms that would make our criminal justice system at least a little more humane. In his campaign for City Attorney he highlighted that poverty was the root cause of crime and “I plan to use the power of the City Attorney’s office to work alongside, listen to, and support community organizations, community leaders, and residents to address the challenges that allow generational poverty to persist. I plan to focus on tangible progress at the neighborhood level…I plan to be relentless in these pursuits until we achieve meaningful progress.” Knowing this, and giving Goyke the benefit of the doubt, we can assume that he wants to go after these leech landlords but perhaps is facing bureaucratic or some other opposition from within the administration (maybe from our quasi-Republican mayor?). Goyke needs to know that he has community support for lawsuits like these and we want more. No, we demand more.
It does seem that there is something in the air in Milwaukee when it comes to holding landlords accountable. The Reclaiming Our Neighborhoods Coalition (RON) also launched their annual property surveys on April 8th and held a press conference that was well attended (even the Mayor decided to show up!). The central theme of the press conference? Holding landlords accountable and uplifting community voices. Is it frustrating to see elected officials getting what is essentially free publicity for the hard work of organizers? Absolutely. But if it means this gives us leverage to push them to act in meaningful and tangible ways to hold landlords accountable, we can endure it.
Hopefully the city (or other organizations like Common Ground) can use the data collected by RON to build a case against their next target. We covered the last property surveys released by RON, which unfortunately seems to have been a bit of a nothing burger, with none of that data being used to support the city’s lawsuit (or any meaningful efforts to hold landlords accountable that we can find evidence of). This goes to highlight that there are A LOT of organizations working for housing justice within the city and we need to be working together. These landlords are powerful individuals with access to oceans of resources and will fight tooth and nail to maximize their profits. We need to be able to pool our resources together if we have any hope of winning, and now that we potentially may have access to the city’s support as well, or at least a sympathetic ear in the city attorney’s office, the chances of success are even greater. Housing justice seems to be the hot topic now and we need to keep up this momentum.
