THE ACHE OF SEGREGATION
One woman’s journey from the city to the suburbs
BROWN DEER - Fifty years ago, when Edna Kearney was 6, her parents moved to Milwaukee from Pine Bluff, Ark., to find stable employment and safe, affordable housing. Her father became a foundry worker for Allen Bradley, her mother a cook for Milwaukee Public Schools.
At the time, nearly all African-Americans lived in a concentrated area on the city’s north side. Even though the federal Fair Housing Act was passed the year the family arrived, Kearney has lived in disadvantaged, segregated neighborhoods most of her life.
Neighborhoods where she had to cover her windows with newspaper to deter burglars from breaking in.
Where she and her grand-kids had to hit the floor during a gunbattle outside her door.
Where a landlord would enter her home at any time without notice — once at 11 p.m., while her children were sleeping.
“I literally felt like a prisoner in my own home,” said Kearney, 56. “I don’t think a lot of people realize how divided things really are between those who have and those who don’t.
“Maybe they don’t care because they don’t have to see it.”
Decades-long journey
Kearney’s journey to finding safe, affordable housing in a diverse neighborhood took decades and affected her mental and physical health.
“Living like I was living makes you depressed, because you feel like the only thing you can do is work and come home and be shut in, because your neighborhood isn’t safe,” she said.
Milwaukee was on the front lines for fair housing in 1967. In August of that year, demonstrators led by the NAACP Youth Council and Father James Groppi started the first of 200 days of protest marches calling for an open housing ordinance.
Five decades later, Milwaukee still is one of the most segregated communities in the nation and has been listed by the Annie E. Casey Foundation as one of the worst places to raise a black child.
A 2013 study by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee found that while 90% of the region’s black population lives in the city, 80% of the region’s white residents lived in the suburbs. The percentage of African-American residents living in the suburbs is the lowest among the nation’s metro areas.
Milwaukee also had the second highest rate of black poverty and the second largest disparity between blacks and whites in poverty, the study found.
In that respect, the story of Milwaukee has not changed much since 1968.
In a 2011 study, “The Persistence of Segregation in the Metropolis,” professors John Logan and Brian Stults of Brown and Florida State universities ranked metro Milwaukee second in segregation nationally, behind Detroit.
Public policies have played a role in enforcing patterns of racial segregation in Milwaukee, said David J. Pate Jr., an associate professor at UWM’s Helen Bader School of Social Welfare, who studies disadvantaged African-American men.
Factors that contribute to segregation include poverty, racism, education, housing costs and access to affordable, dependable transportation to get people to jobs.
Instead of looking for a single thing that can change the pattern of segregation, Pate argues many strategies should be used at the same time to achieve that goal.
Pate said there is a mistaken belief that segregation is largely the result of people simply choosing where they want to live.That is, he said, the idea that “blacks feel comfortable living around blacks and whites feel comfortable living around whites.”
Said Pate: “We know that there is so much more to it than that.” Kearney agreed.
“There are some people who like to live around people who look like them,” she said. “But I don’t know anyone who want to live around gunshots, sirens and fighting all the time.”
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Richard Rothstein, author of the book “Color of Law”, said racial segregation in America was created through zoning, taxation and redlining — policies that prevented African-Americans from purchasing homes and accumulating wealth.
For instance, denying mortgage loans and insurance to blacks assured they could only live in poor neighborhoods.
Rothstein, a research associate at the Economic Policy Institute, said AfricanAmericans did not move to the suburbs in droves after fair housing laws passed because while the law may have changed, other issues surrounding race relations had not.
Matthew Desmond, a professor at Princeton University and author of “Evicted,” which examined the eviction crisis in Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhoods, said housing segregation should betreated as a civil rights issue.
“The fact that there are landlords in Milwaukee who profit off the backs of poor people who live in segregated communities and have no place to go is criminal,” Desmond said.
The expanding downtown is the home to a new $524 million arena; a $128 million streetcar line; and the $450 million Northwestern Mutual Tower and Commons. However, less than five blocks north of the new arena sits Hillside Terrace public housing.
Three miles further north takes you to the heart of the city’s most disadvantaged ZIP code, 53206, where studies have shown more than half the black men have spent time in jail or prison by the time they are 34-years-old.
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While living in an apartment on S. 7th St. and W. National Ave., Kearney said her landlord would use his passkey to enter her home unannounced.
“The last time he came in, it was 11 p.m. at night and my babies were sleeping in the front room,” she said. “I knew I had to move because I didn’t know what he would do or try.”
The Latin Kings street gang also made it difficult for her to go out at night.
“They ran their turf, so I just stayed out of their way,” she said.
Kearney, a divorced mother of five, lived in a one-family, three-bedroom house near N. 32nd and W. Brown streets, from 2005 to 2015.
Kearney said she moved to the house because the rent fit her budget and the three-bedroom was large enough for her children.
Trapped in bad neighborhood
The landlord allowed her to move in with just $550 and no security deposit. She thought she could manage because she had regular work through a temp service.
She felt trapped in the neighborhood because of her limited finances, and she had an eviction on her housing record.
That eviction, she said, forced her to live in unsafe conditions.
“When I got the house, I was working at the (Veterans Administration) in the canteen area,” she said. “I was bringing home about $500 every two weeks — sometimes more sometimes less depending on the hours I would get. When you factor in food, about half of my money went toward my rent.” That’s not unusual.
In the City of Milwaukee, 30% of renters spend at least half of their household income on rent, according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau.
A Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analysis of housing costs showed people in some of the most impoverished areas of the city can pay as much as $900 per month in rent. Renters in middle and upper-middle class neighborhoods pay similar amounts.
That means residents in the lowestincome, mostly African-American neighborhoods face some of the highest relative rent costs in the city.
The U.S. Housing of Urban Development has recommended that households not spend more than 30% of their income on housing costs. When households spend 50% or more on their housing, they are at much higher risk of losing their housing.
Although half of her income was going to put a roof over her head, Kearney said there were times when the hot water didn’t work, and she had to heat water on the stove for a bath. The house also had a rodent problem.
“For the rats, he didn’t do anything but give me big rat traps,” she said of the landlord.
To stop rodents from coming into the house, Kearney said she stuffed areas where they could come in with newspaper.
When she lost her job, finances got tighter. She felt that if she complained, her landlord would retaliate and move to get her evicted.
“I felt stuck,” she said. “I cried a lot, but I didn’t let my children see it, but I felt like every time I took a step forward, something else would happen to knock me back three or four steps.”
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As the city struggles with segregation, Ald. Bob Donovan said having one of the city’s more diverse aldermanic districts presents its own unique challenges.
Donovan said his south side district has a large Hispanic population, a growing Hmong and East Asian population, along with African-Americans and whites, many of them part of an older German population.
“While there may be language barriers there are never communication barriers,” Donovan said. “I may not understand everything they are saying, but I know what they expect of me.”
“The last thing they want to come home to is a chaotic atmosphere,” he said. “They elected me to ensure that I will fight for them.”
While diversity is important, Donovan said things will not change until neighborhoods become stable and crime is reduced.
“People don’t want to live in unstable neighborhoods overrun by crime,” he said.
Andre Lee Ellis, who runs “We Got This,” an urban gardening program in the 53206 ZIP code, said he’s less concerned about having primarily black neighbors than other consequences segregation brings.
“I don’t have a problem with segregation itself,” he said. “I love living around my people, but it becomes a problem when an area doesn’t have any resources.”
Ellis’s program teaches gardening to black boys ages 12 to 16 and pays them $20 every Saturday for four hours of work. The boys are paid through donations from Ellis’ social media circles.
Program teaches boys
He said said while many of the boys who come to his garden are angry about their condition and where they live, he instills in them values to be the positive spark in changing the neighborhood.
“Not many of these kids’ families can just pack up and move,” he said, “but if I can reach them and steer them away from gangs and crime by teaching them a skill and putting a little money in their pocket, then they can go back out in the community and teach others to do the same.”
On June 16, this summer’s opening day for The Garden on the corner of N. 9th and W. Ring streets, more than 75 youth and volunteers showed up.
Ellis began by having the boys clean up the neighborhood. Lead by mentors, they went out in groups of 10 and picked up candy wrappers, bottles and cans.
Ellis, 57, said since he started the garden in 2013, he has seen a decrease in shootings and fatalities. While his block was once ranked as one of the most dangerous in the city, it doesn’t crack the top 50 today.
But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t problems.
At this year’s kickoff, one face that was missing was Dennis “Booman” King, 15.
King was beaten and stabbed to death last month over allegations that he knew who stole a video game system. King’s body was set on fire and dumped in a vacant house. Malik M. Terrell, 21, was charged in the death.
King worked in the garden and was well known among the boys who showed up.
The garden gave the boys a place to talk about King so they can get that pain out.
“I went to his visitation, but I couldn’t make it to his funeral,” Ellis said. “I changed my life to save these kids, so I’m in it until the end.”
The Garden welcomes volunteers from every background and nationality as long as they are willing to work with youth, Ellis said.
“We won’t break our cycle until we first fix the trauma that many of our kids are going through and that starts with all of us.”
Kearney said living in violent neighborhoods for years often left her feeling sick.
“I don’t know how to describe it other than I just felt like crying all the time and just sleeping because I felt like there was nothing else that I could do,” she said.
Kearney was living with trauma. In “A Time To Heal,”the Journal Sentinel last year examinedhow untreated traumatic stress, combined with a depressed economy, can have devastating consequences on individuals and the community. The series described how violence and trauma can have an impact on every aspect of life from generation to generation.
In December 2012, Kearney’s friend,
“Living like I was living makes you depressed, because you feel like the only thing you can do is work and come home and be shut in, because your neighborhood isn’t safe.” Edna Kearney
grocery store clerk Fawzi Abu-Hamdan, was shot and killed.
Abu-Hamdan ran the Zara Food Market on N. 32nd and W. Brown streets, when he was killed in what appeared to be a robbery. Kearney, who lived a half a block away, had left the store 15-minutes earlier.
“I kept thinking to myself that I could have been caught up in there when the shooting took place,” she said.
In the neighborhood, Kearney said she would hear gunfire and sirens “all the time.”
“I wouldn’t let my grand-kids go to the park because the gangs took it over,” she said. “It was terrible.”
Impact on mental health
Kearney said she felt like she was having a mental breakdown and checked herself into the hospital. She was referred to La Causa, Inc.’s adult program where a psychiatrist diagnosed her as bipolar.
“They basically told me that I could not continue living there and get better,” she said.
In 2015, Kearney moved to Bradley Crossing in Brown Deer, an affordable housing unit for people with disabilities or mental illness.
Bradley Crossing opened its first building off Sherman Blvd and Bradley Road in 2012 and opened a second complex in 2015. The units are owned and operated by Jewish Family Services and house about 330 residents.
The units range from 1-to-3 bedrooms. Half of the apartments are reserved for households with a disability and half have Section 8 vouchers, which means residents only pay 30% of their income in rent.
The average household income for residents at Bradley Crossing is $18,000, said Daniel Fleishman, vice president of housing for Jewish Family Services.
“We know that if a single person is living off $18,000 that is extreme poverty, but we’ve seen families as large as six trying to do it,” he said.
Kearney pays $193 a month for rent, the lowest she’s ever paid for housing.
The goal of the housing units was to create a community.
“I can leave my front door open and I don’t have to worry about anyone coming in and stealing anything,” Kearney said. “We look out for one another.”
The complex offers activities for residents that center around health, stability and mentoring. The June calendar included blood pressure checks, bingo, arts and crafts and a root beer mixer.
Her first winter in the housing unit, Kearney said she wasn’t able to buy any of her grandchildren gifts for Christmas, but to her surprise, Bradley Crossing came together with a huge gift bag for the kids.
“I also got a chance to see ‘A Christmas Carol’,” she said. “You know, it’s the first play that I’ve ever been to.”
Kearney’s dimly lit apartment is filled with plants — some real, some fake — and framed pictures of her five children and 24 grandchildren. She proudly talks about how her children earned their high school diplomas and how one of her grandsons is a budding basketball star.
While living on Brown Street, one son got “caught up in the streets” and is now incarcerated, Kearney said.
“He is eligible for parole in two years,” she said. “I pray for him every day. He’s going to need support when he gets out.”
On the walls of her dining area is a stenciled piece that reads: “You don’t have to be perfect to be amazing.”
“I try to live my life by that,” she said. “But if you have a problem or mess up, people don’t like to give you a second chance.”
Kearney said when she was living on Brown Street, she never dreamed that she would one day live in a Milwaukee suburb. In the end, it was her diagnosis that opened the door to safe, affordable housing.
“Bradley Crossing saved my life,” Kearney said. “Living out here is really night and day . ... I can take walks when I want and not feel like I have to look over my shoulders. And I can breathe again.
“Every part of the city should feel like this.”
“Bradley Crossing saved my life. Living out here is really night and day . ... I can take walks when I want and not feel like I have to look over my shoulders. And I can breathe again. Every part of the city should feel like this.” Edna Kearney