‘HE’LL EVICT YOU IN A MINUTE’
In tough times for strapped tenants, one landlord has been notably busy
Afew months after Ernestine Young returned home from a hospital stay last year, she found herself on the basement stairs of her apartment building, sobbing. ❚ Her building had recently been bought by a company tied to Youssef “Joe” Berrada, a native of Morocco who has quickly and quietly become a force in the Milwaukee rental business — and the county eviction court.
Berrada is known as “the boulder guy,” since his companies frequently put boulders on the lawns of their properties. In all, his companies own 292 properties with more than 3,600 units in the city. Berrada says his organization owns 8,000 rental units nationwide.
Housing advocates in Milwaukee say that the companies sometimes run roughshod over tenants and that they are using small-claims court as a collection agency. The approximately 75 firms owned by or linked to Berrada — most of them limited liability companies — were behind more than one out of every 10 eviction cases filed last year in Milwaukee County, a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel analysis found.
Soon after a Berrada LLC bought Young’s building, the company began renovation work. When Young went to the basement to check her belongings kept in a locked storage area, she was shocked to see just how aggressive the workers had been. Everything was gone, Young said. Among the vanished belongings: the urn containing the ashes of her infant granddaughter, Miracle Young.
“I just sat on the stairs and cried,” Young said. “I was hurt, I was devastated. There were things in there that never will be replaced, my pictures, my family pictures — my siblings’ (pictures). My granddaughter’s ashes.”
Berrada Properties Management paid Young $5,000 to settle a lawsuit she filed against the company.
Evictions have become alarmingly common in poorer areas of the country, according to research by the Eviction Lab, a research project at Princeton University led by Matt Desmond, the author of the Pulitzer
Prize-winning book “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City.”
In Indianapolis, the eviction rate in
2016 was 7.27 percent, meaning more than seven out of every 100 renter homes were evicted, according to data from Eviction Lab. In Virginia, the cities of Richmond, Hampton and Newport News all had eviction rates higher than
10 percent in 2016, more than four times the national rate of 2.34 percent. The eviction rate for Milwaukee was
4.25 percent.
Berrada, 49, started buying Milwaukee rental properties in the 1990s. The business has been good to him. He lives in an 18-room area home that sits on a
51⁄ 2- acre estate and is listed on state records as the principal office of his Berrada Properties Management Inc.
The home is one of eight luxury homes in some of the USA’s trendiest vacation spots, including the Hawaiian island Maui; Scottsdale, Arizona; and Boca Raton, Florida, purchased by Berrada or companies linked to him. Berrada has also been known to tool around in some pricey cars, such as a Ferrari, Bentley, BMW or Aston Martin – the car made famous in James Bond movies.
Berrada declined, repeatedly, to be interviewed for this story.
“I’m not a media person. I’m not a politician,” Berrada told a reporter.
His attorney, Joe Goldberger, would answer questions only by email and began by arguing Berrada should not be the subject of any story. Goldberger said his client is “a particularly private person and wishes to operate his business without unwelcome publicity.”
Some city officials praise Berrada, saying he oversees a well-run operation that buys and rehabs neighborhood eyesores. His companies pay property taxes and generally make building repairs that are ordered by the city in a timely manner.
“He doesn’t present himself as a bad actor,” said Preston Cole, the commissioner of the neighborhood services department.
Other officials express anguish over his companies’ aggressive dealings with tenants, particularly through assemblyline evictions.
Even if a tenant agrees to a payment plan and follows it, the original eviction lawsuit almost always remains on the tenant’s public record. That can continue to haunt tenants, hobbling efforts to find new places to live.
“A lot of landlords will deny housing to anyone who has been sued for eviction, regardless of the outcome of the case,” said Eric Dunn, litigation director for the National Housing Law Project.
Of Berrada, Milwaukee Alderman Russell Stamper, himself a landlord, said: “He runs a tight ship. He’ll evict you in a minute.”
Berrada companies filed at least 1,637 eviction suits last year, or 11.6 percent of the 14,157 filed countywide, records show. On one day alone – Jan. 30, 2017 – Berrada companies filed 99 eviction actions.
Some of Berrada’s tactics are raising red flags with advocacy groups and attorneys who work with low-income renters.
Berrada entities will repeatedly file eviction actions against the same tenant, often ending each case with an agreement, or stipulation, demanding the tenant pay back rent, court costs and late-payment fines. Berrada companies routinely fine tenants $100 when they are 10 days late on rent. Failure to make the stipulation payments on time could result in an eviction.
Some Berrada tenants are sued for eviction as many four times in a year, records show.
“It’s using the court system as a mode of collection,” said Karen Dardy, chief staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee. “It’s a terrible abuse. I don’t think it is illegal; I think it’s very unethical.”
The Berrada filings in 2017 included
265 so-called serial filings – that is, suits filed against the same person on multiple occasions, the Journal Sentinel found.
Goldberger said the multiple evictions are a byproduct of working with a tenant. For example, if an agreed-upon payment plan – which often includes the client paying late fees and Berrada’s court costs – is not followed, it can result in additional evictions.
“That’s unfortunate but completely understandable,” Goldberger wrote.
Others see it as an extra burden on financially strapped tenants.
On the west side of Milwaukee, a
28-year-old man who asked to remain anonymous said that when he and his girlfriend first moved into a Berrada building, everything was fine. They liked the neighborhood, which gave the couple good access to transportation to get to their jobs.
But as time went on and things broke, service was slow or sloppy, the man said. When there was mold in the ceiling, workers simply painted it over – basically guaranteeing the mold would return. It did.
So why not move?
“Where am I going to go?” he asked, gesturing toward an area a couple of blocks away where boulders are on the lawns of nine buildings linked to Berrada in a two-block area. “He owns everything here.”