Common Ground Celebrates 12 Years Rehabbing Houses in Sherman Park
In late April, when Common Ground closed on the sale of its 91st, and final, rehabbed house in Sherman Park, it was time to celebrate and bring to a close the 12-year Milwaukee Rising campaign. So organizers and volunteer leaders gathered for a virtual hi-five. The centerpiece of the event was a slideshow tracing Milwaukee Rising’s history. Led by founding leader Bob Connolly, whose face mask was adorned with a CG logo, attendees reminisced about specific houses, confrontations with bank executives and neighborhood open houses for prospective buyers.
During those 12 years, CG’s financial investments in the housing work combined with carefully planned actions that not only publicized our neighborhood work but made any number of bank officers, landlords and politicians distinctly uncomfortable. The slides took us from Milwaukee’s War Memorial to Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany (the location of Deutsche Bank headquarters), and all around the Sherman Park neighborhood.
Importantly, the noticeable changes made by Common Ground’s efforts and pressure over the years prompted other Milwaukee developers and homeowners to undertake rehab and cleanup projects, in Sherman Park and elsewhere. Milwaukee took notice. CG accrued power. Further afield, community organizers and leaders in Metro IAF organizations decided to follow our model for confronting powerful financial forces that stand in the way of healthy cities.
At the time of Common Ground’s founding assembly in 2008 – just as the country was beginning to pull out of the last recession – average home values in Sherman Park were about $35,000. There were 300 vacant, foreclosed homes in the 25 square blocks around St. Joseph Hospital at 5000 West Chambers St., just north of Burleigh Street.
By 2020, there were few if any vacant homes. Consider the resulting increase in property values as well as tax revenue. Common Ground’s 91 restored properties sold for an average of $100,000. That is $9.1 million in property values, $6 million in value above the 91 houses’ estimated average $35,000 in value in 2008.
Today, those 91 properties are generating about $232,000 annually in property tax revenue for Milwaukee City and County, Milwaukee Public Schools and Milwaukee Area Technical College. In 2008 those properties were generating NOTHING in property tax revenue. Now, you can add to this new total the increases from Sherman Park property values going up to somewhere between $90,000 and $125,000, and annual tax revenues are growing each year.
The success of Milwaukee Rising is visible proof of how Common Ground works to identify and fix problems in our communities. To learn about our current issue campaigns, click here.