From Milwaukee County Housing Services (includes Milwaukee County Rent Assistance).
This month, meet our Housing Navigation team!
Join us on the 4th Tuesday of every month for a virtual presentation, followed by Q&A. This month's meeting is Tuesday, July 23rd at 10AM.
Microsoft Teams meeting
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Meeting ID: 238 438 212 252 Passcode: MNLVRW
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+1 414-436-3530,,521306523# United States, Milwaukee
Phone Conference ID: 521 306 523#
By Bob Pinnegar, CAE President and CEO of the National Apartment Association
You are probably aware of President Biden’s comment about rent control at his press conference following the NATO Summit last week. It was picked up by CNBC on Friday, July 12 with a segment that I participated in with former Governor and 2004 presidential candidate Howard Dean.
The rumors about an announcement of a nationwide rent control policy have continued to swirl around DC over the weekend. Today at 2:30 p.m., the Washington Post reported in the article reproduced below that on Tuesday, July 16, at a campaign stop in Nevada, the White House will be announcing that if reelected Biden will call for a 5% annual rent cap annually.
It appears that the intention is to tie the ability to depreciate assets to compliance with this new policy. According to the Post, the administration has declined to comment, which is consistent with our efforts to verify the rumors. Such an action would require action by Congress and would likely face an uphill battle. In my opinion, it is reflective of how desperate the President and his campaign staff are to reset the dialogue away from fitness for office to policy, no matter how outrageous it is.
We are prepared for the release of President Biden’s proposal and will issue a press release under the Housing Solutions Coalition (note that NAA is mentioned in paragraph 13 of the article below as an HSC member) as well as through our NAA channels tomorrow after the announcement. We will also insert it in the Industry Insider newsletter which has our highest readership if the timing permits. Now that this is in the public arena, I anticipate that Lester Holt will ask about it during the one-on-one interview that he is having with the President tonight. I anticipate that tomorrow will be a busy news day for us here at NAA and across the real estate industry.
10 Unintended Consequences of Rent Control Policies
By Atty Heiner Giese
I was told today by a staff member of the DNS Milwaukee's Rental Property Registration office that the form DNS-8, which is used to register a change in ownership of rental property, no longer needs to be notarized.
This is due to a change in state law eliminating the need for a notary on most court and government forms.
The form has not yet been updated but the staffer said the box for notarization of the owner's signature could simply be left blank.
By Attorney Heiner Giese
Dawn Anastasi, RPA Board member, alerted us to this announcement about new “tenant protections” by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).
These tenant protections apply to multifamily properties where the loan application was submitted after the policy effective date, February 28, 2025. So it would not apply to owners who have existing federally-financed mortgages.
Note in particular the provision requiring a 5-day grace period for rent payments. Owners will not be allowed to charge a late fee during this grace period. This is also going to affect Wisconsin law regarding 5 and 14 day notices for nonpayment. For example, assume the lease says rent is due on the first. Assume the owner has a clause imposing a late fee after the 5th.
Say the tenant hasn’t paid for July, the owner has let it slide without issuing a 5-day notice and now August 1st rolls around without a payment and the owner wants to do a 5-day notice and then go ahead promptly with an eviction filing.
The owner will have to wait until August 6 to issue the 5-day.
If the tenant is month-to-month the 14 day notice without a right to cure is always effective where the tenant has behavior problems or is chronically late and the owner just wants them to move – a 14 day notice could be used effectively as of the 2nd or 3rd day of the month if no rent was paid. But now owners would have to wait at least 5 days before serving the 14 day notice.
Finally, if an owner has a per diem type of late fee, the first 5 days of delinquency couldn’t be charged.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) today announced a set of required tenant protections for multifamily properties financed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac (the Enterprises).
Covered housing providers will be required to provide tenants with the following:
Read the Full Article Here
If you are a housing provider that rents to tenants using Rent Assistance from HACM (Housing Authority of the City of Milwaukee), this session is for you:
Wednesday, July 10, 2024
10:00am - 11:00am
By Dawn Anastasi, RPA Board Member
Today I attended the first ever Milwaukee Landlord-Tenant Summit. It was held at the Community Advocates building on James Lovell St. If you have never been to this building, it houses not only Community Advocates, but also Legal Aid, and the Rental Housing Resource Center.
The meeting was lead by Ericka Crowley, the Rental Housing Quality Assurance Manager for Community Advocates. There was a mixture of landlords, tenants, and case workers in attendance at this summit.
The short meeting included the following discussion:
One focus of the meeting is the message that all parties involved in housing should be in the discussion, including landlords. Too often, rental property providers have been left out of the discussion, and it's a step forward to see that we are being included.
The city has been awarded $2.1 million in grant funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). This grant is part of an $85 million dollar investment from the Biden Administration in what officials are calling a first-of-its kind program.
Milwaukee is one of 21 cities awarded funds. "Among the steep competition, the city of Milwaukee's application stood out," said Marion McFadden, HUD Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary.
Officials said the grant will help Milwaukee provide subsidies to builders to develop vacant lots and abandoned buildings.
Eviction Free MKE offers free legal help to residents facing eviction, but it’s set to end without funding
Kohler says both United Way and Legal Aid are working hard to secure more funding to keep the program running after this year. The pilot program is funded by American Rescue Plans Act funds and a $1.5 million gift to United Way from the Mackenzie Scott Foundation.
Note: Per the Eviction Study conducted in December 2019, the RPA found that the majority of eviction cases were due to unpaid rent. Matthew Desmond, the author of "Evicted" also came to the same conclusion.
Tim Ballering wrote a blog post at the beginning of the year regarding Eviction Diversion programs and how they harm good tenants.
Milwaukee Apartment Listing is Part of Nationwide Rental Scam
According to the FBI's 2022 internet crime report, 11,727 people in the U.S. reported falling victim to a real estate investment or rental fraud scam in 2022, losing a total of almost $400 million.
The Wisconsin Supreme Court today issued it’s long-awaited ruling (Rule Petition 22-03) on how long eviction case records should remain available to public view via online access to court records.
The Court rejected the petition of Legal Action of Wisconsin for only a one-year retention and accepted the proposal of the Rental Property Association of Wisconsin and other landlords: 2 years retention if no money judgment entered and 10 years if a writ of restitution was granted.
The dissent by Justice Hagedorn (joined by CJ Ziegler and J. Rebecca Bradley) says a change to open records should have first been vetted by the Court's own CCAP committee and there should have been more consideration as to how restricting access to eviction filings is going to affect the business practices of landlords -- who are entitled to know the prior rental history of tenant applicants and will pass on the costs of more difficult screening to other tenants (J. Hagedorn does not say it, but an example of this is landlords requiring a double security deposit because they can't be sure if an applicant had prior evictions and is thus not a good risk).
The Order's effective date is delayed for one year to July 1, 2025 but the current law found in Wisconsin statute section 758.20 -- which requires no less than a 2 year retention for evictions where no money judgment was docketed and 10 years if a writ of restitution was issued -- was acknowledged by the Supreme Court and should continue to apply. Legal Action of Wisconsin had urged the court to overrule that statute and make its own rules but the court specifically declined to do so.
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