Madison Evictions

What if I told you that the City of Madison and Dane County along with its community partners in the past five years have spent over $47,000,000 to pay the back rent of tenants landlords were trying to evict. This at a time they want to ask voters to approve a $22,000,000 referendum to increase your property taxes.

Sounds crazy, right? The Tennant Resource Center recently published their Eviction Diversion and Defense Partnership report and since 2020 they have distributed more than $47,000,000 in rental assistance to prevent evictions.

The primary reason landlords began the eviction process was for unpaid rent (92%), with the average amount owed around $3,000. As of June 2024 there have been about 600 evictions in Madison. Over 1/3 of those evictions (200) were repeat offenders who were evicted at least twice in the past year. In that same time frame roughly 300 landlords filed eviction notices on tenants.

From a common sense point of view one would assume these landlords were doing the right thing by preventing their property from becoming a public nuisance. Many of the highlighted apartment complexes were in the news for gang activity, shootings, and other violent crimes. Oh no, we are talking about Wokeland, Wisconsin here, in Madison with its bizarro world view, its the property owners who are at fault for not offering social services, afterschool programming, or mental health services. In the story told by the Tennant Resource Center the tenants are the good guys, the bad guys are the landlords who through the eviction process are causing harm and violence.

Now you might be thinking, rhetoric aside, at least these landlords were able to evict these tenants and begin the process of cleaning up their apartment buildings. In the second quarter of 2024 there were 87 cases presented to the eviction court, of those 61 evictions were prevented and 21 were dismissed with stipulation. Well over 95% of eviction cases brought before the eviction court were prevented or dismissed.

To make matters worse 42 of those cases had their records redacted. This means future landlords have no way to determine if a potential tenant had previously had eviction proceedings. The Tenant Resource Center would no doubt argue these redactions are necessary to guarantee housing as a right, but from a common sense lens, redactions make it all but impossible to weed out problem tenants from nuisance properties.

There was a time, many years ago, as a single parent I lived in Section 8 housing. It gave me a step up to raise my two children with dignity in a nice white bungalow. As I transitioned towards financial independence, Section 8 allowed me to increase my portion of rent to the landlord until I was paying full rent. There was not one instance during that time on Section 8 that I did not pay my portion of the rent to the landlord. For me, the cost was too high, I was responsible for two young children.

Which is to say there is a right way and wrong way to approach affordable housing. The current approach of the City of Madison and Dane County and its community partners is the wrong way.