Community Projects
Below are brief summaries of the projects and a letter for each project certifying that Congresswoman Moore or her immediate family do not have any financial interests in that project. This is a list of Congresswoman Moore’s 10 Community Funding Project requests to the House Appropriations Committee for potential inclusion in the House’s FY 2022 appropriation bills. Inclusion on this list does not ensure mean the House Appropriations Committee will fund the project. Only those projects that are included in the FY 22 funding bills that are signed into law will be funded.
Pathfinders Milwaukee, Inc.
4200 North Holton Street, Suite 400
Milwaukee, WI 53212
Amount Requested: $200,000
Housing, Mental Health, and Other Supports for Vulnerable Youth
Pathfinders is a 50-plus year-old nonprofit that provides resources and support to youth and young adults ages 25 and under and their families that focus on housing instability and homelessness, sexual abuse/exploitation, trafficking, mental health care and other needs.
The requested funding would provide additional youth in Milwaukee with trauma-centered mental health support, housing counseling, and supported employment assistance. It would help ensure housing stability while helping youth/young adults develop effective independent living skills, addressing trauma and mental health concerns and increasing employment opportunities. All of the youth and families that would be served by this project are at or below the poverty level.
Unfortunately, there are a growing number of young people in WI-04 who are experiencing increased risk due to the ongoing pandemic and continued lack of safe and affordable housing in Milwaukee County. Low-income youth of color are especially vulnerable. This project will help ensure housing stability while helping youth develop effective independent living skills and increasing employment and educational achievements. Pathfinders places a particular emphasis on serving LGBTQ+-identified youth, chronically homeless youth, youth with disabilities, youth with mental health challenges and youth aging out of foster care.
Financial Certification letter
Benedict Center
1849 N. Marin Luther King Drive, Suite 101
Milwaukee, WI 53212
Amount Requested: $157,000
The requested funding would support the Benedict Center’s Sisters Program which helps women in the street sex trade/sex trafficking in Milwaukee. The Sisters program helps support these women by getting them into housing, treatment, and support services to enhance their health and the safety of the community.
Benedict Center’s Sisters Program is a priority project given that human trafficking/sex trafficking is a high priority problem in the city of Milwaukee. In 2020, the Sisters program provided services for 614 women, through Street Outreach, connection to services including mental health and substance abuse treatment, and housing advocacy, including emergency housing services and referrals.
Financial Certification letter
UEDA
Milwaukee Rental Housing Resource Center (MKE RHRC)
1915 N. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Drive, Suite 260
Milwaukee, WI 53212
Amount requested: $500,000
Urban Economic Development Association (UEDA) serves as a fiscal sponsor for the Milwaukee Rental Housing Resource Center (MKE RHRC), a collaborative of 9 organizations in Milwaukee County trying to fight housing insecurity and prevent evictions. The funding would support the MKE RHRC. The requested funding will support efforts to provide a one-stop shop (MKE RHRC) to reduce frustration and confusion for tenants and landlords in need of assistance, help households maintain safe and stable housing, provide referrals to appropriate rental housing service providers as well as additional financial and social service resources, and provide peer support to help people navigate the affordable housing system and find appropriate housing.
The MKE RHRC anticipates serving 1,500+ individuals on an annual basis. The target population includes Milwaukee County tenants in need of housing stability assistance, and landlords who are seeking guidance and information to support their tenants.
Eviction rates are seven times higher for Black and Latinx adults than for white adults, which means Black and Latinx households are far more likely to experience the range of negative impacts post-eviction. The immediate financial impacts lead to long-term barriers to safe and stable housing, employment opportunities, credit, and insurance. MKE RHRC co-partners are committed to advancing racial equity by providing equitable and racially sensitive access to eviction prevention services.
Financial Certification letter
Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District MMSD
Fresh Coast Works Project
260 West Seeboth St.
Milwaukee, WI 53204
Amount Requested: $1,000,000
The requested funding will provide employment and on the job training to help 56 local disadvantaged youth workers gain work experience, including those returning from the justice system. The participants will help maintain existing green infrastructure in their neighborhoods. MMSD will serve as the program manager and will partner with experienced community-based workforce development organizations and workforce development boards such as Employ Milwaukee to recruit, train, and employ participants.
The Fresh Coast Works project will benefit the WI-04 district by helping put hard to employ individuals to work and provides a paycheck to people who may not otherwise be employed. It also creates a career pathway into the water sector, a sector with good paying jobs with limited barriers, such as higher education. Increasing employment rates benefits everyone by reducing the cost of public assistance programs and generating additional tax revenue on increased earnings. The program will also contribute to the upkeep of critical infrastructure in our communities. The project recruiting will focus on neighborhoods identified with a high socially vulnerable index by the CDC.
Financial Certification letter
United Community Center
Abriendo Puertas (Opening Doors)
1028 S. 9th Street
Milwaukee, WI 53204
Amount Requested: $273,750
The funding requested will support the Abriendo Puertas (Opening Doors) program to provide student support to help increase college enrollment, retention, and persistence among local low-income first-generation minority high school students and undergraduates in higher education. Abriendo Puertas focuses on supporting high school juniors and seniors and college freshmen and sophomores in three key areas that are barriers to access as well as threats to persistence: finances, academics, and social-emotional health. Abriendo Puertas program will provide case management for higher education applications, course credits, financial aid, and social emotional needs for 330 low-income minority students in high school and postsecondary education students.
Increasing educational outcomes for these youth will have a ripple effect in Milwaukee for years to come, creating a more dynamic and diverse workforce earning higher wages and contributing the local economy.
Financial Certification letter
Marquette University
Education Preparedness Program (EPP)
1618 W. Wells Street
Milwaukee, WI 53233
Amount Requested: $749,950
The Education Preparedness Program (EPP) is an initiative of Marquette University Center for Urban Research, Teaching, and Outreach that provides pathways to higher learning for justice-impacted individuals in Milwaukee. The funding requested would support the EPP, allowing expansion to serve additional students.
Education can help break the intergenerational cycle of poverty and incarceration, especially for marginalized populations. Educational opportunities can also provide individuals with expanded options for employment in sectors that provide livable wages and competitive benefits. Education and improved job prospects can also help lower rates of recidivism. Wisconsin currently spends nearly 1.5 billion dollars on its corrections budget annually. Not only does lowering rates of incarceration through education provide economic opportunities for Milwaukee residents, but it also can lead to fewer Wisconsin tax dollars needed to reincarcerate returned citizens.
Financial Certification letter
DryHootch Inc
Quick Reaction Force Program
1030 East Brady Street
Milwaukee, WI 53202
Amount Requested: $153,452
The Dryhootch Quick Reaction Force (QRF) program is for veterans experiencing mental health challenges. The funding would provide additional support to the program, including to update training materials and expanding services to 350 Milwaukee veterans. The funding will help Dryhootch add online content, including videos, and improve the online mentoring training to make it easier to access remotely.
Many veterans continue to struggle with mental illness, substance abuse and depression, and among other challenges, behaviors that may lead to suicide, violence and unintentional injury. The National Alliance of Mental Health estimates that untreated mental illness costs the country up to $300 billion every year due to losses in productively QFR peer mentors support veterans in a healing process that lessens depression, violent behavior, and substance abuse through coaching on self-care, relationships and more--all outside the traditional clinical environment, important because many veterans may have had negative experiences in formal health care settings. Assisting Milwaukee veterans to avoid substance use and improve their mental wellbeing will have positive economic benefits in terms of decreased hospitalizations, increased productivity, increased school enrollment and more.
Financial Certification letter
16th Street Community Health Center
Chavez Clinic Pharmacy
1032 S. Cesar Chavez Drive
Milwaukee, WI 53204
Amount Requested: $1,250,000
Sixteenth Street cares for nearly 44,000 patients with clinics in Milwaukee and Waukesha. Sixteenth Street provides Medical, Behavioral Health, Dental, Social Services, and additional support services to our patients of whom 86 percent are either under or uninsured. The project is to support new and needed health care services at their Cesar Chavez Health Clinic by adding pharmacy services. As a result of this project, the following benefits are anticipated: 1) Improved health outcomes and improved medication adherence, 2) result in coordinated care between our clinic providers and the pharmacy, 3) easier accessibility to medications in a part of the city that is a pharmacy desert, and 4) better enable Sixteenth Street to assist patients with any drug co-payments.
Financial Certification letter
Milwaukee Public Schools 53206 Initiative
5225 W. Vliet Street
Milwaukee, WI 53208
Amount Requested: $600,000
Funding for this initiative will support efforts by Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) to provide additional support to help elementary, middle, and high schoolers in this area to succeed. Part 1 of the initiative would provide additional support for MPS' Building Resiliency in Classroom Education (BRICE) program to support students struggling with mental health, academic, and/or behavioral challenges in underserved communities in Milwaukee. This family-centered initiative will address mental health, improve social-emotional outcomes, and restore relationships with strategies to helps students become resilient learners through multisector partnerships. The second part of this initiative would fund driver's education to improve access to licenses and remove another needless barrier to employment while supporting a well-rounded education. A driver s license increases one chances of attaining gainful employment, and supports access to education and other resources and opportunities.
Financial Certification letter
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for Economic Development
Bolton Hall, Suite 610
Milwaukee, WI 53201
Amount Requested: $350,000
Both the Administration and this Congress have made confronting systematic racial inequities a priority. Those efforts are only strengthened by strong data and research. The Center was established to conduct research on crucial urban economic development issues, including racial and other equities. Over the past decade, the Center has released major work on topics such as the crisis of Black male joblessness; transportation obstacles to Black employment in the region; environmental justice; concentrated poverty in the city, and studies of how Milwaukee’s Black and Latino communities compare to counterparts in the nation’s largest metropolitan areas. As part of its work, the Center often provides technical assistance to nonprofit organizations and local governments.
The Center would use funds to hire and train faculty and graduate students to carry out research into key policy areas (racial inequities in health, employment, and poverty) to inform the development of related academic curricula throughout the rest of the university and provide insights and data to help policymakers better understand key policy questions and develop effective solutions.
Financial Certification letter
