Milwaukee, like many other parts of the United States, has been very hard hit by the home foreclosure crisis that has been unfolding since the housing market peaked in 2007. With the advent of the Global Financial Crisis in 2008 and the resulting sharp rise in unemployment in many parts of the country, the capacity of many homeowners to continue to finance their mortgages has declined rapidly. Homes are both foreclosed and abandoned, and since the City of Milwaukee is the first creditor in line in cases where property taxes are unpaid, this has left the municipal government with a large reserve of foreclosed homes and vacant lots, where foreclosed and / or abandoned houses have been demolished. This spatial phenomenon is concentrated in socioeconomically deprived areas of the city’s inner north, and the population most affected is African American:

• Office of the Mayor: Coordination with Strong Neighbourhoods Plan
• Department of City Development: City-owned real estate, site planning, and food policy
• Department of Public Works: Forestry services, composting, lot maintenance
• Milwaukee Healthy Department: Food safety, licensing, and ordinance revisions
• Department of Neighbourhood Services: Permits, and ordinance revisions
• Community Development Grants Administration: Support for HOME GR/OWN staffing

Liaison with External Partners: HOME GR/OWN is working with community businesses and organisations to help connect the dots between local food, health, neighbourhood and economic development work currently taking place. HOME GR/OWN seeks to expand the capacity of this community team and attract the financial resources to take partners’ community-based work to the next level. The program seeks to create new public/private partnerships, catalyze new hope and real street-level change in our most vulnerable neighborhoods across Milwaukee.

Representation on city-wide urban agriculture bodies: 

• Milwaukee Food Council steering committee to ensure City collaboration.
• Institute for Urban Agriculture & Nutrition steering committee
• Coordinating vacant lot rehabilitation efforts with the Mayor Barrett's Strong Neighborhoods Plan.
• Building stronger links between new grower training efforts among local providers.

The four high-priority strategies are: 

In later phases, the City of Milwaukee aims to adopt a Food Charter to guide the development of a food policy; to ensure that 30 additional properties are producing food by 2016 and a further 173 properties by 2023; that 25 new properties distributing healthy, locally produced food are in operation by 2016 and 100 further outlets by 2023; and that a minimum percentage of residents are living within a 10-minute walk of healthy and nutritious food.  

The program leverages funds from the Strong Neighbourhoods Plan, which has an allocation of $23.8 mn for 2014/5. This covers City of Milwaukee staffing for the program and assistance to community and neighbourhood groups to begin re-purposing vacant lots, covering the costs of plants, trees and infrastructure. Home GR/OWN also seeks to leverage private sponsorship from businesses, and grant funding from philanthropic foundations. For example, a consortium of Milwaukee organisations were awarded a $75,000 grant from the Funders Network for Smart Growth and Liveable Cities for infrastructure to help with the repurposing of vacant lots for urban agriculture. This national grant was matched with $75,000 from Miwlaukee-based foundations, allowing the construction of a dozen community orchards in 2015. 

Accomplishments since 2013 Inception:

• Passage of major revisions to the city's urban agriculture ordinances
• Aided passage of revised Food Peddler ordinances
• New community gardens & orchards on City vacant lots: with partners Neu-Life, Groundwork MKE & Infallible Helping Hands
• Gillespie Park constructed summer 2014; named 2015 MANDI finalist
• Fundraising targets met to date
• 30 vacant lots have been coverted to food production
• 2 new corner stores serving healthy food have been opened 

2015 Priority Projects:

• Development and 2015 construction of two new urban farms: Alice's Herbal Farm and Cream City Gardens
• 2015 construction of new mini-park at 37th St and Center St
• 20 new orchards and 6 new mini-parks, including Sunshine Park at 14th St. and North Ave., built through Partners for Places grant
• Final construction on All People's Church orchard stormwater features

There was some initial concern about whether the City of Milwaukee would have capacity to deliver a program as ambitious and far-reaching as Home GR/OWN. However a key element of the program's design is collaboration with existing not-for-profit organisations, philanthropic foundations and private businesses. The City of Milwaukee also  participates on multi-stakeholder forums, in particular the Milwaukee Food Council (established in 2007) and the Milwaukee Institute for Urban Agriculture and Nutrition. These horizontal governance spaces allow for disagreements to be aired and resolved rather than generate into unproductive tensions and conflicts. 

A key success factor is the integration of the Home GR/OWN program as a major plank of one of the City's priority programs over the next five years, the Strong Neighbourhood Plan. The City has clearly and strongly embraced urban agriculture as a key strategy for urban renewal and repurposing of vacant lots. This builds on the momentum and leadership generated by the dynamic, diverse and active urban agriculture community in Milwaukee (see Victory Gardens Initiative as one representative of this sector). 

http://city.milwaukee.gov/homegrownmilwaukee.com