Board Shows Support For Affordable Housing Listing

Riverwest Workforce Apartments and Food Accelerator. Photo by Jeramey Jannene.

The Milwaukee County Board unanimously approved a resolution supporting a new online rental marketplace designed to help connect renters with affordable and subsidized housing.

The new rental listing, pushed at the county by Sup. Jack Eckblad, will see county government partner with a local startup CityWise, to create an online rental listing showing affordable, subsidized and market rate units. The county won’t have to pay for the new listing; instead it will lend CityWise its branding, making the service easier to market and more identifiable as a local marketplace for renters.

The new service will allow renters to search through listings based on price, amenities, availability, whether the unit is subsidized and what kind of subsidy it uses. It will also show renters any active code violations next to the listing and require landlords to agree to accept housing vouchers to list on the site. Landlords in active litigation with tenants won’t be able to list on the marketplace. The listing will also eventually include a map of shelters and warming rooms.

Landlords with affordable or subsidized housing can list their units for free. Landlords will only be charged to list if they have buildings with 20 or more units.

CityWise was founded by the creators of Rent College Pads, which employed a similar business model, partnering with universities to bring students and landlords with student housing into the same marketplace. The institutional branding is the “secret sauce” that makes Rent College Pads and CityWise work, said Dominic Anzalone, CEO of CityWise. CityWise has already partnered with eight municipalities around the state, launching listings in seven.

The county’s attorneys and housing officials worked with CityWise to develop a contract that requires CityWise to remove any landlords from the listing who are refusing to accept housing vouchers, or engaged in litigation with their tenants, Eckblad told his colleagues on the board Thursday.

“The timing of this is also really fortuitous, because the county was actually exploring launching a website like this of its own, but the cost was prohibitive, and the expertise was, frankly, outside of our scope,” Eckblad said. 

The county administration doesn’t need the board’s approval for the contract, as there is no taxpayer funding involved. Eckblad sponsored the resolution to submit it to the board’s process and uplift some work that has already been done.

“I believe we will have a role to play in letting Milwaukee County know about this work and the spirit and values behind it,” Eckblad said. “And we’ll also have a role going forward… because CityWise and Milwaukee County’s own public servants have committed to coming before us with quarterly reports and to welcome the feedback from renters groups and other stakeholders.”

Board Amendment

Sup. Anne O’Connor submitted an amendment to Eckblad’s resolution, which was also unanimously adopted by the board. Eckblad was a co-sponsor to the resolution.

“I’ve been fortunate to have a network of advocates, neighborhood associations and other nonprofits and individuals who are really interested in this work,” O’Connor said. “So based on the feedback that they provided, I came forth with this amendment.”

The amendment, which does not change the contract between the county and CityWise, called for community members and those impacted by housing security be involved in the development of any “technology or data platform to ensure it serves the public interest without harm.”

It also called for, among other things, the software to be reviewed for implicit bias; for user data to be protected; and for testing and vetting of the platform by renters and housing advocates.

UPDATE: Story was updated to clarify that the county had previously only explored launching an affordable housing listing

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