Our campaign to evict Tomblin and Highgrove was featured on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” last week nationwide.  Listen or read here: The fascinating way Milwaukee tenants are fighting one of the city’s largest landlords

In the story the national reporter, Adrian Florido says:

A big part of your story is about the alliance between a nonprofit group that organizes tenants and officials at City Hall, the way they work together to basically build this case against this landlord. How important is this alliance proving to be as tenants continue their fight, as we speak, to win their case against this landlord?”

Milwaukee reporter, Sam Woods, responds:

Yeah, this alliance was one of the most interesting parts of the reporting for me because under state law, the city of Milwaukee can’t carry out random inspections. It can only document code violations that are either visible from the street or if a tenant reports them. And you can understand why maybe a tenant wouldn’t want to get on their landlord’s bad side for fear of retaliation and then, you know, doesn’t report a violation. So that’s where this nonprofit called Common Ground came in. It started to get to know Tomblin’s tenants, and it documented a lot of the problems in their home. And the city was then able to use that information to build its legal case that this landlord is a public nuisance. And for the tenants we talked to, Common Ground was a breath of fresh air, as they got to meet other people going through similar situations and realize they weren’t alone. 

Woods concludes the story by explaining:

This story really is about power. Tomblin has monetary power. [T]he city of Milwaukee has legal power. And tenants and Common Ground have people power. And so as we see how this plays out over the next, you know, months or years, it may reveal how power works in Milwaukee and maybe in the country.