May 27

The Milwaukee Journal is reporting that a provision in ACT 317 may stop attorneys from representing pro bono eviction clients.

The small change included in Act 317 “has a potential chilling effect” on lawyers volunteering at clinics like the Eviction Defense Project, said Dawn Caldart, director of pro bono and professional development at Quarles & Brady, a Milwaukee-based national law firm.

This article, like many others on evictions vilifies owners.

We need to get the other side of the story out there
 
… the one with frivolous legal defenses whose only goal is delay
… the one where tenants that strive to meet their obligations are the ones that ultimately are paying for those who tenants that do not
… the one where twenty million dollars a year of rent is not paid in Milwaukee county alone
… the one where mom and pop, moderate income owners are struggling to pay their own bills because the rent isn’t paid
… the one where elderly duplex owners are refusing to rent the other unit due to problems with prior tenants
…the one where no owner benefits when tenants fail and must be evicted.
 
May 22
A lot of PhDs say the same thing we’ve said for years about landlording in general and Section 8 in particular in peer reviewed papers.  Typically we only see those critical of owners, but there are many that accurately explain the dynamics of rental housing.
Here is a excerpt from two.
 
How to attract more landlords to the housing choice voucher program: a case study of landlord outreach efforts –  David P. Varady , Joseph Jaroscak b and Reinout Kleinhans
Our interviews suggest that existing stereotypes of Section 8 (HCVP) landlords as greedy and unconcerned about their tenants are inaccurate. Moreover, our findings provide new support for the classic studies of inner-city landlords cited earlier. Currently, many landlords in the HCVP are themselves experiencing significant financial burdens and risks as they try to deal with the low-income rental market. Tenants exhibiting various forms of problematic behavior, such as drug dealing, substance abuse, and violent crime, exacerbate the problem.
Urban Landlords and the Housing Choice Voucher Program – Prepared for U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development by The Poverty and Inequality Research Lab Johns Hopkins University Philip Garboden Eva Rosen Meredith Greif Stefanie DeLuca Kathryn Edin
Of small properties with affordable rents (below the regional median), only those without debt service are viable. Only 25 percent of mortgaged properties have positive cash flow (Garboden and Newman, 2012). Taken together, these quantitative analyses and our own findings described in the following suggest that much of the stock is financially precarious, which could theoretically lead to under maintenance, abandonment, and conversion.
June 11th, 2018: The publication is back up on HUD USER at a new address above
Note: this publication has been removed from HUD USER.  I reached out to the authors who said it will be reposted soon, that the removal was to improve the formatting
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