Safe & Sound Springs into Action After Spring Flooding

Sep 5th, 2008

Flooding impacted many areas across the City of Milwaukee in the spring of 2008. Residents in the Safe & Sound neighborhoods were severely impacted, especially by basement flooding, and needed the information and assistance as quickly as possible. Our staff and other Neighborhood Strategic Planning organizers were in contact with residents in the hardest hit flooding areas of Milwaukee through our regular door-to-door outreach.For a FEMA information meeting held on August 2nd Safe & Sound knocked on 800 doors city wide in flood damaged areas. We spoke with several hundred residents and provided them with an informational flyer on how to apply for emergency assistance. Safe & Sound organizers spoke with people in the Parklawn Housing that had basement flooding, applied and were denied. Unfortunately, many people may be limited in their mobility or in areas of self-advocacy.

In the McGovern park area hit especially hard, Jim Bartos of Silver Spring Neighborhood Center worked with Aaron of Community Partners to arrange a meeting on Tuesday, August 19 to gather residents and get information first hand. Guests from FEMA gave an overview of the application process associated with the flood damage and representatives from the City’s Department of Homeland Security provided additional information.

Midtown Neighborhood Strategic Planning area was hit by flooding and so Paula Butler of Safe & Sound organized a special outreach session to promote the FEMA assistance on September 12. 174 houses received flood assistance information with 20 individuals receiving referral assistance after describing their own flood losses.

Safe & Sound Community Partners ability to communicate with residents face-to-face in low-income high-crime areas is significant. A major focus of Safe & Sound Community Partners is daily, year-round door-to-door outreach to access residents. Functional literacy is an undeniable issue in the Safe & Sound target areas with a high population not graduating from high school, almost 60% in some neighborhoods. Face-to-face interaction increases resident access to resources while enabling follow up for additional assistance. Anti-crime and neighborhood improvement outreach information targeted to the specific language and needs of a block is distributed door-to-door to each residence.