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KURT OWENS IS A SOWER. Before founding Uflourish Church and Bridge Builders MKE, Owens almost became yet another Milwaukee expat.
Less than a decade ago, Owens and his wife were in the midst of major life shifts on two fronts. They were planning a move out to Grafton from their longtime home in MKE proper. Simultaneously, Owens was trying to start up a new church – still on the North Side. While hosting some info sessions in the neighborhood around the church-to-be, “Someone there started to heckle me,” Owens recalls, “saying I was making a bunch of promises and that we were about to leave.” At first, he was annoyed by the heckler. But then it became a life-altering light bulb moment. “I knew at that moment that we couldn’t leave in order to make a change.”
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Owens had been quietly witnessing his Old North Milwaukee neighborhood deteriorate for 20-plus years. Instead of fleeing, he then decided to plant roots and fight for it. That’s how Bridge Builders MKE got started, with a goal to unite residents and reinvigorate that love for neighborhoods. During the initial door-knocking as the nonprofit was getting started, the volunteers found “a lot of homeowners suffering in silence” – folks who wanted to see their streets do better but didn’t know how they could save them.
The city had “been closing down drug houses only to see them return,” Owens remembers. “So, we just started buying the problematic properties.” Bridge Builders renovates those homes (eight of them so far) and gets them into the hands of new homeowners who will actually appreciate them long-term.
Most weekends throughout the summer, you will find volunteer groups from within and far outside of Milwaukee wearing orange Bridge Builders T-shirts, helping homeowners repair garage doors, clean up garbage, repaint siding. Doing all the little things and more. The teams have completed about 60 rehab projects and counting. “What we bring to the table is presence,” Owens says. “That’s our mojo.”
Who or what in Milwaukee inspires you the most?
“The moment we started unifying the residents in our community, we saw there is more power among us than the few people who are causing problems in the neighborhood.”
