Sherman Park home buyer recommendations head to Common Council
Job training. Home ownership. Stable neighborhoods.
Those are the goals of Ezekiel Community Development Corp., a Milwaukee-based nonprofit focused on rehabilitating foreclosed homes with the help of minority contractors and inmates who need practical work skills. Ezekiel then tries to sell the properties to first-time and low-income homeowners.
"We use the houses we get from the city as a classroom," said Don Utech, the group's president. "Our mission is to create jobs, especially for people who are hard to employ."
Ezekiel is one of six buyers recommended by city officials to participate in Milwaukee's employment and renovation initiative for the Sherman Park neighborhood and surrounding areas.
Other recommended buyers include Gorman & Co., Strong Blocks Real Estate, Advance Investors, CUBE Development/ FIT Investment Group, and T.E. X LLC.
A resolution will be introduced to the Common Council next week that would authorize the Department of City Development to sell up to 100 tax-foreclosed homes in Sherman Park and enter into grant agreements with the recommended buyers.
Those houses will be sold for $1 each plus closing costs and fees, and participating buyers will be eligible for grants of up to $10,000 per home after renovating them to code-compliant standards and hiring at least one unemployed or underemployed worker for each house purchased.
City officials recommended starting with 87 homes, and retaining another 13 units that will be awarded to buyers based on their performance and ability to complete renovations before the program deadline.
Staffers from DCD recommended awarding 37 units to Gorman, 25 to Strong Blocks, 10 to Ezekiel, and 5 each to Advance, CUBE Development and T.E. X LLC.
The six buyers were chosen from a group of 12 applications that met the city's criteria. They were evaluated based on the capacity and experiences of applicants; and their plans for financing the renovation work, providing work opportunities to unemployed or underemployed workers and contracting with certified small businesses. Plans for clustering property purchases and the end use of the property were also considered, city officials said.
Some of the groups plan to sell the homes to owner-occupants, while others would do some lease-to-own programs or use them as rental properties.
"I think we accomplished the goals of finding a variety of responsible investors who are interested in working in different parts of the greater Sherman Park area," said Martha Brown, deputy commissioner for DCD.
Ezekiel's goal is to sell all 10 homes it redevelops to owner-occupants.
"We only sell; we don't rent. We believe that to stabilize neighborhoods you really need home ownership," Utech said. "You need a stake in the ground."
The program has drawn a flood of interest. But when it was announced early this year, some people warned it would favor large, out-of-state developers rather than smaller, local businesses and families hoping to purchase homes.
"None of them are from out of state," Brown said.
The houses being renovated must be in the greater Sherman Park area, bounded by N. 60th St., N. 20th St., W. Capitol Drive and W. Lloyd St.
The $1 million program is part of a $2 million grant from the state Department of Financial Institutions for the demolition and rehabilitation of blighted properties. That money was made available by the state Department of Justice and comes from a settlement with Volkswagen in connection with the company's manipulation of emission control readings. It's part of a $4.5 million funding package for Milwaukee that Gov. Scott Walker announced in the weeks after last summer's unrest in Sherman Park.
The city hopes to close the sales by June, and work on the homes is expected to be complete by March 2018. The state's deadline is June 2018.
"The real work begins now," Brown said.