By Mike Cottrell, RPA President
I'm happy to welcome Lily Johnston as an intern to our RPA team! During her time with us, she'll be helping the board on a variety of tasks including events and marketing, social media, and more.
Welcome to the team Lily!
By Dawn Anastasi and Tim Ballering, RPA Board Members
Here are some of the top legislative issues that RPA is working on. We went into more detail on these at tonight's general members meeting.
Want the full scoop on legislative issues? Be sure to attend the next in-person membership meeting on Monday, November 20, 2023.
Legal Action petitioned the WI Supreme Court to seal all evictions after one year
The Association, represented by Attorney Heiner Giese, opposed the proposal in oral arguments on September 7th. The grounds for our opposition are:
The proposal directly conflicts with Wisconsin Statute 758.20 that a case cannot be removed for 10 years if a writ of restitution was granted in an eviction action and dismissed and no money judgment must remain available for at least 2 years.
The real victims of the proposal are good renters who have never been evicted and now must compete equally for limited housing with renters who may have multiple evictions.
Owners are increasing screening and deposit requirements because of free attorneys are slowing evictions and case sealing makes screening harder.
EPA proposed zero lead dust level
This would make most urban housing unsustainable. Zero is unattainable in new housing in urban areas.
Please make your comments at https://bit.ly/EPA-zero
Deb Heffner is returning to Community Advocates to run the Rental Housing Resource Center
This is good news. Note, however that the WERA money for Milwaukee is gone. The rest of the state, excluding Milwaukee, Waukesha, Dane, and Brown Counties, received an additional $9.4 million.
Proposed mandatory insurance disclosure
Robin Vos is considering proposing mandatory disclosure by a landlord if they have liability insurance. This was in response to the deeply flawed “Wires and Fires” article by the Journal.
We oppose the proposal as we fear it will increase fraudulent claims, thereby increasing insurance premiums for all owners. We will use this conversation to force insurers to provide reasonably priced insurance to property owners in all areas of the state. The Wall Street Journal reports that 12% of residential properties nationwide are uninsured due to costs.
The City of Milwaukee appears to be charging owners for yard clean-ups without proper notice
The legislative committee will invite Erica Roberts, head of DNS, to one of our meetings to discuss the issue and work to resolve it. There are perhaps millions of dollars of improper charges.
Elmer Moore - The head of WHEDA has agreed to speak at the October RPA Trade Show
WHEDA has some exciting new programs that may be advantageous for owners, neighborhoods, and renters
Be sure to sign up for the RPA Trade Show, being held on October 27.
Free Lead Abatement
Heiner and Tim have ongoing discussions with SDC regarding lead abatement grants that should be available to owners in Milwaukee County.
Hybrid Eviction Court
The Legislative Committee is working with the Milwaukee County Courts in an attempt to get eviction first hearing to be available either in person or online.
By Tyler Durden, Zero Hedge
The argument that landlord “greed” warrants government intervention in private property contracts is specious.
Months’ worth of modest profits can easily be wiped out by a broken water heater, tree removal, or roof replacement—situations I have dealt with.
Troublingly, the failed retro housing policy of rent control is experiencing a revival led by liberal activists, lawmakers, and regulators.
Rent control is not the solution to the lack of affordable housing; it creates more problems than it solves. The best way to reduce housing costs would be to increase the housing supply; sadly, rent control works against this.
Limiting rental prices may appear to be financial relief. However, rental control experiments have led to unsavory outcomes: deteriorating properties, racial segregation, discrimination against younger renters and larger families, and greater income inequality.
Read the full article here
By Dawn Anastasi, RPA Board Member
You may have heard at a recent RPA Landlord Boot Camp, RPA blog post, or other RPA event about the CARES Act.
The CARES Act requires rental property owners to provide a 30-day notice to tenants prior to eviction for nonpayment of rent if the rental property is a "covered property."
Okay, so what's a "covered property"?
The term “covered property” includes any property that participates in certain federal housing programs or that has a federally backed mortgage loan.
Here are two ways to search to see if a property is covered by the CARES Act:
Keep in mind that if the rental property owner receives funds from the Rent Assistance program through the Housing Authority, that property is also covered through the CARES Act.
Do you have further questions on the CARES Act? Comment below!
This article by David J. Decker proposes an interesting solution -- have tenants pay Rent Assistance to the Housing Authority, not to landlords. The Housing Authority can pay the landlord the rent in full.
Excerpt from the article:
The existing assistance formula usually requires tenants to pay at least a small portion of their rent, for example, $100 per month. This is good policy, but it puts landlords in an awkward position. While the county can be trusted to make its payments, sometimes the tenant does not. The landlord is faced with a conundrum. Landlords can beg and cajole tenants and request payment, but the only tool with any consequences is eviction. However, is a landlord likely to file an eviction costing $150 or more to recover a $100 delinquency? Unlikely.
Instead, the delinquency may fester until the amount demands action. That amount could be $400 or more. While seemingly a relatively small sum, for the county aid recipient, this represents four months of rent. They are unlikely to be able to pay and will face eviction. Now everyone loses. The landlord is unlikely to ever recover these funds and the tenant is forced out of their home.
The remedy is obvious. Have the aid recipient pay their portion of the rent to the county and have the county pay the landlord in full. Now the county can decide when to be patient. The county will know more about what is going on with their clients and how well their recipient screening process is working.
What do you think of this idea? Post your comments below!
This paper was discovered by one of our members while using Google Scholar. The paper was submitted as someone's dissertation for their Doctor of Philosophy in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University.
This paper is 399 pages, so not a bit of "light reading" but those who like reading long research papers may find this interesting.
The author, Anna Perlmutter, has spent the last 8 years as a landlord for lower-income tenants in Cleveland.
On page 5 of the paper, the author writes:
Small-scale, private market landlords work independently and are often structurally disconnected – with loose information networks and few integral ties to organizational participants.
One of the RPA's goals is to connect rental property owners not only to each other, through our monthly events and social outings, but also to outside resources such as Mediate Milwaukee, the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee, and more. And yet our membership doesn't contain all rental property owners in southeastern WI. Why do some rental property owners choose to operate as islands instead of making beneficial connections with others and invest in additional knowledge for themselves?
Also on page 5, the author continues:
This is evidenced by missed opportunities to engage landlords by public sector interventions and the widespread mistrust between landlords, tenants, and public/nonprofit sector professionals (PNPs) across the field.
The RPA has seen this many, many times over. We are constantly fighting to "get a seat at the table" at housing discussions by the city and state. We are constantly trying to fight bias by the media.
Do you know of other landlords who are not part of the RPA? If so, encourage them to join (or re-join if they have been past members). The RPA works hard to provide networking, educational, and legislative work for our members.
Read the entire paper here
By Christina Van Zelst and FOX6 News Digital Team
"I think we need to do something about corporate landlords taking over entire neighborhoods, buying their property so the regular, every day people can afford to purchase a home," Jackson said.
See the full article here
By Sharon Wilson Geno
Our current housing crisis is the result of decades of broken policy and repeated unwillingness to invest needed government resources in housing. The pandemic then drove the cost of housing way up due in large part to dramatic increases in uncontrollable costs, such as insurance and state and local taxes.
Rent control discourages builders from building the amount and the variety of homes needed to keep housing costs in check and upgrading existing homes. Over time, it creates a “worst of both worlds” scenario: It widens the shortage of affordable homes while also causing the existing housing stock to decay and deteriorate.
Moreover, rent control is wildly inequitable. It gives the well-off the same access to rent-controlled apartments as lower-income families who need assistance most. It incentivizes every renter, no matter their income or wealth, to stay in their apartment much longer than they otherwise would, even when their apartment no longer fits their needs. This creates fierce competition for a smaller number of vacant units. Studies shows that rent control supports more upper-income and white renters than those of moderate income and people of color.
This isn’t theoretical; the dynamic has been observed time and again in empirical studies by researchers of all political persuasions.
By Tim Ballering, RPA Board Member
See the link to the article from Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service Here
Yusuf “Joe” is an impressive guy and an asset to our industry.
The Legislative Committee supports his efforts to repeal the Thurmond Amendment. Crimes committed by a 16-year-old, with the last arrest at 18, should not harm them twenty productive years later.
In addition to being the past president of the Association, Joe is a Princeton Alumnus and, until this summer, the Director of the Dyer School for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Lafayette College, PA. He runs the Real Estate Lab in Allenton.
Here are links to his Prison to Princeton and TED talk videos. They are short and worth viewing.
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