Harambee Neighborhood Landlord Meeting
Dec 6th, 2009
Who do drug dealers really fear? Property owners, residents, police, prosecutors, city services and probation and parole all working together to address the on-going criminal and nuisance issues at the neighborhood level. When left to fester, drug dealing and criminal nuisance problems push out the best tenants and contribute to blight and board-ups. Safe & Sound is working with the Harambee Great Neighborhoods Initiative to bring together these community resources with landlords to find and implement solutions.
Landlords from the vicinity of 1st & Keefe are being invited to sit down and identify their top concerns at a meeting which will take place on Tuesday, December 15th from 6:00 to 7:00 PM at the Harambee Great Neighborhoods Initiative (HGNI) office at 2772 N. Dr. Martin L. King, Jr. Drive. It is the first of five targeted meetings in the area to build a base for an area landlord compact.
The meeting is being organized by Cacy Williams, one of four Safe & Sound VISTA volunteers. Her overall efforts are centered on building community leadership development models; one being landlord compacts. Cacy has been participating in other landlord compacts and block club meetings across the city as well as conducting research to identify what works for Milwaukee. The end result will be tools that enable Safe & Sound’s Community Partners and other organizers in Milwaukee to more easily and effectively develop leadership among residents, landlords, and small business owners in Milwaukee’s high-crime neighborhoods.
For Tuesday’s meeting, Safe & Sound community organizer Al Hegwood will give specific examples of how bringing landlords together has successfully solved problems in other neighborhoods. Community Prosecutor Ben Wesson will be on hand to explain how the District Attorney’s Office can work with landlords to better screen tenants and deal with criminal nuisance issues as they arise. Lastly, Nannette Smith of HGNI will talk about just some of the many resources currently offered and neighborhood developments already underway in Harambee. However, the primary goal of the meeting is to receive feedback and identify the top concerns of property owners. Landlords are active contributors to neighborhood stability and they need the support of our communities’ resources to keep out criminal nuisance activity and remain strong in tough economic times.
