Trash, Treasure & Two Sides to Each Coin

Brophy’s Boondoggles” offers the same old and tired view of “Rehabbers.” Let me offer a different perspective on recycling properties and what it takes to reclaim properties destined for the wrecking ball. Drug houses and blighted properties are becoming fewer and fewer in Riverwest because of the efforts of renovators like Tim Brophy and others. Reclaiming abandoned properties is an often torturous effort that requires no small amount of guts and perseverance. Actual ownership of these properties has to be traced–often to out of town owners who have turned their backs on their responsibilities and don’t want to be found. Once an owner can be found there are title issues–banks with mortgages in excess of the properties’ value. These national and regional banks are unaware, (and often unconcerned), with the properties’ actual condition and the effect they have on the neighborhood. These financial institutions simply view the abandoned drug house down the block as an asset securing a mortgage loan. These “short sales” and other lines have to be negotiated with out of town lenders in order to even begin the rehab process.

Financing an acquisition of this type of property requires some special attention as well. The big banks and lenders wouldn’t, and apparently don’t have to, deign to consider intensive rehab loans so it falls on smaller community based savings banks and credit unions to take these risks. Through trial and effort they have established relationships with individuals, like Tim Brophy, who have taken on the dirty work of distressed property renovation and prevailed.

Is there a payoff for the banks and Brophy? You bet. But it isn’t like buying a lottery ticket. Once acquired the new owner has to deal with all these problems that led to the properties distressed condition in the first place. These are the very same issues that defeated the former owner. Start with identifying quality, reliable contractors for the “piece” work involved with property repairs. Many skilled trades people prefer clean new construction projects as opposed to the difficult and time-consuming repair of Victorian era plumbing, heating and electrical systems.

Ever been inside one of these properties before work begins? Ask the kids on your block because many of them can tell you what you’ll find. A dead dog in the basement of a cottage on Booth St., fire damage and broken stairs in a house on Meinecke, squatters and drug addicts on Fratney, used needles, broken glass, condoms, pornography and more. (This is not just hyperbole, but actual conditions found at the beginning of some of Brophy’s renovation projects). What you don’t see is just as bad. All the garbage and trash can be cleaned up readily enough but there are hidden defects like broken pipes, bad plumbing and wiring to deal with. Much of this is identified in the City of Milwaukee code violations a new owner inherits and become responsible for.

What is seldom remembered is that is is the FORMER owner and/or their tenants who caused the problem. Rehabbers like Brophy not only get to clean up their mess, they have to take the flack for them. Admittedly they get compensated for their trouble and enter into the deal with eyes open.

When neighbors suffer, often for years with derelict landlords and abandoned properties their patience wears thin and eventually reaches the boiling point. It’s about at this point that rehabbers appear on the scene and start to work. Community advocates like the Riverwest Currents need to be conscious of and view the whole process of property reclamation. Brophy’s record is not as one-sided as your April issue would lead readers to believe. He has shut down numerous problem properties, notorious drug houses and three taverns, one of which he took on only a week after a homicide. It would be interesting to see thousands of City Work Orders fulfilled and a list of the homes renovated and resold to owner-occupants along with the shortcomings you point out. Brophy’s efforts over the years has preserved some valuable housing stock in Riverwest.
Recycling requires getting our hands dirty.

Paul Campbell
Riverwest Home Owner
Resident and fellow rehabber