To kick off 2026, Melody McCurtis, deputy director at Metcalfe Park Community Bridges, had a surprise to share with Metcalfe Park resident and longtime renter Shirley Dunn.
“You know that house you’ve been checking on for us...on 33rd [Street]?,” McCurtis asks Dunn, who is sitting across from her. “The house is yours.”
Dunn bursts into a mixture of laughter and tears and says “Thank you Jesus." She’s a longtime Metcalfe Park resident, and she just won the neighborhood’s lease-to-own lottery, their Reclaim and Restore initiative.
The rehabbed home is five or six bedrooms, depending on who you ask in the room, with two and a half bathrooms. The home keeps Dunn in Metcalfe Park, where she and her family have been for the past eight years. It’s where they’ve hosted block parties and bingo games.
The Reclaim and Restore initiative works like this: Community Bridges buys a foreclosed home in the neighborhood directly from the city for cheap. Money for the rehab comes from a few places: some individual donors and some foundation money. The model treats the home as a subsidy of a community investment, which ends up making the home incredibly affordable.
The total cost comes out to $105,000, which broken down into 15 years means monthly payments of $901 a month. Dunn says that’s cheaper than anything she remembers paying in a long time.
Tyrone Dunn, Shirley’s husband, calls it a blessing.
“I’ve been around here ever since I’ve been 19,” he says. “My mother stayed in a house for 33 years on 33rd between Center and Hadley so I know how it is when you renting, renting, renting and you not getting nowhere.”
In Metcalfe Park, less than 30% of homes are owner-occupied. Rent averages around $1,300 in the neighborhood. So trying to save for a down payment, and then a mortgage, you might be better off winning the lottery.
McCurtis says the way Metcalfe Park Community Brdiges decided on the lottery’s winner is a “waterfall method:” basically you earn points based on different metrics like how long have you have lived in the neighborhood, whether you're a renter, whether you own a home — things like that.
“If Shirley was staying in that home for 20 years and we add up how much rent is going into that home, you have the ability to own,” says McCurtis. “So just wanting to create a pipeline and an opportunity, which isn’t a traditional opportunity, just to say — let’s reclaim these homes. Let’s reclaim our neighborhood. Let’s really invest in the people that make it what it is.”
This is the third property restored as part of the program. The fourth is purchased and currently being rehabbed. Community Bridges also said there are 10 new construction, affordable homes set for the next year in the neighborhood.
One of the reasons why programs like Reclaim and Restore are needed is because it’s not easy to reclaim neighborhoods.
The corporatization of home ownership
“We often talk about supply and demand, and don’t get me wrong, there is a lack of supply and there’s a lack of buying power from tenants,” says Kevin Solomon, senior organizer with Common Ground in Milwaukee. “But there’s also a power imbalance that’s intertwined with those issues.”
Solomon and Common Ground have been working with tenants for years fighting this imbalance with their Tenants United campaign. He says, to understand why people aren’t buying, you need to know where they’re getting stuck. Corporate landlords are a big part of the problem.
“Landlords are organized, have a trade association, have a super PAC, have a hired lobbyist, have agenda items that they lobby for in Milwaukee or Madison,” he says. “Just think about that. There’s this huge imbalance where tenants are divided and conquered and yet we see this phenomenal rise in the number of tenants in Milwaukee.”
In 2018, renters in Milwaukee numbered around 50%, which was the highest among large counties in the Midwest. That number today is almost 60%. And we have more out-of-state landlords than ever before. As we’ve seen more people renting, they’re also paying more. From around $900 a month, to almost $1,400 in that same time.
As minimum wages have yet to increase, and pay (adjusted for inflation) has stagnated, this means less money for families, living in worse conditions, and an unfair playing field.
Solomon says this all impacts lease-to-own programs like the one in Metcalfe Park in a few ways.
“One is it’s hard to compete with corporate landlords because they have money, resources and attorneys and can quickly jump on and gobble up the market," Solomon says. "New properties come up — boom — they’re purchased.”
These landlords also have a tendency to buy up homes in bundles — think 15 or more properties at a time. Metcalfe Park Community Bridges is working hard just to buy one at a time. Competing with that speed and scale isn’t possible. But, it doesn’t stop people from trying.
Challenges and evolutions of lease-to-own programs
JoAnna Bauch is the executive director at VIA Community Development Corporation, a neighborhood organization on Milwaukee’s south side.
“Homeownership for many is the driving factor to higher education rates, to higher employment, to generational wealth,” she says.
Like the Community Bridges team, VIA has been buying and rehabbing homes with their Turnkey program since 2008 — right after the housing crisis.
“Essentially it was designed and developed to purchase foreclosed and dilapidated properties, and then designed to use philanthropic and government funding to rehab those homes and then sell them back to income-qualified families” Bauch says. “Many who are first-time homebuyers.”
At the end of 2023, they had fully rehabbed and sold 33 properties — almost exclusively single-family homes — for an average of around $130,000 per home. But the work today is more complicated than ever.
“A number-one barrier to the development of these properties is cost — construction cost,” says Bauch.
Tariffs have impacted VIA’s ability to build, and contractors don’t know what to expect. Another issue is VIA, after almost 20 years of success, is now classified as a developer.
“We’re a community developer, we’re not a for-profit developer, but there’s no sort of category for us when it comes to buying properties from the city,” she explains. “We’re placed in the same box as some of these out-of-state investors.”
What that means is they’ve been outbid for homes, they don’t have a legal team fighting for properties, and they’re only buying in Milwaukee — so, a much older housing stock, where rehabbing is more expensive.
All of these challenges have led to the next evolution for the Turnkey program: new construction. While they still rehab homes all over the city, they’ve also started building in neighborhoods like Washington Park and Metcalfe Park, including working with Community Bridges.
“I would be willing to bet if you asked our neighbors on the near north side about housing, they want the same thing our south side neighbors want: access to safe, healthy, affordable housing. That’s what they want, that’s what they need. And that’s what they deserve,” Bauch says.
“An experience everyone deserves”
Back on North 33rd Street, Tyrone and Shirley Dunn are standing in a back bedroom of their new home, dreaming.
“I’m a DJ so this will be a space for me,” Tyrone says.
Shirley chimes in.
“Woman cave! I’m gonna have a woman cave [here] with my computer. I run bingo games. We gonna be playing bingo!”
The two joke how all the rooms are already filled up.
Neighborhood initiatives like Metcalfe Park’s Reclaim and Restore, and VIA’s Turnkey highlight a different path to homeownership. One that’s affordable, keeps people in the neighborhoods they’ve long lived in, and does so with dignity.
But for every Shirley and Tyrone Dunn, there are thousands of people in the city struggling with rent, corporate landlords, and without a lottery to save the day.
But a home changes everything, JoAnna Bauch says. Shirley Dunn said she never dreamed this day would come. Standing on her new home’s porch overlooking her new block, she says that’s something everyone deserves to experience.
“I have a bunch of adult kids and they already know they can always come here,” she says.
Support for Seeking Solutions: Keys to Homeownership is provided by Educators Credit Union, Greater Milwaukee Association of Realtors and Geis Garage Doors.
