Take Root Milwaukee (Bayside: low income, foreclosure, loans)

[Concrete]

I saw an ad on TV for "Take Root Milwaukee," so I went online just to see what it was about. There are some forgivable loans one can get to purchase and fix up some run-down properties. What's the catch? Your income needs to be below a certain level.

Seems interesting, but I don't think they are taking the right approach. They want to improve the area and make things better, but then they limit it so that no wealth can come into the city.

Sure someone with money can just move into the city and buy a house themselves, but I don't think that is really happening. If anything, it seems that once someone gets enough wealth, they move out/away from the city. Perhaps if this program didn't only allow low-income people to get some incentives, some money would come into the city instead of the opposite.

[SBOGD]

You make a very good point, I dont know why they just dont give the incentive to everyone high or low income

[43north87west]

My guess is, the program is about keeping slumlords from outside the area or the city, from buying up whole city blocks, collecting subsidies for each property, then repeating the entire drug house/foreclosure/abandoned property problem all over again in another decade, maybe a couple of decades.

I might consider buying up a bunch of distressed properties and getting money to do it. Sounds like a good incentive. But I can't. That's probably the object; I don't even live in Milwaukee most of the year.

It is fairly intelligent to attempt to sell local income properties to people who already own homes in the neighborhood. Regardless of city neighborhoods, if a homeowner owns and lives in a home, they probably have more of an interest in the immediate neighborhood than some rich guy from Bayside, who may have paid cash for properties, collected all of the government money, and could care less about who his tenants are, or what type of drugs they sell to pay the rent.

Still, it's another program that is brought to you by your elected officials, which distributes your money in such a way that you can't get any of it back. From the viewpoint of those who can take advantage of it, it's probably a great opportunity.

[Milwaukee City]

This group is acorn the troubled organization that was all over the news not too long ago for running a criminal enterprise. I'll stick to saving up for a down payment and 0 debt when I buy a house, even if it is a little later in my life.