Housing Initiatives Passed

I am happy to announce that the Affordable Housing Task Force of Waukesha County was able to get a 61 unit affordable housing multi unit project through the plan commission in the city of Oconomowoc, WI, as well as allowing a temporary housing unit retain its zoning permit in the city of Waukesha, WI.

Pulling the Cart Before the Horse?

So, it is looking like our effort to get a housing trust fund passed in Waukesha County might stall due to internal strategy disputes. The problem: Some of us want to focus on pushing through a housing trust fund, but the problem with this strategy is that no one can agree on the policy details and others just want to push for affordable housing and once we have public traction then focus on the policy details. Personally, I favor the latter because to me it doesn't make sense to focus on the details of a housing trust fund policy if we don't even know that we have enough public support for it. Moreover, I think we may never get our grassroots effort underway if we keep constantly bickering over the specifics of a policy (which they have for about a year and a half now) that the politicians/public will eventually alter once we do cultivate the public support. Lesson for activists: Do not pull the cart (policy proposals) before the horse (needed public support) if you want to be successful.

The Poor: An Invisible Social Class

So, I had a meeting today with our fellow affordable housing task force members to review our strategy after collecting some of our petitions (we received about 500 signatures so far). I was surprised to hear one of our members dismiss the petition results once I told them that we got signatures from people at food pantries. He said that county supervisors won't recognize their signatures because "food pantry people" don't pay taxes so we should try to get signatures from the "representative community". Besides being appalled by his comments, it was even more amazing at the muted reaction from everyone else (considering that these are folks who advocate for affordable housing). The poor has truly become an invisible class in America. With the rich in power and politicians tripping over each other to cater to the middle class, who will speak for the poor?

Spies Among Us?

Today at our affordable housing task force meeting there was one well dressed guy who seemed to take on the role of an obstructionist. He seemed to try to steer us off of our agenda and he steamrolled over other people's opinions. Later, it was revealed that he worked for the county and that there is strong suspicion amongst our leaders that the county sent him to keep an eye on our meetings. This serves as a reminder to activists everywhere that moles can be sent to infiltrate our ranks with the goal of destroying what we seek to change so be careful!!!!

Organizing in a Conservative County II

So we decided to pursue a low key grassroots strategy that entails getting petitions out to churches, calling county supervisors, and meeting with supervisors one on one. Waukesha County is pretty cool to the idea of "in your face" activism so we are adjusting our strategy and tactics to fit within this framework. I drove around Waukesha County today dropping off petitions and found that mostly Catholic churches and some food pantries were receptive while most politely denied to pass the petition. The greatest challenges we will face will be finding a suitable funding source for the housing trust to provide monies for affordable housing (the good people of Waukesha do not enjoy tax increases) and convincing elected officials that affordable housing is a problem.

An interesting aspect of organizing around affordable housing in Waukesha County are the people who are behind the effort as well as the people who are most affected by it. The face of people struggling with housing is not single mothers, minorities, and working class people, but rather teachers, daycare workers, pastors, middle management people, etc. Also, the people driving the change are mostly non profit folks (many of whom do not even live in the county such as myself). One of our goals is to increase the participation of the actual county residents who are being affected by housing, but due to Waukesha's subdued political climate, most people do not want to "ruffle any feathers." So, it will be interesting to see how this campaign unfolds. We also have a website for our campaign at http://www.affordablehousingtaskforce.org.

Email Quilen with your questions, comments, or random outbursts about your organizing or activism work at cuestocommunityorganizing@gmail.com