Tenants Councils Forming in Milwaukee

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Renters across Milwaukee have been organizing to form tenant councils in order to know their rights, challenge evictions, and hold landlords accountable for code violations and exploitation. With the help of tenant-led organization Milwaukee Autonomous Tenants Union (MATU), renters are organizing their buildings by talking to their neighbors and enlisting lawyers to aid in the struggle to advocate for themselves. MATU operates under the principle that tenants should have control over their homes rather than them being places for profit that enrich landlords and that housing in general should be decommodified and guaranteed to all. As a part of the broader Autonomous Tenant Union Network (ATUN) which exists across the country, MATU draws upon a wealth of shared knowledge and experience.

MATU Organizers Josh Taylor, Robert Penner and Sean Scheuler have been at the forefront of facilitating these unions. “We advocate for adequate living conditions while critiquing the reality of paying landlords rent while they don’t maintain property,” Schueler explains. “Building these unions is our way of creating relationships with each other and amplifying our voices.”

A 2019 report by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel found that Republican legislators in Wisconsin (some landlords themselves) pushed laws through the legislature to overturn safeguards and allow evictions to be faster and easier, limit city intervention, lower code violation fees, expand background checks on tenants, allow landlords to dispose of tenants’ personal property and other things built on the business model for housing commodification.

Wisconsin Problems

“Tenants face difficulties here in Wisconsin because there’s very few protections for them from state legislation,” Taylor said. “Even though it’s illegal, landlords do retaliate against tenants for making complaints or ordering them to fix things. The fact that it’s easy for a landlord to take away someone’s housing puts a lot of fear in tenants. A lot of tenants don’t talk to their neighbors, and so they’re not aware that they might be having the same issues as each other.”

Caitlin Hazard Firer of Legal Action Wisconsin has represented a number of tenants. “Housing has a huge impact on everything from employment to education to community to criminal justice,” she said. “I look at it as a public health issue. Eviction defense is important but it’s not the endgame; we need to affirmatively sue and be present in the courts to represent interests that aren’t just reactive but proactive too.”

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Penner adds that there is a problem of housing insecurity and endemic displacement in Milwaukee. “People here are forced to move around a lot because of evictions and issues they have with their landlords. They don’t feel comfortable going to the authorities for help because there’s landlord interests sprinkled all over the state apparatus. It causes a lot of apathy with renters around the city.”

Landlords Retaliate

Retaliation from landlords can take many different forms. Penner continues, “The most extreme instances are threats and use of violence; often landlords hire goons to harass or attack tenants or even physically remove them from their homes. Another instance would be a constructive eviction, where the landlord fails to provide heat or water or removes doors and windows to essentially force the tenant out by making their unit uninhabitable. There’s also retaliatory rent increases and changing of lease terms.”

When tenants have poor credit or evictions on their records, they often get stuck renting from the same group of landlords who routinely carry out illegal practices or fail to upkeep their properties because they are the only ones who accept such tenants. “It’s a very lucrative business model for them,” Hazard Firer noted.

Youssef “Joe” Berrada of Berrada Properties is one of the largest landlords in Milwaukee, owning over 8,000 rental units in the city and its surrounding suburbs. The Wisconsin Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against him in November 2021 for violation of landlord-tenant law, alleging a range of offenses including pest infestations (see WISN 12’s article), safety hazards, not fixing appliances, illegal late fees, forcing tenants to pay for court fees during evictions, tampering with tenants’ personal property, failure to give proper notice before entering tenants’ units and forcing tenants out—all while collecting rent. His company has also been responsible for the highest volume of evictions during the pandemic; in 2022 he had already filed about 1,000 evictions in the first three months of the year alone, according to Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service. 

The first tenant council, the People’s Courtyard Tenants Council, formed this past fall in one of Berrada Properties’ buildings. Dana Smith has been a tenant there for about a year; his adverse experience with Berrada’s practices have resulted in job insecurity and losing access to personal property. “I’ve lost two jobs because of them towing my car,” Smith shared. “I had no way to work. The third time they towed my car, I had to Uber for a month because I couldn’t get it back, all because a sticker wasn’t updated … all my valuables were inside my car when they towed it. My kids have missed school and been late to school because I haven’t had transportation to take them back and forth.”

On top of that, Smith has been dealing with issues in his apartment such as mice chewing up the walls, poor water pressure and a leaking sink. Berrada has not addressed said issues but has raised Smith’s rent. “Berrada is not helping me,” Smith said. “I’m spending more and more money.”

Tenants Come Together

Smith is a member of the council and has been speaking with his neighbors about what their demands to Berrada can look like. “Many people aren’t used to doing this kind of activity,” Taylor said. “They’re used to doing it themselves or just dealing with the circumstances. But we’ve been getting them to come to meetings and talk with each other about what their main demands are so that they can create a strategy around them. It’s not just us as MATU doing the work; it’s the tenants doing it with us.”

Another tenant council recently formed in the eight-story Villager complex at 3955 N. Murray Avenue in Shorewood. The property, owned by Edgewater Real Estate, is home to a number of elderly and disabled tenants who require access to an elevator to get to their apartments safely. The elevators, however, are either poorly functioning or not functioning at all, as reported by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. The article cites other issues in the building involving leaks, faulty pipes, mold and broken floor tiles. Not having working elevators in a building with that many floors is a violation of the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990. 

MATU’s most recently formed council is at 2904 W. Wisconsin Avenue a building recently acquired by Berrada Properties in January that was previously owned by James Crosbie. Bobbie Jo O’Dell has been a tenant there since 2020 and had issues with Crosbie from the beginning; she explains that she was told that everything would be ready when she moved in only to enter a unit lacking necessities. 

“I show up with all my stuff in the Uhaul,” she recalls, “and we come up here and there’s no stove, no refrigerator, and no lights installed. The electrical room was locked with a padlock, and we couldn’t get in to turn anything on...I was living here with candlelight and no way to eat for almost two weeks.”

The building has had plywood and tarp in place of a sturdy roof, and it has not had reliable heat through any of the four winters O’Dell has been a tenant. This past Christmas Eve, her apartment got as cold as 41 degrees, as pictured. She asked Crosbie to fix the heat,but he never did. “We were using our stoves to keep our place semi-warm,” O’Dell recalls. “I was afraid myself or someone else was going to die.”

In fact, Crosbie had been operating properties under his Wells Street Investments LLC, which was actually dissolved by the city in 2017 (see photos). This indicates that he had been illegally managing these properties, collecting rent and evicting tenants up until the point it was sold to Berrada. He operates a number of other LLCs as well that have been fined by the city for code violations (see Journal Sentinel article) and sued by We Energies for unpaid utilities (see photo).

Tenants should know that they have the right to organize and form councils with one another and are protected against retaliation by their landlord or form, join or participate in tenant councils according to ATCP 134.09. They also cannot be physically removed from the property by the landlord without a court order. “If you as a tenant are being retaliated against, call us,” Penner concludes. “There are legal resources in Milwaukee that can help you protect your rights and make sure you are treated as fairly as possible throughout the eviction process. You have your day in court, and you have the right to be represented.”

“The more we ignore people and keep them on the margins as disposable, the less of a community we have,” Hazard Firer added. “That’s destructive to the city and to everyone. When you have a kid living in the house where you have to worry about rodents or no electricity, then how is the kid supposed to go to school the next day and concentrate? How is someone supposed to go to work? It’s harmful to everyone, but we could refocus housing into this idea of public health.”

“I was at a point where I was ready to give up,” O’Dell said. “I was staying in contact with King Rick from the Black Panthers through this and I really want to give him a big thank you. If it weren’t for his kind words, I don’t think I would have gotten this far.”

Anyone interested in forming a tenant council should contact MATU at intake@matunion.org or reach them at 414-410-9714. To research a landlord and their records, visit MATU’s step-by-step guide here. Folks facing evictions can also contact Eviction Free MKE and Legal Action of Wisconsin for legal help. For more information on Wisconsin landlord-tenant law, visit Chapter 704 of state statutes or ATCP 134 of the state administrative code.