Republicans Attack Crowley Over Wife’s Nonprofit Work

Community Advocates (left). Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley (right).

Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley is being attacked by Wisconsin Republicans over his wife’s employment with a longstanding community agency that receives funding from the county.

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, causing a global economic recession. In April that year, Crowley was elected county executive. Two months later, his wife, Ericka Crowley, was hired by Community Advocates, a social services nonprofit founded in 1978 by former Catholic priest Ramon Wagner.

So why are Republicans using this to attack Crowley and his campaign for governor? On Oct. 12, the Daily Caller, a right-wing news outlet founded by former Fox News broadcaster Tucker Carlson, published a piece with the headline: “Dem Candidate Approved Tens Of Millions To His Wife’s Employer While In Office.” The publication has been categorized as an unreliable source of information by the Wikipedia community.

The millions in the headline were federal rental assistance funds to support housing stability and prevent mass evictions during the pandemic. In 2021, the federal government started releasing billions in rental assistance funding to local governments through the Emergency Rental Assistance program. That year, the county provided Community Advocates $40.8 million, according to public tax documents and financial statements.

U.S. Congressman Tom Tiffany pounced on the Daily Caller story, releasing a statement insinuating the payments may constitute corruption by the Crowleys. “Did his family personally profit from this aid?” he said in a press release.

During a press conference Tuesday, Oct. 13, Crowley responded: “His campaign must be going to a new low when he’s attacking my wife. I want to be very clear, Community Advocates has been contracting with Milwaukee County since… County Executive Scott Walker.”

The county’s partnership with Community Advocates stretches back to the 1980s, according to a statement from Community Advocates, which encompasses the leadership by five county executives who served before Crowley took office. Milwaukee County was listed as a major source of revenue for the nonprofit, alongside the City of Milwaukee and state and federal agencies, in a copy of the organization’s 2007 annual report that can be found online. Community Advocates told Urban Milwaukee it operates on a “diverse mix of funding sources” that also includes private philanthropy, foundations, corporations and individual donors.

The variety of funding sources is borne out in public tax records and consolidated financial statements, which also show the agency spends the vast majority of annual revenue directly on services (91% in 2024). The biggest service run by Community Advocates is the Basic Needs program. The program provides direct financial assistance for low-income families behind on utilities or rent; helps settle disputes between landlords and tenants and helps residents access resources to prevent or divert eviction proceedings; offers intensive case management services for children; helps people find jobs; and provides financial management services to protect people with disabilities.

The county’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) has provided the nonprofit grants to run programs providing energy assistance to low-income households; help seniors apply for Social Security payments; and run substance abuse and youth programming. The nonprofit also acts as a fiscal agent for the county’s emergency housing operation run by the Housing Division, said Jill Lintonen, a spokesperson for DHHS.

In 2016, DHHS first contracted with the nonprofit to provide emergency rental assistance. After the pandemic hit in 2020, the county received federal funding through the CARES Act that had to be spent down by the end of the year. In a bid to get rental payments out the door as fast as possible, DHHS turned to its old rental assistance contractor, Community Advocates, and offered it a no-bid contract to disburse the federal rent assistance payments, Lintonen said. County ordinances include an exemption from contracting rules when there is a public emergency. 

A public request for proposals “would likely have delayed the first rental assistance payments to late 2020 or early 2021,” Lintonen said.

In 2021, the county began to receive the first federal funding through the Emergency Rental Assistance program. It continued to disburse rental assistance through Community Advocates, which had to hire more staff to keep up with the huge demand for rental assistance.

In May that year, Crowley’s administration went to the Milwaukee County Board seeking retroactive approval of all actions required to administer an emergency rental assistance program with $21,076,502 in federal stimulus funds that had already been received. Accompanying the request for approval was a letter from Crowley disclosing his wife’s employment with Community Advocates.

“Community Advocates was chosen as a community partner and vendor for the disbursement of Rental Assistance Funding due to the long-standing ties between Milwaukee County and their organization… My wife’s employment did not in any way influence the decision to award Community Advocates,” Crowley wrote. “I have consulted with Milwaukee County Corporation Counsel, who advised me that the contract remains proper, and I plan to sign that contract within the next week.”

In 2021, Community Advocates received approximately $40.8 million from the county. It spent a total of $41.65 million on direct payments for housing, according to publicly available financial statements.

By July 2023, the county’s support for emergency rental assistance — funded almost entirely by federal stimulus funds — had amounted to approximately $80 million in payments to 22,600 unique households, according to James Mathy, county Housing Services Administrator.

“Community Advocates is an organization that we rely on to help people with their energy bills, stay housed… This is an organization that we rely on heavily, and we have for a long time,” said Supervisor Shawn Rolland, who chaired the county board’s Committee on Health Equity, Human Needs and Strategic Planning from 2022-26.

Ericka Crowley joined Community Advocates in 2020 after nine years working for the Social Development Commission. She was hired as a rental housing operation coordinator, according to her LinkedIn page. She was promoted to director of the Rental Housing Resource Center in 2024, at which time the county funding had significantly wound down and was providing funding support consistent with pre-pandemic levels.

The RHRC was created in 2020 to connect landlords and tenants to trustworthy resources for preventing eviction and stabilizing housing as the pandemic sent the global economy into a recession, according to the Urban Economic Development Association of Milwaukee, a partner organization in the effort.

“As a practice, we do not publicly discuss specific personnel,” Community Advocates told Urban Milwaukee in a statement. “Our entire team, including Ericka Crowley, is talented, dedicated, and works to the best of their ability each and every day.”