By Heiner Giese, AASEW Legal Counsel

I. Activities on State Level

The Legislature's Joint Finance Committee continues work on Gov. Evers' budget. None of the Governor's proposals on housing issues (reported in the March newsletter), such as $66M for free attorneys for tenants, are likely to be adopted in present form. However, I did attend a meeting on March 23 in Madison called by Speaker Robin Vos to hear from housing providers and tenant advocates from Milwaukee and Madison. Rep. Rob Brooks, chair of the Assembly Housing Committee, participated.

His committee would draft legislation. Issues discussed were (1) defining "reasonable diligence" as used in the statutes when making attempts to serve a defendant with an eviction notice or summons and complaint in a small claims case; (2) clarifying by statute what amount of late fee is allowable; (3) modifying the tenancy notice statutes to specify that a 60 day or longer notice of termination of tenancy is permissible – a subtopic here is a prohibition on winter moveouts; and (4) creating a statute acceptable to both landlords and tenants on when eviction cases can be sealed.

There will likely be follow up meetings.

II. Activities on Local Level

A comprehensive report on Milwaukee County's Right to Counsel program being run by Legal Aid (they call it EFM, "Eviction Free Milwaukee") by Stout Risius has been published for the period September 2021 through December 2022. The report claims that providing attorneys to defendants (at a cost of $3M) has been very successful in avoiding or delaying evictions and has saved governments $9M in eviction-related social costs.

To its credit, the report acknowledges that the delays and refiling of nonpayment cases have a negative effect on owners. This results in tighter screening (hurting marginal tenants), increased security deposits demands and likely rent increases.

The biggest shortcoming of the report is that it does not acknowledge the millions of dollars in lost rent from evictions. The report does not even give statistics on how much rent is owed in the cases being handled by Legal Aid, though it says it will try to include this data in next year's report.

I had an interesting email exchange with Greg Borowski, Executive Editor of the Journal Sentinel regarding a recent tragic north side Milwaukee fire where three people died. The reporters on the first version of the story – which had a huge headline in the print edition the next day – did not check who owned the property and implied that it was a rental property without working smoke alarms. The JS tried to tie this tragedy into their series alleging dangerous electrical fires are mostly the fault of landlords. However this fire was not electrical in nature and the property was owner-occupied.

The JS corrected its false implications in a follow up story the next day.