Speaker 1: To become a homeowner is a lot of hard work,
Speaker 1: especially for a family that doesn't have credit or has
Speaker 1: some credit challenges, has low income. Owning your own home
Speaker 1: and being successful with it is a ton of work,
Speaker 1: and we can't do that work for you. It's about
Speaker 1: the family being willing to put in that hard work,
Speaker 1: and then it acts we're a coach because then at
Speaker 1: the end they've achieved something amazing. They don't need us
Speaker 1: at all. But even better than that is when they
Speaker 1: help that next family member buy a home without us.
Speaker 2: Welcome to an army of normal folks. I'm Bill Courtney,
Speaker 2: I'm a normal guy. I'm a husband, I'm a father,
Speaker 2: I'm an entrepreneur, and I've been a high school football
Speaker 2: coach in inner City Memphis. And the last part, somehow
Speaker 2: it led to an oscar for the film about our team.
Speaker 2: That movie is called Undefeated. I believe our country's problems
Speaker 2: will never be solved by a bunch of fancy people
Speaker 2: in nice suits and big words that nobody ever uses
Speaker 2: on CNN and Fox, but rather by an army of
Speaker 2: normal folks. Guys, that is us, just you and me,
Speaker 2: seeing in the area of need and deciding, hey, maybe
Speaker 2: I can help. That's what Michael Gosman, the voice you
Speaker 2: just heard, has done. Michael is the head of AXE Housing,
Speaker 2: which has helped over four thousand low income families purchase
Speaker 2: homes to an incredible empowerment model that I hope will
Speaker 2: spread across the country and candidly, I'm dying to bring
Speaker 2: it to my hometown, Memphis. I cannot wait for you
Speaker 2: to meet Michael. Right after these brief messages from our
Speaker 2: general sponsors. Michael Gosman from the Beer Place, Milwaukee, Wisconsin,
Speaker 2: what's up.
Speaker 1: Absolutely thrilled to be here.
Speaker 2: Thrilled to have you. When when did you get in?
Speaker 1: I got him last night. Yeah, a little late. I
Speaker 1: got in about eight thirty, but it was not too
Speaker 1: late for me to explore just a little bit because
Speaker 1: it's my first time in Memphis, so I had to
Speaker 1: take advantage of it.
Speaker 2: What'd you get to see?
Speaker 1: I got to see some live music, so I walked
Speaker 1: over to Bill. Yeah, no, I went to the what's
Speaker 1: it called City Cafe?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yeah, there was there was live music at Blue City.
Speaker 1: There was. Yeah, it was Mine Morris.
Speaker 2: Moose Blonde, Willie Morse and Willie Morris.
Speaker 1: I think, yeah, that's all it was. I mean, it
Speaker 1: was so cool and I wasn't hungry, and I still
Speaker 1: ordered some food because I had a buddy who's like,
Speaker 1: you got to try the greens They're so good. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: no I did. I couldn't go that deep. It was
Speaker 1: like ten o'clock at night.
Speaker 2: You got to come back tomorrow, now, I mean, you
Speaker 2: got to come back soon and draw the ribs.
Speaker 1: But we did get them at your favorite hotel too.
Speaker 2: Finally, you stayed at the Bay.
Speaker 1: Body what a place. See see, it's very cool. And
Speaker 1: please don't tell the hotel that they had a little
Speaker 1: soap that's carved like a dock.
Speaker 2: And I stole everybody does everybody does well. I wish
Speaker 2: you had more time to enjoy our city. You're not
Speaker 2: far from the National Civil Rights Museum, Bill Street and
Speaker 2: the music. You know, we are the home of the blues.
Speaker 2: We are the home of the rock and roll and
Speaker 2: Elvis and Cherry Lee Lewis and Aretha Franklin and Isaac
Speaker 2: Hayes and you know Roy Orbison. So much of that
Speaker 2: is still ingrained in our gritty, GrITT and grind Memphis fabric.
Speaker 2: And I love it when somebody from Milwaukee comes and
Speaker 2: only spends five five hours here but has a smile
Speaker 2: on their face. We got a lot to offers, for sure.
Speaker 1: I got to come back. Yeah, I hope you.
Speaker 2: I hope you do. Michael is the president and CEO
Speaker 2: of AXE Housing based in Milwaukee, and honestly, Michael, I
Speaker 2: want to come You want you to come back, and
Speaker 2: I'm dead serious about this. I want to introduce you
Speaker 2: to our city and our county mayor, and I want
Speaker 2: them to engage with you because I think AS is
Speaker 2: the answer to so much of what ails so many
Speaker 2: of our urban areas. I think you guys have I'm
Speaker 2: really as I've read all of the information that Alex
Speaker 2: gave me on you and your organization, I just kept thinking,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, Oh my gosh, why hasn't this been
Speaker 2: done before? Oh my gosh. So I can't wait to
Speaker 2: dive in. And I am dead serious. I invite you back.
Speaker 2: I really hope you'll take me up on it. Spend
Speaker 2: a couple of days into're a city, and let me
Speaker 2: introduce you to some people in Memphis, because I think
Speaker 2: what we're about to find out about what you and
Speaker 2: AX does. We need what you do, as do many
Speaker 2: other cities so let's get into it, and we're going
Speaker 2: to get to where you are, but could you just
Speaker 2: first tell us kind of the founding story of Acts
Speaker 2: and how it evolved before you ever even showed up,
Speaker 2: when you were just a twinkle in your mommy's eyes.
Speaker 1: So AXE was founded more than thirty years ago, and
Speaker 1: it really came from a rather simple premise, which was
Speaker 1: the priest at Saint Michael's Parish on twenty fourth in
Speaker 1: Cherry in the city of Milwaukee. He was getting frustrated
Speaker 1: that he was trying to build a strong congregation there
Speaker 1: and there was some struggles. So the neighborhood around the
Speaker 1: church wasn't doing too well.
Speaker 2: I've been to Milwaukee once actually for a birds game.
Speaker 2: Give us what twenty fourth in Cherry is kind of
Speaker 2: topographically to the city geographically.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're talking about a neighborhood community. It's like
Speaker 1: a mile and a half from our central downtown district,
Speaker 1: and so it is city, so it is very central,
Speaker 1: but it feels a world apart from actually being in
Speaker 1: our downtown, which now is a fairly thriving place. So
Speaker 1: it was a neighborhood that was had a lot of crime,
Speaker 1: had fairly expensive rents, even though the quality of the
Speaker 1: homes and the apartments that people were renting were quite low,
Speaker 1: and the church was struggling because they'd had an influx
Speaker 1: of refugees from Southeast Asia. So actually a large among
Speaker 1: population individuals who'd helped the US during the Vietnam War.
Speaker 1: They got resettled by Catholic charities, and many of them
Speaker 1: wound up renting apartments right in this area around the church.
Speaker 2: So let's talk about that a little bit. We're talking
Speaker 2: the seventies. Yeah, the end of the Vietnam War. So
Speaker 2: these are Southeast Asians, primarily from Laos.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so Laotian people. Typically they had spent then years,
Speaker 1: many many many years living in refugee camps and Thailand
Speaker 1: before they actually came to the United States.
Speaker 2: But they had to do the refugee camps, right because
Speaker 2: described their involvement with the United States military and Vietnam
Speaker 2: and why they were refugees in the first place.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So I'll use one of my colleagues's former colleagues
Speaker 1: as sort of husband as an example. I mean, he
Speaker 1: was a key partner, you know, he was working as
Speaker 1: a part of one of one of the units and
Speaker 1: had a real belief that democracy was important. Also, you know,
Speaker 1: developed strong relationships with some members of the military, and
Speaker 1: yet you know, the war ends and and sort of
Speaker 1: life is upended, and so they wind up being refugees
Speaker 1: for a long, extended period of time. And I know
Speaker 1: for some, for some that was a period of years,
Speaker 1: for some it was much much much longer, until eventually
Speaker 1: some of them were able to because of their service
Speaker 1: to the United States, were actually able to move to
Speaker 1: the United States, and many of them settled in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: A lot of them settled in Minnesota and some other
Speaker 1: parts of the country, typically in partnership with the Catholic Church.
Speaker 1: So it was through Catholic charities and in Wisconsin that
Speaker 1: many of them got settled.
Speaker 2: I think it's important for our listeners to remember or
Speaker 2: be aware of. Oftentimes these refugees are here because they
Speaker 2: assisted us in some war theater where they assisted the CIA.
Speaker 2: Great may if I'm wrong, but they're just the CIA
Speaker 2: and we lost or we left, and now that people
Speaker 2: in control were our enemies, which are now their enemies,
Speaker 2: and then they get persecuted. Was that the case with
Speaker 2: these folks?
Speaker 1: Yeah, And my understanding of the life and the refugee camps,
Speaker 1: which is where they were, you know, in the aftermath
Speaker 1: the wars that that was that was not a great place,
Speaker 1: that was not a great place to be. And so
Speaker 1: you know, obviously you'd like to think that we as
Speaker 1: a country can do right by people and if they've
Speaker 1: really gone on a limb to try and support us,
Speaker 1: that then we can offer them something in return. By
Speaker 1: the way, these tend to be like the hardest working,
Speaker 1: most incredible, democracy minded individuals. They buy into our culture completely.
Speaker 1: So and I.
Speaker 2: Can't help but think, and again we're talking about the
Speaker 2: founding and the seventies and get there. But I can't
Speaker 2: help but think that these are were our generation Afghan interpreters,
Speaker 2: same type people people who have assisted our military and
Speaker 2: Afghan war. And then when we had our disastrous pull out,
Speaker 2: were left there and then the Taliban were hunting them down,
Speaker 2: killing them, persecuting them, jailing them for assisting us against them.
Speaker 2: And when we left Afghanistan and we left them, what
Speaker 2: are they to do? And so that's what these people are.
Speaker 2: They're just the Laotian folks. What are they called their
Speaker 2: mun they're among people. They are from laos Hmong, Okay,
Speaker 2: the among people from laos that fought and helped and
Speaker 2: advised and interpreted and gave are Cia and our military
Speaker 2: information and fought alongside us for the for to try
Speaker 2: to for democracy's sake. And when we lost and we left,
Speaker 2: they're screwed, right, Yeah, Okay, so that's who we're talking
Speaker 2: about who end up somehow getting here through the Catholic Church.
Speaker 2: But now they're these guys.
Speaker 1: In America, right, and they're you know, they're sort of
Speaker 1: plopped down and the church did the best they could,
Speaker 1: but they're they're a part of this congregation. They don't
Speaker 1: necessarily speak the language yet. But this was a group
Speaker 1: of incredibly hard working people. And so the church actually,
Speaker 1: you know, it was growing because you've got all these
Speaker 1: Mung families who now are a part of the church.
Speaker 1: It's a really special place. The church still i think
Speaker 1: says Eastern Mass and seven languages as part of.
Speaker 2: The service, kidding because it's awesome.
Speaker 1: In addition to the Mung families, now there's there's Burmese
Speaker 1: families and there's multiple Bermese dialects. There's Hispanic families, there's
Speaker 1: white families, there's black families. It's a really cool place.
Speaker 1: There aren't many places in the country that worship and
Speaker 1: such a diverse, you know, such a diverse group of
Speaker 1: people come together to worship. It's it's very cool. But
Speaker 1: the priest who was leading the congregation at that time
Speaker 1: was seeing that here's these people. They're so hard working,
Speaker 1: but you know, they're renting homes from often slum lords.
Speaker 1: And even though they were, you know, doing the best
Speaker 1: they could and they were all working, the amount of
Speaker 1: money they had left over at the end of the
Speaker 1: month was extremely small. And he wanted them to put
Speaker 1: down roots and become a part of the church long term.
Speaker 1: He didn't want them every single year, every few months
Speaker 1: need to move because you know, the homes weren't being kept,
Speaker 1: or because the landlords were trying to jack up the rent.
Speaker 1: And so we said, well, what if we could help
Speaker 1: them actually buy homes. What if you know, these these
Speaker 1: are responsible, working people, but they didn't know about our culture,
Speaker 1: they didn't know about the home buying process, and so
Speaker 1: it was clear that and they didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of money, and they didn't have a lot of money,
Speaker 1: and they were tended to be debt averse, so even
Speaker 1: the idea of a mortgage wasn't necessarily something that you know,
Speaker 1: was intuitive to them or something they were comfortable with.
Speaker 1: So it wasn't going to be an easy process. But
Speaker 1: he said, these are the types of peace we want
Speaker 1: owning homes in our city, right, right, We wouldn't want
Speaker 1: want them to be temporarily here. We want them to
Speaker 1: put down roots and be a part of building you know,
Speaker 1: a great, a great neighborhood. And so he was. He
Speaker 1: was smart enough. The priest, Father Dennis Lewis, he's still
Speaker 1: he's still around, amazing visionary leaders still in the Milwaukee community.
Speaker 1: And but he was smart enough to know he couldn't
Speaker 1: do everything. So he needed a partner. He needed someone
Speaker 1: who could actually operationalize this, right because Father Dennis is
Speaker 1: mostly going to be, you know, performing his pastoral duties.
Speaker 1: He can't be running this housing program. And so he
Speaker 1: went he went to the mayor of Milwaukee at the
Speaker 1: time and said, I need some help hold it.
Speaker 2: That's government and church working together.
Speaker 1: I know, right, this is blasphemy. This story is going
Speaker 1: to blow your mind. It's it's a fascinating one. And
Speaker 1: I'm gonna maybe not share the names of all the
Speaker 1: individuals are involved.
Speaker 2: To protect come on to share them let's go. But
Speaker 2: go ahead, I got you. And the priest reaching this
Speaker 2: is still seventies.
Speaker 1: Well this is this is actually late eighties. Okay, this
Speaker 1: is late eighties.
Speaker 2: But he's got that. Okay, seventies. The people calm. Now
Speaker 2: it's a decade of it. His church is growing with him.
Speaker 2: He sees a need and he reaches the mayor exactly.
Speaker 1: And the mayor at the time was rather forward thinking.
Speaker 1: He sort of bought into this vision and he had
Speaker 1: the i think, the intelligence to realize that while this
Speaker 1: was a great idea, it didn't need to be a
Speaker 1: city program. That you know, if we tried to make
Speaker 1: it a city program, it might not be as successful
Speaker 1: as if there was some way to sort of make
Speaker 1: it its own thing.
Speaker 2: Partner started to love you, mayor or this mayor back then.
Speaker 1: So he made an offer. This is the story. I've
Speaker 1: heard this story many many times. He made an offer
Speaker 1: to the priest and he said, so, okay, go down
Speaker 1: to the Department of City Development and see see if
Speaker 1: there's anyone there that you think could really help you
Speaker 1: with this. And so the priest goes to the Department
Speaker 1: of City Development a father Dennis, and he looks around
Speaker 1: and this is his perception. He sees a bunch of
Speaker 1: mostly men wearing sort of business shirts. You know, they
Speaker 1: had like, you know, pencils in their pocket, and they've
Speaker 1: got very neat desks, and they just don't seem like
Speaker 1: the type of person to him who's going to be
Speaker 1: able to really come into the community that he's a
Speaker 1: part of and make an impact. And there's one desk
Speaker 1: that's just a mess it's just you know, it's it's messy.
Speaker 1: And he's visited now a few times. He never sees
Speaker 1: anyone there. He's like, well, who sits there. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: that's that's a guy named John Worm. You know, yeah,
Speaker 1: he works, he works here, but he's he's always in
Speaker 1: the community. He's always got some some you know, special
Speaker 1: projects he's working on. You know, we don't see him
Speaker 1: that much. And father Dennis said, that's my guy, and
Speaker 1: so he started partnering with this John Worm, the city employee,
Speaker 1: and and the two of them, you know, we're the
Speaker 1: leaders of the organization and they're the reason that the
Speaker 1: work we do today helping families transition from renters to
Speaker 1: owners is happening, is flourishing at a huge scale just
Speaker 1: from those sort of humble, humble beginnings.
Speaker 2: And now a few messages from our general sponsors. But first,
Speaker 2: we're thinking about launching a few low chapters of the
Speaker 2: Army this year. To dive more into it, check out
Speaker 2: our recent shop Talk episode titled experimenting with Local Chapters,
Speaker 2: and if you're interested in potentially leading a chapter in
Speaker 2: your community, email Army at normal folks dot us and
Speaker 2: Alex would love to connect with you. We'll be right back. Okay,
Speaker 2: So at the beginning, you got a priest, you got
Speaker 2: a mayor's blessings, and you got messy worm. Mm hmm, boy,
Speaker 2: this sounds like a recipe for success if you ever
Speaker 2: came up with right now, what was their idea then?
Speaker 1: Yeah? So the idea was, we need to make the
Speaker 1: real estate market work for these these refugee families. So
Speaker 1: how do we do that. We need to figure out
Speaker 1: how to first of all, get them to a place
Speaker 1: where they can get financing. So there's going to be
Speaker 1: some work with them to establish credit. We're going to
Speaker 1: need to talk to them about the importance of that.
Speaker 1: This wasn't an issue of credit repair. These were individuals
Speaker 1: who you know, had just zero They just had zero
Speaker 1: credit right, So how do we help them start to
Speaker 1: build some credit, and then how do we develop the
Speaker 1: relationships with banks that we're going to need so that
Speaker 1: when we have a good loan, that we're able to
Speaker 1: navigate that with the family. Because these families, you know,
Speaker 1: some spoke some English, some spoke very little English. You know,
Speaker 1: they were still adapting to living in this country, and
Speaker 1: they weren't going to be able to navigate the banking
Speaker 1: system on their own.
Speaker 2: But I hear this, and I'm still thinking these largely
Speaker 2: have to be middle income at best to lower income folks,
Speaker 2: although maybe everybody in the family's working and cumulatively they're
Speaker 2: making enough money to get along, but they're basically barely
Speaker 2: paying rent and getting along. The idea of a two
Speaker 2: hundred thousand dollars house seems a little difficult. But they
Speaker 2: also figured out a way that the city could take
Speaker 2: non performing assets and get them on the tax rolls,
Speaker 2: which is also incredibly bright and interesting to me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this wasn't the age of the two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Homes, okay, even eighty back.
Speaker 1: Then, this was this was the time of the dollar homes.
Speaker 1: You know, there was such distress in the neighborhood around
Speaker 1: the church, that there were a lot of deeply distressed homes,
Speaker 1: and there were opportunities for these families to actually purchase homes,
Speaker 1: sometimes for a dollar, sometimes for one thousand dollars. Put ten, fifteen,
Speaker 1: twenty thousand dollars into these homes, and actually that was
Speaker 1: enough for them to be decent, safe, and code compliant
Speaker 1: in a lot of instances.
Speaker 2: Okay, but this is what I just when I read
Speaker 2: this part. I'm telling you, bro, this is when I
Speaker 2: just went crazy. You've got homes that have been foreclosed
Speaker 2: on or abandoned and that the city is really now
Speaker 2: responsible for because they're gone there. Nobody's paid the taxes
Speaker 2: and they're just sitting there. It's a plot of property
Speaker 2: with the bones of a house still sitting there and
Speaker 2: nobody to pay the taxes, and it ends up being
Speaker 2: on the assessor's rolls, the city or county assessors roles
Speaker 2: of properties. And every once in a while they have
Speaker 2: tax sales, and tax seals come up and slum lords
Speaker 2: come and by them and put them very littlest amount
Speaker 2: of work that can in them and rent them. That
Speaker 2: happens all day, every day in cities, all the country. Yes,
Speaker 2: all right, So what the city is saying is, if
Speaker 2: you can get your people to learn how to buy homes,
Speaker 2: will open up the roles of these properties that we're
Speaker 2: getting absolutely no tax revenue for, and we'll sell them
Speaker 2: at almost nothing. If these people come in, fix them up,
Speaker 2: pay a note, and therefore start paying property taxes. So
Speaker 2: when I caught when I read that, it's like, hold it.
Speaker 2: This is a win win. You're getting people in ownership,
Speaker 2: you're getting people out of out of renting, and you're
Speaker 2: getting dilapidated properties fixed up, and the city is now
Speaker 2: getting tax revenue on properties that have that are nothing
Speaker 2: but a drag on the city's balance sheet. Is that
Speaker 2: is that it?
Speaker 1: I wish I could say it as well as you
Speaker 1: just said it. That's exactly that's exactly right.
Speaker 2: Put worm and a priest came up with this in
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's pretty I mean, it's pretty amazing that they
Speaker 1: had the vision to put this, to put this thing together.
Speaker 1: So that's what happened, That's that's exactly it. And it
Speaker 1: was what if we could help them get loans, what
Speaker 1: if we could what if we could coach them through
Speaker 1: the rehab of the homes because these families often were
Speaker 1: very handy, but didn't know about our building codes, didn't
Speaker 1: know about when permits needed to be pulled they need.
Speaker 1: It's sort of a guide make sure they don't get
Speaker 1: ripped off when they're contracting for the services that they
Speaker 1: were getting. And it was really the two of them
Speaker 1: at the start, and they were really smart. The way
Speaker 1: they went about this was incredible. You know, they were
Speaker 1: struggling early on to attract enough families for the sort
Speaker 1: of dollar homes that were available. And they got a
Speaker 1: call from a woman named Baliah among refugee wanting to
Speaker 1: buy one of the homes, but she she already owned
Speaker 1: a home. She wanted to buy it as an investment property.
Speaker 1: And they said, okay, Bliah, you've missed.
Speaker 2: One of the greatest parts about Lilia how she learned
Speaker 2: to speak English. Watching Wonder Woman and Star Trek. I
Speaker 2: read that. I'm like, okay, I really that's how she
Speaker 2: learned to speak English. According to what I've.
Speaker 1: Read, she's I mean, one of the more She's someone
Speaker 1: who whatever she decided to do in this world, she
Speaker 1: was going to be wildly successful. She is so tenacious,
Speaker 1: so hard working, so she hears a no from John Warren,
Speaker 1: but she wants to buy a house, and he says,
Speaker 1: this house isn't for you, Bilia. We're trying to help
Speaker 1: new families buy homes. You already own a home. So
Speaker 1: she decides to start letting people know about these homes.
Speaker 1: And so there's an event.
Speaker 2: So is it a foreclosed house?
Speaker 1: Is that foreclosed homes? Foreclosed homes available for a dollar
Speaker 1: at that time tax sale? Yes, And so even though
Speaker 1: she has no ability to buy the home, she brings
Speaker 1: six seven families out just for this one opportunity, because
Speaker 1: she knows what a good opportunity it is, and she
Speaker 1: wants to share that with her community. And so John
Speaker 1: sees that she's brought, you know, a lot more people
Speaker 1: to this home than he's ever getting. When when he's
Speaker 1: trying to recruit and he says, what are you doing
Speaker 1: for work right now? And you know, she explains to
Speaker 1: him that she's got sort of a part time job
Speaker 1: that she's doing. She's raising her kids, her husband's also working.
Speaker 1: And he says, have you ever thought about being a
Speaker 1: real estate agent?
Speaker 2: Really?
Speaker 1: And she says, no, you know, I can't read English
Speaker 1: that well, I don't know anything about the practice of
Speaker 1: real estate, and he said, what you just did getting
Speaker 1: seven families to this house who wanted to buy this home,
Speaker 1: that if you can do that, I will help you
Speaker 1: get your real estate license. I'll help you understand the
Speaker 1: real estate practice because you have what it takes to
Speaker 1: be very successful representing this community. And Bileo wound up
Speaker 1: becoming one of I think the first woman Southeast Asian
Speaker 1: women in southeastern Wisconsin to get her real estate license,
Speaker 1: and over what wound up being a twenty five year
Speaker 1: ish career at ACTS before she retired, she wound up
Speaker 1: helping something like six or seven hundred families, the vast
Speaker 1: majority of whom were Southeast Asian families, purchase homes in
Speaker 1: the city because of her work.
Speaker 2: Okay, Dave, we're still at the beginning. We haven't even
Speaker 2: gotten to what you're doing now. But if you go
Speaker 2: to Shelby County is our county. If you go to
Speaker 2: the Shelby County Assessor's Office property list right now online,
Speaker 2: I think it's seventeen thousand properties in this county that
Speaker 2: are in some level of process of taxes admin k foreclosure.
Speaker 2: When I say foreclosure, not by banks because many times
Speaker 2: they're eighty seventy sixty eighty nine year old homes, but
Speaker 2: they've been abandoned. Nobody's pay taxes on them, and they're
Speaker 2: just sitting there on the city's rolls or the county's rolls,
Speaker 2: and they're producing absolutely no revenue for the city. And
Speaker 2: actually the city's kind of responsible taking care of them
Speaker 2: because they've had to take possession of them. Right. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: forty percent of the people inside the city of Memphis rent,
Speaker 2: So you have all these homes that the city would
Speaker 2: love to get any tax revenue on and get off
Speaker 2: the rolls and get fixed up so you don't have
Speaker 2: blight in some of these lower income communities. And you
Speaker 2: have all these people paying rent, oftentimes the slumlords, or
Speaker 2: at the very least paying for nothing and not building
Speaker 2: any American dream ownership. This seems like the fix. And
Speaker 2: you got worm and a priest and now believe the
Speaker 2: Southeast Asian person actually doing this in Milwaukee. How many
Speaker 2: homes I mean, first year, second year, you know, how
Speaker 2: to grow? Yeah.
Speaker 1: So, interestingly enough, at the start, the idea was really
Speaker 1: just around the real estate peace and so they had
Speaker 1: realtors that they were hiring sort of real estate professionals
Speaker 1: to represent the families, and they didn't have a formal
Speaker 1: education program for the families, but they had this vision.
Speaker 1: They had some realtors who took a real interest in
Speaker 1: supporting the community, and they pretty quickly were able to
Speaker 1: do you know, maybe a few dozen homes a year,
Speaker 1: which is prettyificant volume. And then over time there became
Speaker 1: an awareness of you know, Okay, having the agents is
Speaker 1: really important. We need families to represent. We need people
Speaker 1: to represent the families make sure they're getting a good deal,
Speaker 1: but we also need designated support. If they're fixing up
Speaker 1: a distressed home, that's really hard. So we need to
Speaker 1: make sure that families have some support in that work,
Speaker 1: because especially if you've never owned a home before taking
Speaker 1: on a massive rehab project, hiring out all your own contractors,
Speaker 1: knowing the order of operations, making sure, yeah, you got
Speaker 1: to do the roof before you start worrying about the kitchen, Like,
Speaker 1: let's make sure that you're doing things in a smart
Speaker 1: way to be successful and make good investments in the home.
Speaker 1: And so over time we sort of have been able
Speaker 1: to layer in some of that additional support in a
Speaker 1: more formal way to make sure that First of all,
Speaker 1: we can get to significant volume because the idea behind
Speaker 1: our program is that neighborhoods do better when families have
Speaker 1: the opportunity to own the homes they live in. And
Speaker 1: if we can create more communities where there are large
Speaker 1: numbers of homeowners, you know, the schools are going to
Speaker 1: be better, communities are going to be safer, families are
Speaker 1: going to be healthier, and it's a good platform then
Speaker 1: for these families to figure out what's next. Right you
Speaker 1: accomplish this thing, you buy a home, you experience that
Speaker 1: pride of home ownership. You've done something really hard. Well,
Speaker 1: then maybe you're ready to take a step in your
Speaker 1: educational journey or in your journey towards a more meaningful career.
Speaker 1: Maybe it gives you more ability to finance your kids'
Speaker 1: education or to give them some opportunities. And so as
Speaker 1: we've been able to sort of continue to invest in
Speaker 1: these strategies and make sure that families have the right support,
Speaker 1: we've seen that home ownership can flourish in a city
Speaker 1: like Milwaukee, and we think that we've learned some things
Speaker 1: that can certainly benefit a lot of other cities around
Speaker 1: the country. And from what you're saying it sounds like maybe,
Speaker 1: you know, Memphis White might be one of those places.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm bringing your butt down here. We'll be right back.
Speaker 2: So back to chronologically how this happened. In ninety two,
Speaker 2: father Dennis and John Worm said were onto something, yep,
Speaker 2: and so they founded what's it called.
Speaker 1: AXE Housing And they didn't even they didn't.
Speaker 2: Even applied churches teaching self empowerment.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was the initial name. That was the
Speaker 1: name we were incorporated under. And it was it was
Speaker 1: the two of them, it was some other church leaders
Speaker 1: from the area who saw what they were doing and said,
Speaker 1: we want this for you know, the neighborhoods around our
Speaker 1: churches too. And they didn't even have like a five
Speaker 1: oh one C three designation. They weren't even an official nonprofit.
Speaker 1: They just started doing it right. They weren't worried about
Speaker 1: sort of what what paperwork might need to be formed.
Speaker 1: It was about, this is work that needs to happen,
Speaker 1: let's let's start doing it.
Speaker 2: I read I think it's on a website somewhere. I
Speaker 2: don't know where Alex found it. But they clarified their
Speaker 2: vision putting people in charge of their own lives. AX
Speaker 2: was not interested in more affordable rental housing. The organization
Speaker 2: wanted documents to become owners as soon as possible, so
Speaker 2: as went to work. And when I when I when
Speaker 2: I read that, I also read about the father's attitude
Speaker 2: toward if we can get people to own, that means
Speaker 2: they invest in the communities and the communities improved. Talk
Speaker 2: to us about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so clearly there's a value to the individual family
Speaker 1: through ownership. You know, often there's a savings. They actually
Speaker 1: spend less owning the home than they were paying in rent.
Speaker 1: They're building equity. But you know, key to Father Dennis's
Speaker 1: vision wasn't just that that one family would be successful.
Speaker 1: It was that the example that they would set for
Speaker 1: the block, for the neighborhood, the fact that there would
Speaker 1: be more families on the block who'd feel like they
Speaker 1: have this ownership interest. It would mean that the neighborhoods
Speaker 1: would get safer, people would be looking out for each other.
Speaker 1: It would mean that there'd be much less moving around,
Speaker 1: which is a huge challenge for the church and for
Speaker 1: the neighborhood. Now, if you've got families on a block
Speaker 1: that are moving all the time, you're not building that
Speaker 1: sort of network of support much more likely than to
Speaker 1: attract nuisance, attract crime, have things maybe fester that otherwise
Speaker 1: a longstanding homeowner wouldn't stand for. And so they really
Speaker 1: focused on the area right around the church and figured
Speaker 1: if they could get multiple homeowners on every block, that
Speaker 1: that could not only improve the lives of the families
Speaker 1: who are the new homeowners, but improve the lives of
Speaker 1: the renters too, right, and also give them renters an
Speaker 1: example of maybe home ownership something that you could strive for,
Speaker 1: you could achieve.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, it makes sense. If I'm living on
Speaker 2: a street and I'm renting a house and it's not
Speaker 2: it's just a place that I stay because I pay
Speaker 2: a monthly rent and there's a polish crap on a
Speaker 2: curb then bothering me that bad. It's not my power
Speaker 2: crap and it's not my curb. But when I own it,
Speaker 2: if there's a power crap on my curb, I'm going
Speaker 2: to find out who's dumping it. I'm going to get
Speaker 2: it cleaned up, because now you're messing on my thing.
Speaker 2: So when you instill ownership in a community, you instill
Speaker 2: a sense of community bride and things start changing.
Speaker 1: That's exactly right, and I've we've seen it firsthand in Milwaukee.
Speaker 1: I've seen it firsthand. I was talking with a homeowner.
Speaker 1: I do some walking tours sometimes in areas where we've
Speaker 1: had sort of the greatest impact, and I was talking
Speaker 1: to a long standing homeowner. I didn't know they were
Speaker 1: an AX alumnus. I just was walking on the start
Speaker 1: talking to them, ask them how they bought their home,
Speaker 1: and they wound up being an AXE homeowner. And while
Speaker 1: we're talking, there's a car that's just sort of parked
Speaker 1: on the block and the person in the car dumps
Speaker 1: some trash out and I didn't see it happened. My
Speaker 1: back was to the car. But the gentleman I was
Speaker 1: I was talking to, said, hey, give me a second.
Speaker 1: He goes, he knocks on the window and he talked
Speaker 1: to the guy who dumped the trash and he said, hey,
Speaker 1: don't do that. Don't bring that here. Right. And I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that's.
Speaker 2: The greatest story I've ever heard. That is perfect, is awesome.
Speaker 1: And you know a renter could could do that too,
Speaker 1: but way less likely. Right, this is someone who's had
Speaker 1: a long standing stake in that block, and more likely
Speaker 1: that they're because of that position, going to feel confident
Speaker 1: to set some good some good norms for what goes
Speaker 1: on in that block and what doesn't.
Speaker 2: The more I hear about this, here's something else that
Speaker 2: Alex said that I'd like you to comment on. Most
Speaker 2: solutions are top down solutions. They don't deal with people.
Speaker 2: They think if we just build enough, that's going to
Speaker 2: fix things. But they don't necessarily solve the problem because
Speaker 2: that doesn't help families provide for themselves. And what we're
Speaker 2: doing at Access, we're starting from the bottom up. We
Speaker 2: start with the family.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so the for Acts, it always started with the
Speaker 1: individual family. So although the hope was that neighborhoods would
Speaker 1: improve and that we would start this ownership ethic that
Speaker 1: could be could be contagious. It was all about if
Speaker 1: we can help one family improve their lives, if we
Speaker 1: can work hand in hand with them, help them navigate
Speaker 1: our home buying process, we're setting they're going to be
Speaker 1: set up for success. And it's not about providing home
Speaker 1: ownership to a family. And this is a real key
Speaker 1: distinction and something that I really always like to make clear.
Speaker 1: To become a homeowner is a lot of hard work,
Speaker 1: especially for a family that doesn't have credit or has
Speaker 1: some credit challenges, has low income. Getting ready to become
Speaker 1: a homeowner, owning your own home and being successful with
Speaker 1: it is a ton of work, and we can't do
Speaker 1: that work for you. It's about the family being willing
Speaker 1: to put in that hard work and then it acts.
Speaker 1: We're a coach, right, That's how we see ourselves. We
Speaker 1: see ourselves as how do we provide the families. We're
Speaker 1: not on the field. They're the ones in the field,
Speaker 1: they're the ones who are doing all this hard work.
Speaker 1: But we want a position for them for success. We
Speaker 1: want to help them understand the key habits that they're
Speaker 1: going to need to invest in if they're going to
Speaker 1: be successful. We get to cheer them on when they're
Speaker 1: able to, you know, clear off debt and make strides
Speaker 1: towards home ownership, and when they're falling short, we get
Speaker 1: to at times give them a little you know, kicking
Speaker 1: the butt, right, like, hey, we know you can do this,
Speaker 1: and you know, based on what we've seen over the
Speaker 1: last couple of months, is home ownership no longer something
Speaker 1: that you're passionate about? Is it no longer something that
Speaker 1: is a priority for you to be able to provide
Speaker 1: for your kids. So sometimes we've got to do some
Speaker 1: of that too, But it's about the family stepping up
Speaker 1: and doing this really hard work because then at the
Speaker 1: end they've achieved something amazing. And the coolest thing is
Speaker 1: then they typically they don't need us at all. It's
Speaker 1: not like they're coming back to us every time something
Speaker 1: goes on at the house. Even more than that, pretty
Speaker 1: often their next family member who buys a home, sometimes
Speaker 1: they refer that family member to us, and that's that's
Speaker 1: really cool. That's an honor when someone refers someone to
Speaker 1: us and says that we can help them. But even
Speaker 1: better than that is when they helped that next family
Speaker 1: member buy a home without us, they don't even need
Speaker 1: us anymore. And we don't always.
Speaker 2: Hear that story into how things work, which is.
Speaker 1: Beautiful exactly, and and so we don't always capture those stories.
Speaker 1: But on my walks sometimes, you know, I on this
Speaker 1: this very same block, I shared the story of the trash.
Speaker 1: There was a gentleman and he had the nicest house
Speaker 1: in the block, and he just had done a ton
Speaker 1: of work on it. It was really impressed, and so
Speaker 1: I saw him outside the house, and so I just
Speaker 1: introduced myself to him, and I asked him if he
Speaker 1: heard of Axe Housing and he said, heard of you.
Speaker 1: Of course, I bought my first house with you, So
Speaker 1: you know, he bought his first house. And I don't
Speaker 1: know if this was house number two or number three,
Speaker 1: but he kept, you know, his family had greater needs.
Speaker 1: He'd done well enough. He was able to sort of
Speaker 1: move up, move on to that next house, but we
Speaker 1: didn't help him with transaction two or transaction three. He'd
Speaker 1: learned through the process. He was now able to access
Speaker 1: the home buying marketplace successfully by himself with confidence. That's
Speaker 1: the best case scenario.
Speaker 2: If you don't care about that from a if you
Speaker 2: don't care about that from a social point of view,
Speaker 2: you should care about that just pragmatically, because you took
Speaker 2: a renter who was really contributing very little to the
Speaker 2: tax space, and you created a guy now who has
Speaker 2: fault and rehabbed two or three homes and stepped himself
Speaker 2: up in the tax space to continue to be a
Speaker 2: greater contributor to your society pragmatically. If you don't even
Speaker 2: care about the social sciety, pragmatically that is that is
Speaker 2: how cities grow. And if you believe that we're only
Speaker 2: as strong as the weakest link in the chain, and
Speaker 2: you strengthen that weakest link. Think what that does if
Speaker 2: you had that's one story. If you have ten thousand
Speaker 2: of those, think of how your city changes. It's phenomenal.
Speaker 2: So somehow I want to I really want to know
Speaker 2: how you did this. Somehow throughs you worked out a
Speaker 2: deal with the city. I may be screwing this up.
Speaker 2: Straighten me out that properties valued less than twenty five
Speaker 2: thousand that were on the city's foreclosure listing for more
Speaker 2: than thirty days could be purchased for one thousand dollars.
Speaker 2: Then those that have been on the listing for more
Speaker 2: than sixty days can purchase for a dollar. And certainly
Speaker 2: their inspection costs and things have to be done to
Speaker 2: the house to get it livable. But the point is, somehow,
Speaker 2: the priest worm somebody got somebody at the city to say, yeah,
Speaker 2: it makes more sense to get these off the rolls
Speaker 2: and fixed up for blight for tax purposes. Who and
Speaker 2: how did that go? Because that, to me is kind
Speaker 2: of a public private agreement that serves everybody well. But
Speaker 2: is that correct that properties valued at less than twenty
Speaker 2: five thousand dollars that were on the city's roles for
Speaker 2: more than thirty days could be birth for a thousand bucks,
Speaker 2: sixty days for a dollar. How did that all happen?
Speaker 2: That's awesome.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So, I really think ACTS has always been i
Speaker 1: would say, a strong partner to the City of Milwaukee.
Speaker 1: And because of the early success we had helping families
Speaker 1: purchase and fix up these distressed homes, it encouraged the
Speaker 1: city to try and expand the partnership. How do we
Speaker 1: create more pathways for home ownership? And what the city
Speaker 1: was seeing was that when homes were taken through tax foreclosure,
Speaker 1: typically one of two things was happening. And this is
Speaker 1: really in the aftermath of like the two thousand and
Speaker 1: eight foreclosure crisis that they started to have, you know,
Speaker 1: massively more inventory, and one of two things happened. Either
Speaker 1: the home sold quickly to an investor, and I'll put
Speaker 1: investor in quotes, because most of the individuals who are
Speaker 1: buying those homes, many of them, you know, they aren't
Speaker 1: from our community, they don't live in Milwaukee, and they're
Speaker 1: seeing dollar signs, right, They're seeing dollar signs. They're hoping
Speaker 1: that they can you know, just not do any repairs,
Speaker 1: hopefully put someone who's desperate in the apartment or in
Speaker 1: the home, charge a bunch of rent, and then you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately those homes pretty frequently they get lost because because
Speaker 1: they're not maintaining them and they're just trying to create
Speaker 1: as much short term sort of rental income as they can.
Speaker 1: So the city saw a lot of that activity happening,
Speaker 1: which they saw is very negative. Or some of the
Speaker 1: more just stressed homes, they would just sit forever. And
Speaker 1: the longer a home sits vacant, the worse it gets
Speaker 1: and the least and then it becomes less likely that
Speaker 1: it can be reclaimed because a lot of the homes,
Speaker 1: once they've sat for years, you know, they really do
Speaker 1: need to be torn down. By the way, if the
Speaker 1: city owns the property, that's twenty twenty five thousand dollars
Speaker 1: maybe depending on the size of the home, for the
Speaker 1: city just to tear it down, and then you've got
Speaker 1: a vacant lot. And in most of Milwaukee's neighborhoods, unfortunately,
Speaker 1: there is not a sufficient market for brand new construction.
Speaker 1: You wind up spending a lot more to build a
Speaker 1: new home than you can sell that home. For and
Speaker 1: so the vacant lots are a big problem because long
Speaker 1: term it means they just sit there. There's a vacant lot.
Speaker 1: It's not good for the block, it's not good for
Speaker 1: the neighborhood, and it's very bad for the city's tax base.
Speaker 2: And the grass doesn't get cut and it looks like
Speaker 2: a hell and that makes the community feel bad.
Speaker 1: And so so the city was pretty proactive about wanting
Speaker 1: to partner with us and others to see how can
Speaker 1: we get more of these homes into owner occupied state.
Speaker 1: And as a result, especially in that you know two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight to maybe twenty and fifteen period when
Speaker 1: there were so many tax foreclosures, we were literally able
Speaker 1: to help more than a thousand families purchase and fix
Speaker 1: up formally foreclosed properties.
Speaker 2: Which are a thousand homes now on the tax rolls
Speaker 2: hanging into the city's revenue buys and a thousand families
Speaker 2: taking ownership and community a thousand a thousand.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we've helped more over our thirty year history. It's
Speaker 1: more than a thousand families have purchased these these foreclosed homes,
Speaker 1: and the vast majority that was in that period right
Speaker 1: after two thousand and eight when there was just so much,
Speaker 1: so much unfortunate inventory, and I just think it was
Speaker 1: really smart in the city's part. You can look at
Speaker 1: it two ways. You can look at these tax foreclosures
Speaker 1: as a liability, and of course they are. The city
Speaker 1: needs to maintain them. They're not bringing in revenue, but
Speaker 1: the City of Milwaukee to a large degree, decided to
Speaker 1: look at it as a significant opportunity to promote home ownership.
Speaker 1: And how often are we going to have this situation
Speaker 1: where our city owns so many homes. If we can
Speaker 1: get a large person manage of those to actually be
Speaker 1: owner occupied instead of being absentee investors, that's a good
Speaker 1: investment in the future stability of our city.
Speaker 2: And that concludes Part one of my conversation with Michael Gosman,
Speaker 2: and you don't want to miss part two that's now
Speaker 2: available to listen to you together, guys, we can change
Speaker 2: this country, but it starts with you. I'll see in
Speaker 2: part two.