What the Hell is Going on With Milwaukee’s Public Housing?

There has been an onslaught of news lately about the dire situation of the Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee (HACM) but in the midst of everything the newly elected fascist in D.C. is doing, it can be easy to miss. It is especially difficult to keep everything straight regarding HACM when it is not even the only Milwaukee government organization going through a crisis recently (looking at you Social Development Commission).

So why has HACM been in the news so much lately? Namely because residents and activists have finally pushed enough that they can no longer be ignored. There is even a glimmer of hope that finally, things can change. This article will do its best to bring everyone up to speed, but we want to recognize that there simply is not enough space to dive into the nitty-gritty details on everything that has happened because this story goes back years, decades even. We also want to recognize the incredible work that Common Ground has done around this issue. They have been an essential part of this struggle and are the ones we should look to and support in order to continue moving forward.

To set a foundation, what even is HACM? At its core, HACM is the arm of the Milwaukee government that is tasked with managing its affordable housing (namely Section 8 and other affordable homes and vouchers) subsidized by the federal department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).  It is responsible for the housing of about 15,000 people and owns over 5,000 units across the city of Milwaukee. The organization is run by an executive director who is appointed by a board. These board members are typically nominated by the Mayor’s office and appointed by the Common Council. In our research for this article, we found warnings that the Milwaukee Housing Authority was mismanaging funds dating all the way back to 2009. Even as recently as 2022, federal audits were warning about serious risk of fraud. So this is nothing new. But of course, it was not until residents and organizations like Common Ground began to advocate for themselves that anything began to change. After a year of organizing, residents sued HACM in August for the absolutely inhumane conditions they were forced to live in. The lawsuit referenced the thousands upon thousands of unanswered pest control requests to HACM. Bedbugs and mice run rampant through many of these homes. Hopefully the courts can finally hold the organization accountable for these horrendous living conditions. 

Pressure has only increased on HACM since this lawsuit with many calling for the resignation of its (at the time) executive director Willie L. Hines, Jr. He has led HACM since 2014. But even at his appointment, federal auditors expressed doubts that Hines had the qualifications required to run the organization. A federal audit in 2022 found $3 million in "unexplained variances" in the Housing Authority's bank balance and warned that the housing voucher program was at “serious risk of fraud”. Hines' response to reform the voucher program, was, unsurprisingly, to try and privatize it. Thankfully Common Ground and residents have for the moment been able to put on hold the contract; which would have awarded an out of state contractor the responsibility for administering $42 million in vouchers and paid them $5 million in administrative fees. All of this gross incompetence of course has not stopped Hines from becoming one of the highest paid public workers in Wisconsin (making  $252,000 last year). And the story does not end there. In December Hines announced he would retire. The timing of his announcement was incredibly convenient, considering that just days later a damning federal report on the gross unprofessional and financial incompetence of HACM was made public. Even in retirement, taxpayers will continue to pay Hines as he will have a pension of $11,000 a month for the rest of his life.

Thankfully there are signs of brighter days ahead for HACM residents now that Hines is gone. In November, 3 reform minded boards members were approved by the Common Council, with Common Ground’s support. There are still some vacancies on the board and the hope is that more reformers can be appointed,and they will then elect a new executive director. HACM has also been doing internal audits to get their finances in order and have already had some key findings. The good news is that, at the time of writing, it does not appear that there was any embezzlement or stealing of funds. Which is a small silver lining considering that the audit found that HACM had mismanaged over $2.8 million in federal funding and is now at risk of bankruptcy. I guess gross incompetence is slightly better than explicit corruption, but not by much. 

Besides Hines himself, one person we absolutely cannot let off the hook for this atrocity is Mayor Cavalier Johnson, who has gone above and beyond to protect Hines and ignore his extreme mismanagement. Johnson had expressed utmost confidence in Hines’ leadership and publicly supported him again and again. His support was so unwavering that Common Ground even wrote an open letter to him asking why he has been so steadfast in his support despite the overwhelming evidence of Hines' incompetence. Johnson, of course, denied all of the accusations and even accused the letter of being “Trumpian.” Hines has donated over $2,000 to Johnson’s mayoral campaigns, which speaks for itself. To no one’s surprise at all, thanks to some excellent reporting at TMJ4, we now know that the Mayor’s office was intimately involved in HACM, helping to craft media statements (to focus on the positive of course) and even to coordinate Hines’ retirement announcement before the release of the scathing federal report. Even the normally toothless Common Council wrote a letter, signed by 10 of the 15 members, pushing back against Johnson’s handling of HACM. 

While the problems of HACM started long before his tenure as mayor, Johnson still must be held responsible. He not only allowed the conditions at HACM to continue, but he took an active role in protecting those responsible from being held accountable. Johnson is just as much to blame for residents’ awful living conditions as HACM itself is. We can only hope that Common Ground and residents can keep up this momentum for change.