Today's NPR podcast on Tenants and Landlords

[Hamid Hotaki]

Really interesting, heartbreaking and informative podcast. After listening to it, I wonder if anyone has prepared a list of agencies, orgs etc that can help tenants when they fall behind. If you have one, or know of them, please share.

Here is the link and click on listen:

https://www.wnycstudios.org/story/scarlet-e-part-iii-tenants-and-landlords

Thank you,

Hamid

[Mitch Messer]

Hey @Hamid Hotaki thanks for sharing this! I've just finished listening to it.

It took a bit longer than I expected, mostly because I had to keep pausing Spotify and walking away so I wouldn't fling my iPhone across the room.

No doubt, low-income landlording is a very rough business. And I'm fine with talking about the worst-case, bottom-of-the-barrel slumlords who abuse the system and their tenants.

But if we're only talking about the extremes, where was the equal time spent talking about the tenants who move in and proceed to destroy the property. Or the ones who can't ever pay rent on time, yet have expensive smartphones, enjoy the deluxe cable TV package, and drive fancy late-model cars?

I don't believe this segment was a balanced presentation of the situation.

But here's my REAL question: When did we as a nation deputize landlords to be the last line of defense for addressing all the ills of poverty in our society? Did I miss a meeting?

(For the record, we do provide a list of resources to tenants in need here in Metro Atlanta. That list is hyper-local, so it might not be particularly useful to you. Connect with me here on BP if you'd still like to receive it.)