Open Letter to City and County Government

Timing for a 1/3 cut in our budget from the county, it turns out, could not have been worse given today’s news of more tenant landlord law changes being proposed.

from: Brenda Konkel
to: All Alders ,
#County Board Recipients ,
“parisi@countyofdane.com” ,
Mayor Paul Soglin ,
“Green, Lynn” ,
“O’Keefe, Jim” ,
“Kostelic, Jeffrey” ,
Anne Monks ,
“Wallinger, Sue” ,
“Becker, Casey” ,
“Noel, Laura” ,
“Morrison, Susan”
date: Thu, Dec 3, 2015 at 3:11 PM

Legislature At It Again!?

The Wisconsin legislature is at it again! A proposal (LRB-3011/4) has been circulated for legislative sponsors that will have several impacts on property left behind, the eviction process, and situations involving suspected drug activity in an apartment. We’re still in the process of analyzing the draft for all of the impacts.

This draft is only being circulated for sponsors and hasn’t been formally introduced, so we expect additional changes in the near future, but here is a copy of the current proposal. Stay tuned for more information!

 

Two things have to happen here:

1)  Someone has to analyze the bills, figure out what they mean and provide education about it and make sure we track what happens so if the laws change, we can be up to date.  Of course, no one pays for that.

2)  When the law changes, because it will, we have to update (and reprint in many cases) all our written materials – website, brochure series, handouts, housing counselor training guide, etc – retrain volunteers and staff and educate the other agencies allegedly doing this work.  Of course, no one pays for that.

Conundrum . . .

This is hundreds of hours of unpaid work.  And yet, we can’t do our work if we don’t do the hundreds of hours of unpaid work.

This is, of course, compounded by the recent cuts to our agency.  Last year we served 14,000 people, this year, we already served 18,000 people, a 30% increase.  The client demand increases, government support decreases, the work is more complicated than ever, and the workload is increasing.

If these are not extraordinary times, where you should be able to to find a way to help our agency struggle through this housing crisis, then what is?  We have had record low vacancy rates for years, there is not enough affordable housing for people and this growing increasingly complicated.

You can talk about process – but the need and the crisis is real.  What will you do to help? 

Brenda