MILWAUKEE — Milwaukee community members have mixed feelings about the city’s plans to demolish dozens of vacant properties deemed beyond repair.
In a news conference Monday morning, Mayor Cavalier Johnson said the teardowns are a part of the city’s Raze and Revive initiative, which is meant to address public safety challenges and improve property values.
A home on North 26th Street, that area residents said has been vacant for years, was one of the first to be torn down Monday. This comes after Johnson doubled this city’s demolition budget in 2024 for vacant buildings.
“They drag their feet,” resident Armando Blair said. “If it was somewhere else, it probably would have been gone the next day or something, but unfortunately we're used to being the last ones to get dealt with.”
With the eyesore finally gone, Blair said he’s glad to see the city taking steps to address the problem but he also worries about what comes next.
"Hopefully they put a big fence up over there too, so it doesn’t become a dumping ground,” he explained.
It’s a concern shared by area homeowner Robert Kimbrough, who’s working on rehabbing his property nearby.
“An empty lot is not going to bring the value of property up it’s going to bring it down,” Kimbrough urged. “We're going to have debris. We’re going to have uncut grass. We're going to have unshoveled snow, and not to mention the field mice that come around and enter in the houses.”
Kimbrough said people looking to avoid paying at the city dump often drop their trash in vacant city lots. So he wants city leaders to have a plan to utilize the extra open space quickly.
A spokesperson with the Department of Public Works said this year they plan to demolish 90 properties, tackling two houses a week.
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