Setting the Table

From a laptop in my brother’s Brooklyn kitchen I listened to Joe Peterangelo talk about more than a decade’s worth of research he’s compiled on Milwaukee housing. Peterangelo’s work, which was supported by the Wisconsin Policy Forum, examined the factors that allowed the city to become a national outlier of rental burdens and racial housing disparities. Peterangelo pointed to a “highly fragmented system of services” characterized by lack of inter-agency communication or collaboration—over two dozen agencies “oftentimes were not aware of each other’s work”—even as he highlighted new housing pushes coming from nonprofit research and advocacy groups. The talk covered three reports—one on evictions, another on a block revitalization program, and a third on scattered housing resources—prompting thoughtful questions from the audience about the lack of investor property management, community trust, and density, respectively. Moderator of the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee and Peterangelo’s after-lecture engagement made for a jargon-light but policy-forward conversation, one ending with suggestions for further reading and tempered optimism.