Welcome back to mornings with Pat Crichtlow That'd be me the Pat Crichtlow part of it here on the Civic Media Radio Network on this Thursday morning May 8th If you've listened to the show long enough it won't surprise you to hear any comments that I would make about hedge funds and The nature of what I would call vulture capitalism You have to keep in mind that You can be a capitalist you can be pro capitalism, but that can mean a lot of different things
same as, same as democracy, you know, the way that we have democratic with a small D elections here is not the same as the way they hold elections in the UK or other places.
You can have many different flavors.
Well, the different flavors of capitalism often find a way to run astray almost to the point of oligarchy if you don't rein in some of the excesses.
And I'm going to say that again, that from Adam Smith on down,
to say capitalism free markets does not mean no guardrails.
It does not mean no government.
It actually relies on responsible government oversight to allow for a capitalist society to operate in this most healthy manner.
Unfortunately, vulture capitalism has struck the housing market even, and we have an affordable housing crisis in the state and in this country.
So some folks are connecting the dots and looking at ways to look at hedge funds and ask themselves, should Wall Street really be a landlord in Wisconsin?
Let's talk to State Senator Sarah Kieske about that.
She's author to Bill that would restrict single-family home ownership by hedge funds.
Senator, good morning.
How are you?
Good morning Pat.
I'm great.
Thank you.
Thanks for having me
on.
It's so nice of you to be here for this.
I know you're you're still getting your feet wet in the the new role here.
There's a lot to learn and I also know from being a when you're a new state senator sometimes you know ideas come up and you may or may not have run on them but you might be just the right person to
author this bill or that bill and speak on it.
And so it was refreshing to see your name next to this one, this bill that would restrict hedge fund single family home ownership in Wisconsin.
Can you help people connect the dots as to why that would be a good piece of legislation?
Yeah, so you're right.
I am brand new.
I've been in my position now for months.
And one of the things I heard oftentimes when I was going around the district was about the affordability crisis, as you mentioned earlier.
People can't afford housing, and this is causing all kinds of dilemmas from where you can live to how much you can pay for basic necessities.
And so that was one of the issues that as I was working on thinking about if I were to bring any legislation forward, what meaningful legislation could I do?
And so my office and I worked on figuring out, is there anything maybe even out there that has been looked at that we could
contribute in our state of Wisconsin.
So there's a Virginia law that we're kind of framing ours around that is similar.
It is about preventing hedge funds and hedge funds for anybody that doesn't quite know.
It's basically investors that pool their money.
So it's a bunch of investors that put their money together, pool it so that they have better access, higher revenue to be able to make
bigger purchases or more purchases.
And so it gives them, you know, basically high, high, high buying power and then ability to be a monopoly really.
And so hedge funds are what we're trying to prevent from buying single family homes in the state of Wisconsin.
We see that they have already about three of them have been doing this in Milwaukee in primarily
Black communities, actually.
And what's happening is when we take homes off the market, either these hedge funds are holding them and waiting for time when they can then gain a huge proceeds if they sell it down the road.
They don't really need people to be even living in it because they're so rich that it doesn't matter if they miss a bit of income, but they can make a high dividend on it.
or they're turning them into rentals and being able to decide where their rental prices will be and be able to really price people out of the rental market and or they're turning them into vacation rentals.
And so the dilemma then is all of these homes are not available for families to purchase.
And one of the things that we know is purchasing property is one of the ways to
build your own wealth.
And so if we take that away from families, we are taking away something very critical for the middle class, lower income individuals that could help them build up in a capitalistic society, right?
That then they no longer have access to, and I fundamentally feel like that is wrong.
Yeah, and so connecting those dots as these single-family homes are plucked out of the stock of available homes to purchase
Obviously, it's going to lift prices for all the others.
Now, if you're one of those homeowners, sure, it's good news for you.
But the crisis we're talking about is affordable housing writ large, having that supply of single family homes that is available.
So there has been this push both in Congress and in state legislatures to limit hedge fund ownership.
What are you?
I know that there's been some bipartisan talk about the idea, but I would I think it's fair to say that
Republican lawmakers aren't exactly racing toward the bill en masse, even though some understand what the situation is.
Are you already receiving pushback on it or are you receiving encouraging words either from Republican legislators or people in the community who may be Republican but understand the market situation?
Well, the great news is when I proposed this, I did write about it a little bit on social media, for example, or when I've been going to my town halls, I've had at least seven listening sessions all across my district.
And I will say across the board, 99% of people are really excited about this, didn't really understand that this was happening and really recognizing, oh my gosh, so supply and demand, right?
taking away more of the supply, then the demand will not be able to meet that.
And then those prices, again, will be pricing people out that need affordable homes.
So I've been having a ton of interest in it and support of it.
41 other legislators have signed on to this bill, which is huge.
It is bipartisan, but only one of them is a Republican.
And what I've
is that when a bill is proposed by a Democrat, again I'm new so I'm kind of learning the lay of the land, it is rare if you're an author that the other party will sign on.
So it's very frustrating because I know this is an important issue whether or not you're an independent Republican or a Democrat.
And so I'm hopeful that even just getting the news out can help people recognize, no, this is going to help everybody.
This is going to help your constituents, wherever you live, if we do this proactive bill in the state of Wisconsin so that we don't become a place where we have this kind of monopoly of ownership.
And to be clear, this is a problem that can be addressed on multiple levels.
We've mentioned certainly in Congress, there's certainly something to be said at the local level too, in terms of zoning, in terms of encouraging more construction of single family homes and not just McMansions.
folks, there's definitely room for more affordable single family homes to be built out there.
I for one would love if these hedge funds got to be more involved in construction of new housing stock rather than, you know, driving up the expenses in the, in what's there right now.
But you're suggesting what can conceivably be done at a state level that I agree with you that there's probably more Republican support than the co-authorship would reflect.
But in this particular legislature over these past, you know, 14 years that Republicans have been in charge, it's rare now that a democratic bills, democratic author bills are even scheduled for a public hearing.
And I can tell you having been in the majority when, when Democrats controlled the house, we had no problem putting Republican authored bills up for public hearings.
We didn't think the bills would necessarily pass.
but it would have been downright rude not to at least let them have a public hearing, let people testify on it.
That's not the time that we live in right now.
So I really appreciate you being willing to take time out for things like this to tell people about the measure.
Sounds like you're getting good public support.
So I guess the next step really is hoping that you can convince the appropriate Republican committee chair to give the bill a public hearing.
Well, and I don't think it's going to be me that can convince them, right?
It's our democracy that is at peril when we don't allow even a hearing about a bill that could possibly be very important to a lot of people.
And so that is troubling to me.
And right now it is sitting in a committee when there have been
request by press to say, hey, are you going to be having this for a hearing with the chairperson of that, which is Senator Quinn, there has been no comment.
So I find that not just rude, but undiagnocratic.
And so I'm hopeful that maybe people that are that care about this issue too, maybe.
give a little pressure in that direction because I know I try to respond to constituents and hopefully he does too.
I would be very curious to get Senator Romain Quinn's comments on this because he has a very long experienced career in real estate in the Barron County area.
He has most certainly seen the crisis of affordable housing for single family homes.
And I cannot imagine why he would want to be, you know, part of the roadblock to making housing stock more affordable in Wisconsin.
So yes, I think inquiries would be very welcome for Senator Quinn's office.
A couple of minutes left here.
Senator Sarakieski of Lodi is here with us.
We know that today Republicans on the Joint Finance Committee are going to cut more than 600 items from the state budget bill that Governor Tony Evers has requested.
And we've talked about this at length.
This is, this is what they've done in all four state budget cycles.
So just again, from a 30,000 foot view, when you hear as a new legislator that Republicans are cutting 600 items in one motion, no individual votes on the merits of any of these ideas, how does that strike you as a, as a new state senator?
Sarah, did we lose you or did we lose me?
Sorry, I'm not sure what
happened.
Okay, that's okay.
We had a low screen freeze there and I was simply asking just for a quick answer on hearing that Republicans are going to cut more than 600 items on a single vote rather than going through the merits of those measures.
How do you, how do you accept that?
How do you think of that as a new legislator?
Well, I find it wild.
And so like again, learning, right?
trying to understand like how is this process what happens so there's the budget that is presented and then all of a sudden on one vote and um all kinds of things can be ripped from it so i'm trying to figure out well what's being ripped from it this is 21 pages of the document that they're going to be voting on all these things are going to be ripped from it on one vote um you're right they're not even hearing about it what what's going on here
that are really important.
I get it, there might be a little bit of access here or there that you wanna carefully refine, but I mean, one of the ones that really has me, because it's very important to me, law enforcement and behavioral health collaboration grants, a million dollars to help emergency response collaboration programs between behavioral health services and law enforcement.
I fundamentally believe that's so important.
That is being voted out.
I could give you more examples.
Oh, there's so many examples.
And again, every one of them worthy of at least a quick discussion, but the Joint Finance Co-Chairs have made clear that, you know, Democratic members cannot even talk about essentially these items that are being cut.
It's an up or down on the full motion, and that's it.
And that's a heck of a way to run a railroad.
State Senator Sarah Kieske from Lodi, thank you so much for your time.
We really appreciate it.
Take care out there.
Oh my gosh, thanks so much, Pat.
All right, thank you.
And a reminder that Chad Holmes will be filling in for me here starting tomorrow as I take a little time off for helping a friend get married.
Very special time for them and pleased to be part of everything that's going on there.
I'm Pat Crightlow reminding you, remember that Pledge of Allegiance, how it ends, liberty and justice for all.
This is the Civic Media Radio Network.
