MILWAUKEE—The City of Milwaukee is working to reduce the amount of blighted homes scattered throughout the community.

Over the past decade hundreds of homes around the Milwaukee community have become blighted and fallen into the hands of the city.

If you take a drive up and down the streets just west of downtown Milwaukee, you'll find a wide variety of homes. There will be some vacant homes, lavish homes, and even some historic homes. These homes all have one thing in common. They are being impacted by blight.

"Since the onset of the great recession in 2008, the city has put together about 15 programs," City of Milwaukee Fourth District Alderman, Robert Bauman said.

Bauman says these programs have been put together in hopes of assisting homeowners and blighted properties, rather than just knocking them down.

"We chose the more expensive course in the short run, hoping in the long run we would be preserving more neighborhoods effectively," Bauman said.

So instead of taking a bulldozer to things like historic homes, the city is using one of its many programs to rebuild and increase the property value. However, historic homes are not the only issue the city is facing.

"Right now the city has about 1,000 properties in its inventory," Bauman said.

This is leaving the city with a costly handful of homes to continually maintain. But the "strong home loan program" helps owners make repairs and tries to prevent more properties to fall into the city’s control.  It allows the city to be the lender and keep properties out of its hands.

"We’re providing a program that really is that last means of repairing their property before something worse happens,” Department of City Development program director, Larry Kilmer said.

More than 50 homeowners took advantage of the program in 2018, making it one of the most successful programs in the city.

However, this isn’t the end of the road for the city, and leaders say there is still more work to be done.

"We've got a lot more work to do, we could probably spend twice as much as we are spending," Bauman said.