Milwaukee Alderman Bob Bauman said he has learned a lot from reading the “anti-displacement plan” released in early March by Milwaukee officials. But the lessons he took away might not be exactly what the people behind the report had envisioned. Rather than hard data showing that long-time residents are being forced out of their homes, Bauman found yet more evidence that Milwaukee’s Downtown development boom is not spilling over into nearby neighborhoods.
The city’s report, titled “A Place in the Neighborhood: An Anti-Displacement Plan for Neighborhoods Surrounding Downtown Milwaukee,” came in response to a general concern that the recent influx of new money would put older, likely poorer, residents under pressure to move.
To be sure, the plan does point to several neighborhoods where warning signs associated with displacement and gentrifications are present. But those places are almost all found in census tracts lying immediately south and north of the city’s Downtown area. What’s more, the plan doesn’t put the changes down to any one cause. It acknowledges that displacement and gentrification could be the main drivers, but so could any number of other factors.
“The conclusion is there is really not a gentrification problem in Milwaukee, with the possible exception of the Brewer’s Hill neighborhood,” Bauman said. “And, if anything, the near-west side is going in the opposite direction. It’s actually continuing to see declines in household income and assessed values.”
Losing Their Homes?
City officials are quick to say they don’t disbelieve residents who have expressed concerns about losing their homes. Many people living in the Walker’s Point neighborhood (just south of Downtown) and the Harambee neighborhood (just north) have been jarred in recent years by offers made by developers seeking to buy up owner-occupied houses and turn them into rental properties. Still, even city officials acknowledge that Milwaukee is not close to becoming the next Brooklyn, N.Y.
“We don’t want to minimize what someone feels,” said Sam Leichtling, long-term planning manager for the Milwaukee Department of City Development. “Those things are real. They are happening. The goal of this plan is to make it clear to people that they have a choice in the matter, and that there are people out there who are willing to help them.”
|
|
To learn where displacement and gentrification might be occurring in Milwaukee, local officials looked for various telltale signs. Among them were changes in household incomes, assessed values, racial composition of neighborhoods, homeownership percentages and the availability of affordable housing. As Bauman noted, the report found that, when changes were occurring in a specific place, they were more often than not signs that a neighborhood was becoming less affluent. In other words, these were places that were moving in the opposite direction of gentrification.
In the end, city officials found only 10 census tracts showing what the plan deemed the two primary signs of displacement: a loss of low-income households and an increase in assessed values. Another seven tracts showed two indicators of gentrification: a decrease in the nonwhite population and an increase in household incomes. Of the latter, most if not all were in places where long-time residents have been the most vocal: Brewer’s Hill, Walker’s Point and the southern sections of the Harambee and Riverwest neighborhoods.
Still, the report was quick to caution against putting the changes seen in those neighborhoods down to gentrification and displacement exclusively. In several spots west of Interstate 43, for instance, population loss, combined with the demolition of run-down houses, has taken some cheap properties off the market. That, however, does not necessarily mean people are being displaced, especially if the places being knocked down were vacant.
From Vacancy to Residency
The report also cautions that the data might have been skewed by the conversion of once underused or unoccupied properties to residential purposes. Bauman noted that apartments and condos have been built at industrial sites in Riverwest and near the Pabst Brewery campus. Those sorts of projects can lead to a spike in household incomes and an influx of white residents. No one is being displaced, though, because there wasn’t really anyone living there in the first place, and because those areas were not used for residential purposes, it would be hard to argue that the newcomers had altered the neighborhoods’ character in a way that could be deemed gentrification.
“Take Commerce Street as an example,” Bauman said. “Developers started from scratch there. They replaced no one and nothing except for some coal yards and railroad tracks. No one lived there.”
Leichtling conceded that academics and researchers have struggled to come up with a reliable way of measuring displacement and gentrification. One obstacle here has been the fact that poorer neighborhoods tend to have higher percentages of renters. He added that researchers have long known that tenants are more likely than homeowners to move. But when they try to understand exactly what might lead someone to pick up stakes, they have a much harder time singling out a cause.
“People give a lot of reasons for why they move in a given year,” he said. “Only a small portion attributes it to rising rents. When other cities have tried to do academic-focused research to learn the exact number of people who’ve been displaced, they’ve had a very difficult time trying to figure out how to quantify these trends.”
Yet, even with some questioning whether gentrification and displacement are happening in Milwaukee, few argue local officials should just sit back and wait. Rick Banks, an organizer at Black Leaders Organizing for Communities and a former community engagement coordinator for the Harambee neighborhood at the Riverworks Development Corporation, said what he most wants to see from the city is action.
“They interviewed me, and I suggested a lot of stuff that, I’m glad, made it into the plan,” he said, adding, “Now I hope they follow up. I don’t want this to be just another plan; I hope the city follows up with action.”
The Steps to Take?
The anti-displacement plan does recommend several steps Milwaukee officials can take now. Tax-incremental financing—which allows property taxes collected in a certain area to be set aside for projects in the same place—could be used to build more low-income housing.
The plan also calls on the city to continue putting money toward programs meant to help residents buy houses and make repairs needed to keep their properties in compliance with local codes. The report notes that one of the best protections against gentrification and displacement is homeownership; even if owners are forced to sell because of rising property taxes, they are at least be able to walk away with some money in hand. Renters can’t claim the same advantage.
Leichtling said city officials will ensure displacement remains a topic of discussion by meeting with neighborhood residents and presenting the plan’s findings. They also intend to stay on top of new developments by returning to their data at regular intervals and bringing it up to date.
For Bauman, the anti-displacement plan is already bearing fruit, even if it’s not in the way the originators might have wanted. Yes, he acknowledges, displacement and gentrification are threats in certain small pockets throughout the city. But more than anything, he said, the report shows that many Milwaukee neighborhoods continue to be overlooked even as developers pour money into the city’s Downtown. Fears of displacement, he said, should not distract local officials from what ought to be their main priority: finding ways to spread the benefits of the city’s boom times.
For too long, Bauman insists, many people have perceived economic development to be “the enemy of social justice. I hope these facts dampen some of that talk,” he said, “because if it’s true, then we’re all sunk.”
