Brian Sonderman, CEO, Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity: Helping hard working residents build new homes

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Photo by Tom Jenz

Brian Sonderman, CEO of Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity

CEO of Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity Brian Sonderman

Housing or lack of housing is often in the news. Can ordinary residents, especially people of color, afford to buy their own homes anymore? 

Milwaukee's history of segregated housing is rooted in discriminatory practices begun in the early 20th century when African Americans started settling here. Due to economic constraints and racial discrimination, they were largely confined to a nine-square block area north of Downtown.

In 1919, Washington Highlands in Wauwatosa became the first metro Milwaukee neighborhood to impose restrictions prohibiting non-white residents from purchasing, owning, leasing or occupying property. By the 1940s, at least 16 of Milwaukee's 18 suburbs had instituted racial restrictive covenants.

In the 1930s, “redlining” entered the picture, making it difficult for African Americans to obtain mortgages in certain areas. By the 1960s, despite comprising 15% of Milwaukee's population, Black families were still highly segregated in isolated neighborhoods. Racially restrictive covenants legally prohibited homeowners from selling or renting to non-white buyers. 

The civil rights movement in Milwaukee gained momentum in the 1960s when African American Alderwoman Vel Phillips introduced the first fair housing ordinance in 1962. After years of resistance and 200 consecutive nights of marches led by the NAACP Youth Council in 1967-‘68, Milwaukee finally passed a fair housing ordinance on April 30, 1968, following the national Fair Housing Act.

Despite these legal changes, housing segregation in Milwaukee still persists, discrimination patterns are hard to break. Enter Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity with CEO Brian Sonderman leading the way. His motto: “Everyone deserves a decent place to live.”

To get to the Habitat for Humanity headquarters on Booth Street, I drove north on Holton Street, a corridor lined with mostly new, two-story row houses with almost the same design, clapboard sidings, peaked roofs and practical porches. These homes had been built through the Habitat for Humanity program. 

I met Sonderman at his Habitat office. He is tall, smart and serious, and encyclopedic about Habitat’s methods of providing new homes to the disadvantaged. 

Tell me about your background, where you grew up, your parents, schools and neighborhoods.

I grew up in Brookfield, Wisconsin. My parents built their first home in Brookfield in 1960 for $12,000 and never had a mortgage. My dad’s entire career was at Allen-Bradley as an economist. My mom was a public school teacher but later stayed home to take care of myself and three older brothers. We lived in an old-fashioned neighborhood where neighbors looked after one another. Kids played outside all day and came home for dinner. I went to the Brookfield public schools for 12 years, graduated from Brookfield Central. 

You earned an accounting degree at UW Madison, and then got your Master of Divinity degree in Theology at Trinity University. Why go from accounting to theology?

Early in my career, I enjoyed accounting and banking, but I felt a calling to pastoral ministry. In later high school and then college, my faith became personal. I had a brother who was a pastor, and I looked up to him. After Trinity University, I went to work at the nondenominational Elmbrook Church as a pastor in 1998. Elmbrook Church developed new churches in Southeastern Wisconsin, and as a pastor, I started the east side Metrobrook Church in Downtown Milwaukee in 2005. Our congregation was mostly young professionals, college students and some retired people. The name was later changed to Brew City Church. I did a lot more weddings than I did funerals.

How did you get involved with Habitat for Humanity? You’ve been with the organization for 14 years, first, as executive director and then as the CEO.

What drew me to Habitat was the work it was doing in the neighborhoods, investing in houses for families in need, mainly African Americans. The job connected me with two of my skills, banking and finance with the pastoral ministry side because Habitat has a faith foundation. This is a fulfilling job. I look forward to coming to work each day.

What exactly is Habitat for Humanity and how does it work?

 Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity is a 501c3 nonprofit with a homeownership focused program. Our mission is to bring people together to build homes, communities and hope. We utilize paid professionals and volunteers from all walks of life —suburban, urban, Blacks, whites, women, religious and nonreligious. They come together with a future homeowner to help build that person’s new home. That new homeowner spends over 200 hours to help us do the actual work. Over the past 40 years, we have served over 1500 families to build their new homes and also do home repairs for existing homeowners. We are focused on the central city, mainly north side neighborhoods. Currently, we build in MidTown, Lindsay Heights and Harambee. We encourage the development of strong neighborhood organizations like the Midtown Neighborhood Alliance. There are 1,000 Habitat affiliates in this country, and Habitat is in 70 different countries around the world. 

Beside building homes, I get the impression that Habitat is also providing stability.

That is a big part of our efforts.

Reading from your website. Milwaukee Habitat for Humanity has an open-door policy: “We invite you to help us build, no matter your race, religion, age, gender, political stance, or any other distinction.” If I am a low-income earner in need of a home or I need help with house repairs, how do I qualify?

You can do your application online through our website. It’s a homebuyer assessment to see if you qualify for our program. To qualify, you need to be a first-time home buyer, have the means for paying back a monthly mortgage, and be willing to put in the hours to help build your new home. Generally, what we see is that applicants are spending 40% to 60% of their income on rental housing. Our goal is to make sure that an applicant’s mortgage payments will be less than 30% of their monthly income. As far as our house repairs program, most of our clients are elderly and want to stay in their homes. They just need repairs. We often get our new clients through referrals, homeowners who experienced our programs. In the last six months, we have gotten about 1,600 applications for homeownership. In 2025, we will build 34 homes. Our Family Service staff evaluates every application. Many people are not quite ready to qualify, and we call them “Not Yets,” and we provide those applicants with coaching and referrals. 

I understand the average cost to rent a dwelling in Milwaukee is more than $1,800 per month, and the average cost to own a home is more than $2,300 per month. According to your website, Milwaukee Habitat can help reduce that cost. Your typical monthly payment to own a brand new home is less than $950. But the new homeowners are required to help build their own homes to qualify for the affordable mortgage. How does Habitat for Humanity accomplish all this? Where does it get the funding? And is Habitat involved in collecting the homeowner’s monthly mortgage payments?

We work with many different partners. Income comes from the sales of new homes to the buyers, but our homes cost more than we can sell them for. That subsidy gap is filled by individual and corporate donors, foundations, churches, and some government funding. We also make money off our three ReStores where we sell donated furniture and household goods. As far as collecting mortgage payments, for the first 35 years, Habitat was the bank, but we now partner with community banks and credit unions to provide below market mortgages for our homebuyers. Fixed term mortgages with no down payment. We vet the applicants and hand them off to a loan officer at a financial institution, who will collect the future mortgage payments.

Who does the work of evaluating applicants for your service? Who does the paperwork, and who helps build the houses?

Including our ReStores, we have close to 100 employees. Seven employees comprise our Family Service team who work with families pre-purchase by providing financial coaching. That consists of evaluating about 1600 applications per year. The team also supports post-purpose by hosting classes and workshops. In terms of building the homes, we have thousands of volunteers who work with us each year. A couple hundred are highly skilled “habituals,” who work multiple times per month or even per week. These are construction sites, and safety is paramount. Our construction site foremen also manage the homebuyer who works alongside the volunteers. We have a very low foreclosure rate historically, under 0.4%. Personally, the best days for me is when I go to a completed house and do a new home dedication, cutting the ribbon with the family.

On a different avenue, existing homeowners can qualify for affordable home repairs of everything from roof replacements to electrical work and lead removal. Up to 80% of project costs can be covered based on the applicant’s income. Who, then, covers the bulk of the repair costs?

Our funders do. Grants from Northwestern Mutual, Bader Philanthropies, and Zilber, for instance. And the city of Milwaukee. Currently, we are doing nearly 120 repair projects with the city, such as lead abatement. 

Mayor Johnson was telling me the city is selling their empty lots for something like one dollar a lot.

We are very involved with that. Almost all of our lots are purchased from the city for a dollar each. 

Escalating prices are making homeownership more difficult. A typical low-price house in the city cost about $71,000 in 2019. Today it costs $126,000, a 77% increase. A mid-price city home cost $126,000 in 2019. Today, it goes for $206,000. And a higher-price city home went for about $200,000 in 2019. Today, that home sells for $294,000. What caused these price increases? 

Simple supply and demand. In Milwaukee as in other cities, we have not done enough to replenish the housing stock in recent years, especially low and mid-priced houses. If you look at homebuilders in southeastern Wisconsin, they cannot really build a new home for less than $400,000 if they want to make a profit to stay in business. In the city of Milwaukee, there are 3,000 city owned vacant lots and 100s of vacant houses. Most of our homeowners want a stable home for their children, so they don’t have to move and go to different schools, so they will have a hopeful future. Habitat is the largest builder of new construction homes in the city and one of the largest in southeastern Wisconsin. 

At Habitat for Humanity, what is Women Build Week?

Women coming together to build a house. Last year, the women built two houses over a two-week period. Only women do the construction. 

How many homes have you built recently?

We built 32 homes last year, and this year, we will build 34, along with over 100 critical home repair projects. By 2028, we will be building 40 homes, I hope.

And you build homes in other countries, I believe.

Yes, we have a global platform. Ten percent of our unrestricted donations we give to our partners in the countries of El Salvador and Zambia. We also send Milwaukee volunteers to these two countries to help build homes. Historically, we have donated $5 million. I am very proud of that.