Milwaukee city officials wrestle with money to oversee housing authority conditions

Milwaukee Common Council members expressed frustration this week that a punitive approach requiring city resources would be needed to improve living conditions at Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee properties.

"We are all trying to clean up a mess, as if the only way you can fix it is by going in, using massive new positions, massive resources and the only way to you can fix it is by us telling you you're doing something wrong," Ald. Marina Dimitrijevic, who chairs the council's powerful Finance and Personnel Committee, said Thursday as the committee debated the 2024 budget.

Two days earlier, the 15-member council unanimously approved legislation giving the city's Department of Neighborhood Services the authority to inspect properties and enforce building and zoning codes at buildings the housing authority owns or manages. Mayor Cavalier Johnson signed the legislation, according to city records.

The move by city elected officials came after residents and community organizers accused the housing authority of poor management, building maintenance and record-keeping, and after federal officials warned agency leaders and Johnson in December that the housing authority was "at risk for serious fraud, waste, and abuse."

In an email, housing authority spokesperson Amy Hall said the agency supports the additional city inspections at its properties and believes the ordinance "offers an additional tool to help strengthen our established processes and to supplement existing investor and federal inspection requirements."

Hall also pointed to decades of inadequate funding for housing authorities nationwide, saying maintenance needs have grown as dollars to address them have dwindled.

The agency takes residents' concerns seriously, she said.

City leaders are now wrestling with how to properly staff and fund the Department of Neighborhood Services' new enforcement duties.

The department could receive about 573 calls each month on housing authority properties, Commissioner Erica Roberts told the committee Thursday.

That would require an additional four inspector positions plus a supervisor at an annual cost of about $234,000, according to city officials.

The funding is not contained in the 2024 budget Johnson proposed last month.

"To some extent, it is an open question what it will cost and whether or not this council and this mayor want to fund that in advance or wait and see how it goes," said Budget Director Nik Kovac.

Council members also pressed the department on how to make the housing authority pay for city inspections of its properties.

"This is a mess," said Ald. Michael Murphy, who put forward an amendment during the earlier council vote to move the ordinance's start date back to Jan. 1.

He said with the later date he wanted to make sure code enforcement, which is already stretched thin, would be sufficiently staffed to manage complaints from housing authority tenants.

And, he said, he was concerned about the likelihood of an increase in the time it takes for the department to respond to residential or commercial complaints if inspectors currently assigned those duties were to be redirected to housing authority properties.

"It seems even more unfair that HACM continues to wait, and those residents are just as important as everyone else," council President José G. Pérez said.

Alison Dirr can be reached at adirr@jrn.com.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee council wrestles with expense to oversee housing authority