Apr 30

I wrestled with sharing The New Shame of the Cities as it is written from a political, anti-Democratic perspective, but found it so valuable that I decided to post it anyways.  Neither party is exempt from bad actors.  Read this from an apolitical view and you will find an equal value.

Milwaukee is prominently portrayed in the article, but the in-depth analysis of what happened to Detroit bears a fitting resemblance to our city. Replace Detroit and with Milwaukee in the passages below.  I think you will find it matches our reality too much.The 352 footnotes are as insightful as the story. Some links in the footnotes are stale, but the articles are available by searching the target site.

Maybe it is time to invite the Institute For Justice to Milwaukee.  The Institue For Justice fought a major rental housing inspection case in Red Wing MN

Hat tip to Richard for sharing it with me.

From The New Shame of the Cities

(1) Taxes:

Because of the middle-class population exodus caused by policies that inflamed race relations, Detroit’s tax base has been in free fall, leading city leaders from the 1960s onward to try repeatedly to regain lost revenue through tax increases.[55] Today, Detroit’s property-tax rates are the highest in America and generally twice as high as the overall average nationwide,[56] establishing a vicious cycle that continues to drive businesses away and cause taxpayers to relocate to the suburbs in still-larger numbers. By 2012, Detroit’s tax revenues—notwithstanding the high rates—were 40% lower, in constant 2012 dollars, than they had been in 1962.[57]

Another reason why Detroit’s stratospheric tax rates have resulted in meager government revenues is because of the city’s rapidly declining property values. Over the past half-century, the total assessed value of property in Detroit has fallen (in inflation-adjusted dollars) by 77%.[58] The median home price in Motown is now just $40,000, and many dwellings in the city’s most blighted areas sell for less than $1,000.[59]

The non-payment of property taxes has also become a widespread phenomenon in Detroit. In 2012, for example, some 47% of all homeowners in the city elected not to pay their taxes — mainly because the city’s cash-strapped government had failed to provide most of the basic services normally funded by such revenues.[60]

(2) Harassing Businesses:

In recent decades, the [people] in control of Detroit have cultivated an oppressive climate for small businesses by instituting a complex constellation of protectionist regulations.[61] In 2013, economist Dean Stansel conducted an “economic freedom” study that ranked the regulatory and tax climates of 384 U.S. metro areas, and found that Detroit placed 345th.[62] The Institute For Justice (IFJ) observes that the massive amounts of “time and money” that business owners must expend in order to comply with “all the regulatory requirements” of Detroit’s “stupefying bureaucracy” cause many aspiring entrepreneurs to “simply give up their business dreams.”[63]

Adds IFJ:
“Multiple inspections and inspection fees, incomprehensible building requirements, expensive, mandatory public hearings, arbitrary discretion by officials, and lengthy processing delays combine to discourage entrepreneurs from undertaking business ventures or improving existing ones. From sign taxes to restrictions on planting trees, the bureaucratic shuffle has gotten so out of hand that one business owner explained, ‘We operate on the basis that we just do what we want to do and the permits will catch up with us sometime.’”[64]

According to one survey, 56% of small-business owners in Detroit are unsure whether they are operating in full compliance with the law.[65]

Apr 25

To be successful at landlording you must approach it as a business.  No better way to be innovative than to liberally steal ideas,  grabbing the best from other industries and repurposing them for ours.  I also have been thinking a lot about starting an incubator for physical businesses in Milwaukee that employee people that have a hard time finding good jobs.

Good artists copy, great artists steal. — Pablo Picasso

This past Saturday John Lee Dumas, who does the podcast “Entrepreneur on Fire” was speaking at the inaugural  Young Entrepreneur Convention in Des Moines.  If you have heard his podcast you know how great they are.  If you haven’t, go take a listen.  His format is doing an interview a day with a different entrepreneur, seven days a week.  He is an ex-tank commander in the Middle Eastern wars, turned successful podcaster and author.

I find such valuable insights in his stuff that I decided to go to Iowa to see him in person. I did not even look at who the other speakers were. After hearing him speak, if the Young Entrepreneur Convention been JLD alone, the trip would have been worth it.

I was pleasantly surprised at the quality of every one of the presenters.

 

Kevin Harrington and Carmen Ballering at the Young Entrepreneur Convention

Kevin Harrington and Carmen Ballering at the Young Entrepreneur Convention

Probably the best known was Kevin Harrington, one of the original Sharks from Shark Tank.

 

His interesting story:  He got his start after seeing a knife pitchman at a county fair and noticing that the Discovery Channel was dark six hours a day in the early days of cable. This was the beginning of “As Seen On TV” and the entire infomercial craze.

Carmen spoke to Kevin Harrington off stage about doing a promo for the Event Decorating Academy. I think what he offered is a valid idea to try.

 

The other surprising presenter was Jeff Hoffman,  founder of PriceLine.com, the company that brought low-cost easy travel to the masses as well as the creator of the airport ticketing kiosk. There was some irony in seeing him Saturday and then having a terrible experience with American Airlines on the way home the next day.  His interesting story: He got kicked out of Yale for not having the complete tuition.  He solved it by creating a B2B software company even though he could not program himself at the time.

Jeff Hoffman, founder of Priceline, with Carmen Ballering

Jeff Hoffman, founder of Priceline, with Carmen Ballering

Two big take aways from Jeff Hoffman:  Create BIG goals, envision that you have achieved them and then work backward each step until you are where you are today.  That is how he arrived at doing concerts with Elton John, Britney Spears, and NSYNC.  He also has produced a profitable indie movie.

The other, which is a to our businesses, is to look at what is occurring outside of your industry and see what opportunities presents themselves.  PriceLine.com was based on his reading articles on perishable goods, distressed inventory, and spot pricing.

 

As I wrote earlier, every presenter was great.

The guy that put the event together was Brandon T Adams.  He had created the (3rd?) largest Kickstarter campaigns and is a 2012 Iowa State University grad.

Two of the presenters are from Madison.  Megan Watt ,who just released her first book, is a leadership trainer at her company, Dream Catalyst Labs. I paged through the book after hearing her presentation and bought it. The other is Jenna Atkinson, who gave a great presentation on marketing and social media.

Ken Shamrock, "The most dangerous man in the world", Carmen Ballering Tim Ballering

Center, Ken Shamrock, “The most dangerous man in the world”, Carmen Ballering, who may just be the most dangerous woman in the world, and Tim Ballering

Cactus Jack Barringer is a very entertaining marketer. Guy holds a dozen patents.

There were a bunch other presenters during break out sessions that I did not get to see.  You can see the  YEC 2016 speaker list here.

One that we did see that I did not see a tie into our businesses but was cool to meet as our son-in-law and his brother are both MMA fighters, in fact, Monday of last week the brother, Kevin Vazquez, had his first major UFC fight was Ken Shamrock  “The World’s Most Dangerous Man”.  Shamrock and his partner were pitching a project to team retiring celebrities with young entrepreneurs.

The event was so great I can’t wait for next year’s conference.

#YECDM

Apr 19
Over on  the ApartmentAssoc at YahooGroups list Bill Lauer wrote:
Since we use conviction records as a screening criteria, it is important to consider this in the larger societal context. The disparate impact issue starts way before someone applying for an apartment. This is a simplified version of a much longer story. The sex offender issue is different so lets make that a different discussion.
 
For example, Landlords use felony drug records to screen.  We now know that drug laws were written to unfairly punish one group over another.  For example, the sentencing differences between powder cocaine and crack cocaine.  First offenders with powder cocaine, used largely by white people, often times got off with probation.  Offenders with the same weight of crack, used largely by Black offenders, went to jail or prison. This is where the disparate impact begins.
 
Another example is the criminal  differences between alcohol use, used largely by whites,  and marijuana, used largely by young liberals and Blacks.  http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richard-nixon-drug-war-blacks-hippie/
 
We know that cops overcharge so that “deals” can be made later in the process.  Deals usually come with reduced charges with higher fines in exchange for little or no jail time.  If you don’t have the money, you sit in jail. We know that if you had  the money for a lawyer  you could beat the charges and stay out of jail.  If you didn’t have the money, well, you went to jail, because there was nobody that could make the deal.  And of course, what groups don’t have the money for good lawyers?
 
So now enter the  Heroin epidemic. The current form has been going on for about 10 years, about 6 in Wisconsin.  It is largely affecting white middle class kids.  They go to treatment a few times, they go to prison for possession, maybe theft, prostitution, and burglary.  They come out as felons who can’t go home to their parents, they can’t get a decent job, nor decent housing. This is the push behind a lot of these changes, now, at this time. You can’t give the white kids a special deal for their medical condition of addiction without applying that equally across all protected classes.
 
 Also, the industry’s response to being made more responsible for tenants behavior, [starting 20 years ago] coupled with easy access to  records through the Internet have had a long term, unintended consequence that we as an industry, really need to look at.  As Tim says below, this is nothing that was not predictable.  But we weren’t proactive, so now we get to be reactive.
 
The wave of change in the criminal justice system that this HUD letter represents has got a lot of momentum. Its 25 years in the making.  Coupled with the pressure of governments to reduce the cost of prisons, we’ll see a lot more change in the upcoming 5 years as America empties its prisons.  And they all need a place to live.
 
Bill Lauer
 
I mean….If you follow Ron Johnson’s career, who in a million years would have guessed that he would be calling for more drug treatment, more action, spending more money on junkie, on national TV in WAUKESHA???????  Sitting  next to Tammy Baldwin!

Bill is right.  But this is wrong.

Yes, the HUD screening directive is in response to a criminal justice system that appears skewed against racial and social minorities.

The method chosen to correct the underlying problem completely ignores the cause.  Rather, the Federal Government and the Administration made screening more complex and litigious instead of addressing unequal enforcement of criminal and municipal laws. Sure in the most egregious situations like Ferguson you see the government step in.

In general, this is another issue forced upon owners who were not the cause. This is a lot like the lead paint situation where the government permitted the use of a known dangerous product for decades, even requiring its use for some federally funded housing, before leaving most of the cost and legal challenges in the lap of the property owners.

So now owners will have to walk even more of a tightrope – rejecting far less applicants for criminal records may keep HUD happy, but then you have to deal with nuisance property concerns and worries that someone you put in may harm other tenants, employees or neighbors.

Apr 12

Last week HUD issued a directive on the use of criminal records in tenant screening.  On the surface, this ruling would prohibit blanket rejections for criminal records, ostensibly including a blanket prohibition against sex offenders.

Renting to registered sex offenders cause anxiety for your neighbors. And I do not disagree with their sentiments.  I would not have wanted someone on the registry living next to me when my children were small and I certainly would not want one living next to my grandchildren today.

I expressed my concern that owners would have to begin accepting  sex offenders to AASEW General Counsel, Heiner Giese.  Heiner brought to my attention that in Milwaukee only 55 properties meet the Milwaukee Sex Offender Residency rule.  The rule penalizes the offender, not the property owners.

If your properties are outside of Milwaukee you may be required to accept sex offenders under the HUD directive.  However, this HUD rule was implemented to address disparate impact of such screening processes as they impact existing protected classes.  It does create a new protected class per se.  Most sex offenders are White males which should make this less of an issue under the April 4th, 2016 HUD Fair Housing letter.

Some people are very passionate on these issues as the recent FaceBook discussion regarding screening for criminals shows. There is, of course, many larger issues with the sex offender registry.  The two kids experimenting in the back of the Chevy probably should not be branded for life on an offender registry.  Remember that 48% of kids have had sex by the time they are 17.  The first sex offender in WI was a case similar to this in Palmyra.

Not that I am an advocate for sex offenders, Affordable had a prohibition against sex offenders renting from us for as nearly as long as the registry existed, but the abundance of residency restrictions will ultimately cause politicians or judges will make them a protected class.  Then all owners, including government housing, will have to rent to them unrestricted throughout the community.

Miami adopted a similar 2,500-foot restriction in 2006.  This resulted in the sex offenders forming a cardboard box camp under the bridges of the Julia Tuttle Causeway, I-195.  In 2010, the city of Miami bulldozed the camp.  It then cost the city $1000 per month per offender that was relocated to house them in hotels.  256 offenders stopped reporting their addresses in the process.

People smarter than me need to find the answer but trust that it will become a problem for everyone if left unaddressed.

 

Apr 05

On April 4th, 2016 HUD guidelines on the use of criminal records in tenant screening were released. This is a game changer that negates much of what was achieved with the crime-free portion of Wisconsin 2015 ACT 176. It also impacts all screening.

No longer can arrests be considered in screening. Convictions may be considered, but only those convictions that directly relate to the safety of the property or its residents.

“A housing provider with a more tailored policy or practice that excludes individuals with only certain types of convictions must still prove that its policy is necessary to serve a “substantial, legitimate, nondiscriminatory interest.” To do this, a housing provider must show that its policy accurately distinguishes between criminal conduct that indicates a demonstrable risk to resident safety and/or property and criminal conduct that does not”

Amazingly the directive does not appear to allow consideration of neighbors safety, only residents. So does this mean an axe murdering rapist drug dealing member of the local street gang must be allowed to rent any single family as long as they meet your income guides?

The real losers in this will be the law-abiding tenants and their neighbors

preload preload preload