MILWAUKEE — Near the intersection of 35th and Scott on Milwaukee's near south side sits an empty lot. Weeds with flowers are scattered through the grass. It may not look like much, and driving around the city you may see similar lots turned into unofficial parking lots or dumping areas.
But those flowering weeds, with a little imagination, just might be the first sign of a garden outside the front door of a family home.
"I grew up here in the near south side, in the neighborhoods that VIA serves," said JoAnna Bautch.
VIA CDC is a community organization investing in the Silver City, Burnham Park, and Layton Park neighborhoods. They're areas of Milwaukee that are majority Latino.
Bautch is the executive director of the organization.
"We're changing lives," she said of the work being done.
One of the areas of focus is affordable housing. In 2008, VIA started redeveloping foreclosed and rundown homes in the three neighborhoods. It's called the turnkey program.
"We saw a lot of our families struggling and losing their homes and we didn't want those properties to be bought up by outside developers, for-profit developers. We wanted to find a way to keep those homes in the hands of our neighbors, folks that live here," Bautch explained.
The houses bought by VIA are fixed up using grant and city funding. They are sold to income-qualified, first-time home buyers for about $130,000. At the end of this year, VIA will have redeveloped 33 homes.
"These families that assume that they would stay renters forever, we're changing that reality for them," Bautch said of the impact. "They're becoming homeowners, and that's the goal, right? That's the American Dream. And a lot of our families in these neighborhoods never thought they'd be able to accomplish that.
Bautch said the turnkey program has been successful but the need and barriers to access still exist.
"One of them being, even though those homes are affordable and below market rate, they can still be a bit expensive," she said.
So, the organization is starting a new approach, this time buying empty lots around the city and building affordable homes from the ground up.
"This new chapter for VIA, this new construction work is an opportunity for us to build housing and still create those affordable, safe, healthy homes at a more costly rate," Bautch said.
VIA's plan is to build more than 20 homes in the next two years. The homes will be about 1,100 square feet and will be sold for $110,000.
"This strategic pathway that we want to go down to make sure that our families have access to that safe and healthy housing, but also so that the surrounding neighbors don't have to be concerned with a vacant lot that we know can somethings attract nuisance activities, bad actors," Bautch said of the new project. "It's really building that home for the family to move in and then watching the ripple effect it has on the block and the entire community."
The groundbreaking for the first house of the new project will happen later Wednesday. Bautch expects construction will be done within six months. By then, it will be time to start thinking about what to plant in a garden.
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