A program called the "Neighborhood Initiative" is working its way through the Shorewood VIllage Board committee structure. If implemented, the program would offer assistance to duplex owners in the Village of Shorewood in upgrading their properties, or converting them to single family homes.  Several options are being discussed, including incentives to convert to single family dwellings, attic space upgrades, and down payment assistance. 

Below is an email from Trustee Dawn Anderson outlining the origins and intent of this program.

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From: Trustee Dawn Anderson
To: Steve Koczela
Date: Sep 21, 2007

I'm not sure when this was first brought up, but I first heard of it when I joined the board last June(06). As you probably recall it is an idea that grew out of a market study on residential properties by SB Friedman and Co - the village asked for it after the Visioning Plan. They presented the study in March of 06 with recommendations on how to approach revitilization of the village's duplex stock. They identified 3 areas of concern:

1- A shortage of family appropriate housing units
2- deferred maintenance of duplexes with absentee owners and
3- overcrowding of duplexes. 

The goals of a "Neighborhood Initiative" would be to enhance housing options for young families and improve the exterior conditions of the existing "problem" duplexes. Overcrowding would be addressed through increased enforcment of code - we have yet to discuss this part of the initiative. For obvious reasons, we want the housing stock in the village to be attractive to young families and we want to protect the value of housing stock in areas that are more heavily concentrated with duplexes with absentee owners.

The CBR committee had discussed it briefly last year, with Ericka Lang tweaking some ideas as we spoke, but it did lay fallow for quite a bit of time - the shoreline ordinance and smoking ban ate up alot of the limited time we had to discuss it in committee before board meetings.... so we have just taken up discussion of it again recently.

We still are really in the preliminary stages of collecting more information and discussing the recommendations among ourselves - I can't give you cost estimates or a timeline at this point. As we move on, we'll be talking more about process and the nitty gritty of how the program might work. But at this time we are talking about incentives that will encourage upgrades/enhancements and more owner occupied duplexes.

Next week we are meeting to talk about code enforcement and how that would fit into the plan. When it might go to the full board for consideration is something I just can't say right now.
 
I hope this helps - have a nice weekend, dawn
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At Monday's Village Board meeting, a group of residents complained of houses in their neighborhood falling into serious disrepair and being used as party houses. Although I arrived late at the meeting, and did not get the exact addresses, the houses mentioned in their complaints were located in the area of the 3800 and 3900 blocks of Farwell, Prospect, and Maryland.

The residents went through a litany of complaints about the houses, including exceeding residency restrictions, frequent raucous parties, constant noise from the parties, party goers moving from party to party up and down the alleyways, trash strewn in the front and in the rear of the house, beer cans, cigarette butts and used condoms in the yards and alleyways, discarded furniture and mattresses, materials from incomplete renovation projects being left out for years at a time, sagging roofs and walls, overgrown yards with 4 and 5 foot high weeds, couples having sex in parked cars, drug use, and disruptive and menacing late night visitors.

The owners of these blighted properties were described as being mostly small scale absentee landlords rather than owner-occupiers or larger management companies. Residents of these properties appear to be predominantly students, though with a smaller mix of non-students. One property was described as a "boarding house," where many individuals had keys and would come and go freely.

The group of residents mentioned various steps they had taken to try to counter the growing problem, but complained of a lack of coordination of responses from the various bodies of Village Government. They advocated a coordinated response of large citations from the police, fines from the DPW for discarded waste, stronger ordinances from the Village Board, and more effective enforcement of the current nuisance ordinance.

Because the item was not on the published agenda of the Village Board, discussion and response from board members was limited. However, several trustees discussed putting this issue on the agenda for a future meeting. This would allow for a more comprehensive discussion as well as possible actions, since the Board is only able to act on items that are on the published agenda.