The document summarizes structural factors that contribute to poverty in Milwaukee such as declining population, rising utility costs, and substandard housing stock. It also discusses economic transformations like the loss of manufacturing jobs in the late 20th century that disproportionately impacted black workers and communities. Welfare reform in the 1990s removed thousands of families from assistance roles. Low-income housing became big business while fair housing policies faced political resistance. The cycle of evictions in Milwaukee perpertuated poverty and lack of opportunity.

1. Sociology of Poverty
MOD 3: Lived Experience, Rent

2. Structural Factors in the City
POPULATION
 “Once America’s eleventh-largest city, Milwaukee’s population had fallen below
600,000, down from over 740,000 in 1960” (Desmond, 2016, p. 10).
UTILITIES
 “Since 2000, the cost of fuels and utilities had risen by more than 50 percent,
thanks to increasing global demand and the expiration of price caps. In a typical
year, almost 1 in 5 poor renting families nationwide missed payments and received
a disconnection notice from their utility company” (p. 15).
 “As much as $6 billion worth of power was pirated across American every year” (p.
15).
BUILDING CODE
 “Sherrena knew her place on Thirteenth Street wasn’t up to code. She would say
almost no house in the city was, a commentary on the mismatch between
Milwaukee’s worn-out housing stock and its exacting building code” (p. 17).

3. Economic Transformations
JOBS
 “Milwaukee used to be flush with good jobs. But throughout the second half
of their twentieth century, bosses in search of cheap labor moved plants
overseas or to Sunbelt communities, where unions were weaker or didn’t
exist. Between 1979 and 1983, Milwaukee’s manufacturing sector lost more
jobs than during the Great Depression—about 56,000 of them…[the]
unemployment rate climb[ed] into the double digits (p. 24).
 Half of Milwaukee’s black workers held manufacturing jobs… and when plants
closed they were typically once located in the inner city.
 “The black poverty rate rose to 28 percent in 1980. By 1990, it had climbed
to 42 percent” (p. 24).

4. Welfare Reform
 In the 1990s, Milwaukee became “the epicenter of the antiwelfare crusade”
(p. 25).
 Wisconsin Works (W-2) program was the first real work program in the history
of welfare… and it removed 22,000 Milwaukee families from the welfare rolls.
 Clinton signed federal welfare reform into law 5 months later (1996)

5. Low-Income Housing: Big Business
 “Since 1970, the number of people primarily employed as property managers
had more than quadrupled” (p. 28).
 Related associations and service industries were created to support this new
business sector.
 “Only three books offering apartment-management advice were published
between 1951 and 1975. Between 1976 and 2014, the number rose to 215” (p.
28).

6. Politics and Fair Housing
 In the 1960s, Milwaukee was considered America’s most segregated city.
 “A supermajority in both houses had helped President Johnson pass the Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965, but legislators backed by
real estate lobbies refused to get behind his open housing law, which would
have criminalized housing discrimination” (p. 34).
 It wasn’t until Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated that Congress took
housing into consideration and the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968.

7. Housing Costs for the Poor
 It’s not uncommon for 70 percent or more of poor families’ income goes to
housing costs.
 Housing vouchers in Milwaukee (which were very hard to get) allowed poor
families to spend only 30 percent of their income on housing.
 “Three of four families who qualified for assistance received nothing” (p. 59).

8. Insights from Jane Jacobs
 “Disadvantaged neighborhoods with higher levels of ‘collective efficacy’—the
stuff of loosely linked neighbors who trust one another and share expectations
about how to make their community better—have lower crime rates” (p. 70).
 When the poor are evicted, they move to another poor living arrangement.
Jacobs explained that this created “perpetual slums,” churning environments
with high rates of turnover and even higher rates of resentment and
disinvestment” (p. 70).

9. Legal Protections -- Vicious Cycle
 “For many landlords, it was cheaper to deal with the expense of eviction than
to maintain their properties; it was possible to skimp on maintenance in
tenants were perpetually behind; and many poor tenants would be
perpetually behind because their rent was too high” (p. 75).
 “Tenants able to pay their rent in full each month could take advantage of
legal protections designed to keep their housing safe and decent….but when
tenants fell behind, these protections dissolved” (p. 75).
 Black families were most likely to be perpetually behind on rental payments.

10. Screening Tenants -- Pros & Cons
 Consolidated Court Automation Programs (CCAP) catalogued speeding tickets,
child support disputes, divorces, evictions, felonies, etc. and the information
traced back decades.
 “For people familiar with hunger and scarcity, addiction and prison, that
often meant being isolated from job networks and exposed to vice and
violence” (p. 90).
 “Some landlords neglected to screen tenants for the same reason payday
lenders offered unsecured, high-interest loans to families with unpaid debt or
lousy credit….there was a business model at the bottom of every market” (p.
90).

11. Eviction Court
 “Roughly 70 percent of tenants summoned to Milwaukee’s eviction court
didn’t come…some couldn’t miss work or couldn’t find child care or were
confused by the whole process or couldn’t care less or would rather avoid the
humiliation” (p. 96).
 The majority of tenants in eviction court spent “at least half their household
income on rent. One-third devoted at least 80 percent to it” (p. 97).
 “In a typical month, 3 in 4 people in Milwaukee eviction court were black. Of
those, 3 in 4 were women. The total number of black women in eviction court
exceeded that of all other groups combined” (pp. 97-98).
 “Women from black neighborhoods made up 9 percent of Milwaukee’s population
and 30 percent of its evicted tenants” (p. 98)

12. Eviction Affects Future Life Chances
 “For the chronically and desperately poor whose credit was already wrecked,
a docketed judgment was just another shove deeper into the pit. But for the
tenant who went on to land a decent job or marry and then take another
tentative step forward, applying for student loans or purchasing a first home—
for that tenant, it was a real barrier on the already difficult road to self-
reliance and security” (p. 103).