In the last 50 years Sherman park, the neighborhood that we are looking at, has changed considerably. in the 80's with the loss of manufacturing jobs and others moving to the suburbs out of reach of public transportation. The disappearance of jobs made it, so families couldn’t keep up with the property tax and the houses were sold by the city to landlords and the houses were split up in to duplexes, multifamily dwellings. Then in the 90's the community was hit hard by the “War on Drugs” with a three-strike law leaving large numbers incarcerated for a long period of time for minor offences and crimes in general and has now made Wisconsin the state with the highest incarceration of African American.
Given the high levels of racial and economic segregation in Milwaukee County, two-thirds of the county’s incarcerated African American men came from 6 zip codes in the poorest neighborhoods of Milwaukee. Sherman park in those zip codes. Once again Sherman park was hit by the housing collapse of 2008 and more jobs were lost followed by more houses being handed over to absentee landlords leaving the houses broken by time and not keeping up on the repair. Now the houses are left in the hands of others outside the community. the jobs created to fill the lost careers have a lower income. Not only are those jobs of lower pay but also, they are not businesses owned by those in the community creating an economy only removing more capital from the community or in other words absentee businesses owners. The homes should be owned by those in the community who have an invested interest in the neighborhood. Renting is important to those who can’t afford housing, but long-term housing can with missed payments can damage a credit score, but renting can never help your credit score. With high eviction rates in the neighborhood we can see that the cost of housing and available is a big issue shown by high eviction rates. If in two years in this neighborhood it would be cheaper to buy a house instead of renting including the cost repair. The missing part of the community can be filled by mixed use development adds has housing and creates opportunity for careers that pay well and retain value in the community the hope would be to hire from within the community giving back jobs, bringing back homeowners and new creating opportunity to hold monetary capital in the community. |