Milwaukee made major progress in reducing homelessness since the pandemic, turning in its lowest count of unsheltered people in at least a decade and lowering the time families stay in shelters before moving to permanent homes. But as tens of millions of dollars in federal and other one-time funding that pushed homelessness to historic lows runs dry, the city is seeing a rise in people living on the street.
Some groups have had to pull back on certain programs such as helping residents with rent and warding off evictions. To top it off, finding a place to live is much harder with a lack of available apartments, rising rents and landlords’ reluctance to rent to people with past evictions, low income or even minor criminal backgrounds.
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“We still have a pretty low number [of unhoused people] for a community of our size, but it’s a concern,” said Emily Whitcomb, who leads the Milwaukee Continuum of Care agency that coordinates the area’s homelessness prevention efforts.
“Most of the shelters recently reported being at their capacity,” says Tim Baack, president and CEO of Pathfinders, which focuses on homeless youth. “We’re seeing less rental assistance, we’re seeing eviction rates go up dramatically and as a result we’ve seen some of our most vulnerable residents ending up homeless.”
Some of those vulnerable residents are families, though their struggles are often less visible. Milwaukee had virtually no unsheltered families during the pandemic in 2020, according to federal data.
The United Way of Greater Milwaukee and Waukesha County had a goal to end family homelessness by the end of 2023. As of late fall, officials weren’t sure whether they would hit all of the marks in 50-plus metrics in all four target counties before the year is over. But Amy Lindner, president of the local United Way, seemed confident the group would meet its overarching goal of reducing the time families spend on the street. “There’s lots of reasons to be optimistic,” she says. “So many positive things [are] happening, and we know we’re going to get there.”
The Safe & Stable Homes initiative, a program started by United Way in 2020, reaches out directly to families who are homeless or on the brink and links them to financial assistance, settles disputes with their landlords, and provides lawyers to represent them in eviction trials. The effort supports several nonprofits that help keep roofs over the heads of those living paycheck-to-paycheck. One key tool is the Flex Fund, which allows for, among other things, direct payments to families nearing homelessness.
Baack and Whitcomb note that people will continue to become homeless, and the goal is to get them back into housing as quickly as possible – and keep them there – rather than taking everyone who needed help off the street at once.
“The pandemic has allowed us to reach community partners and other areas of government in a way we never have,” Whitcomb says, “and we will continue to lean on those partners to bring more resources to our neighbors experiencing housing instability.”
