The profits were staggering. In 1966, a Chicago landlord told a court that on a single property he had made $42,500 in rent but paid only $2,400 in maintenance. When accused of making excessive profits, the landlord simply replied, “That’s why I bought the building.

~ Matthew Desmond

Matthew Desmond Housing Landlords Poverty Profit

Urban landlords quickly realized that piles of money could be made by creating slums: “maximum profits came, not from providing first-class accommodations for those who could well afford them… but from crowded slum accommodations, for those whose pennies were scarcer than the rich man’s pounds.” Beginning in the sixteenth century, slum housing would be reserved not only for outcasts, beggars, and thieves but for a large segment of the population.

~ Matthew Desmond

Matthew Desmond Housing Landlords Poverty

No despotism, no privileged monopolies, no police societies, no divine rights of the emirs or feudal landlords or shady priests and sheikhs. All had the same equal footing—the rich and the poor, the noble and the common.

~ Rami Ollaik

Rami Ollaik Common Despotism Divine Emirs Feudality Footing Landlords Monopoly Noble Police Society Poor Priests Rich Rights Sheikhs

Too often, the landlord-tenant relationship is unbalanced with all the power on the side of unscrupulous landlords.

~ Nydia Velazquez

Nydia Velazquez Power Side Landlords