Board Adds Funding For Housing, Violence Prevention

Milwaukee County Courthouse. Photo by Graham Kilmer.

The Milwaukee County Board voted unanimously Thursday to add funding to county programs for housing and violence prevention.

The funding, approximately $1.6 million, became available after a project aimed at abolishing medical debt in Milwaukee County fell apart. Now, a program providing emergency housing will receive $600,000; and the county’s youth intervention program — Credible Messengers — will be expanded with approximately $1 million to implement a new violence prevention strategy that has shown promise in other parts of the country, county officials say.

Earlier this year, Sup. Shawn Rolland secured funding for a medical debt abolition program. He proposed the county partner with a non-profit called RIP Medical Debt, which buys debt for pennies on the dollar from healthcare companies, and forgives it, to the benefit of middle- and lower-income people.

The major healthcare systems in the metro area did not play ball, though, as Urban Milwaukee previously reported. The negotiations were not fruitless, Rolland said, explaining that he and county officials worked to secure commitments from the healthcare systems to expand enrollment in their charity care programs. “I feel like we moved the ball as far as we possibly could in 2023,” he said.

This left $1.6 million on the table, though, and with a deadline to spend it. The funds for the medical debt program came from the county’s American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA).

The county’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), which worked on the medical debt project, proposed repurposing the funds for housing and violence prevention.

Flexible Housing Subsidy

The Housing Division, located within DHHS, will use $600,000 to expand a master lease program that officials say has been incredibly useful for emergency housing.

Under the program, the county holds several leases to apartment units so it can rapidly house individuals and families that are homeless or in crisis.

“It’s really, really helpful for our outreach teams, because we can furnish the apartments upfront, move folks in very, very quickly,” Housing Administrator James Mathy told the county’s ARPA Task Force earlier this month. “And then it can act as an emergency placement.”

Housing officials use the master lease apartments as emergency, temporary shelter while they look for something more permanent. So the county can provide multiple people and families housing with one unit. “So it’s not just one client that has that apartment for 12 months,” Mathy said.

Violence Prevention

The Credible Messengers program uses adult mentors to intervene in the lives of children who are involved in the criminal justice system or are at risk of being involved.

DHHS will expand the program with $1 million in funding and also implement a new violence prevention model called “Advance Peace.”

“We’re moving into, I would say, a deeper intervention with the Advance Peace evidence-based community violence intervention model,” said DHHS Deputy Director David Muhammad, during a meeting of the ARPA Task Force.

Cities that implemented the Advance Peace model did not experience the uptick in homicides with the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic as did Milwaukee and other cities, Muhammad said. The model is specifically aimed at gun violence, said Kelly Pethke, Administrator of the Division of Youth and Family Services, and cities that have implemented it have recorded a 20% to 80% drops in homicides.

“So we saw this as a worthy strategy for us to use as an intervention,” Muhammad said, and the additional funding will help officials effectuate it.