Housing initiative promotes homeownership for Milwaukee residents

Danielle Terrell and her family have spent years looking for housing stability on Milwaukee’s northside. 

Terrell has 13 children. Right now, she’s staying on someone’s couch. She moved out of a rental following four drive-by shootings. 

But next month, everything will change. 

The Repair to Restore Initiative in the city’s Metcalfe Park neighborhood purchases city-owned vacant properties or dilapidated homes, renovates homes in need of major repair or builds new houses on vacant lots and helps renters, like Terrell, become homeowners. 

Residents pay an affordable rent and are able to own the property after 15 years for the cost of the renovation. Private groups, like the Northwestern Mutual Foundation, cover the remaining costs.

“This is neighborhood stabilization. This is generational wealth building. This is equitable development,” said Lafayette Crump, Milwaukee’s commissioner of city development. “These are all things that we talk about at the department that we aspire to get done, that we often have to go through a number of arcane and bureaucratic rules to try to accomplish.”

Terrell was able to design her home. She chose blue for the exterior and gray for the walls. 

After several months of planning, Terrell finally got to see the house last week.

“I just walked around and I was just in awe,” Terrell said.” I was just like, my God. I feel so blessed.”

Terrell’s home is one of three being restored by Metcalfe Park Community Bridges as part of the Repair to Restore Initiative. The home is one of 10 total in the neighborhood. 

Melody McCurtis, who heads the Community Bridges group, says this is just the beginning. McCurtis wants more people to become homeowners, which she says is the key to stability in her neighborhood.

Another program, the Metcalfe Park Homeownership Initiative, opened the door for 30 tenants in affordable housing to become homeowners earlier this year.

That project used a provision in the federal low-income housing tax credit that allows tenants to buy their homes at a discount 15 years after development.

Almost all the tenants in the Metcalfe Park project are Black. 

While homeownership in Milwaukee has decreased between 2010 and 2021, homeownership among non-Hispanic white residents remains high, according to a 2022 housing affordability analysis of the city. Approximately 27 percent of Black residents owned their homes in 2021, compared to approximately 55 percent of white residents.

When Terrell is finally in her home, she said, she’s going to take a long bath. 

“I want to get in there and light me some candles and relax and just say, ‘Hh, my goodness. This is home,” she said. “It’s peace, it’s peace.”