Looking for ideas on how to make rentals easy to maintain and resilient to tenant abuse.  

This creates buffer zones because people don't want to live next to a manufacturing plant.

For a month the tenant tried to deal with them herself, put her plants outside, wiped down the aparment.

I am a tour foreman at a local plant and moved to Florence after graduating college last year.

@Michael Plante what i meant by that was i am not so against pets that my first thing to do would be evict. 

Tons of renters with good jobs in those plants... 

Adding crisp white towels, a decorative soap dish and small potted plant on a window sill is a expensive way to elevate a bathroom.

This seems like an assumption or a resilience to ask them (which is totally natural).

There the strategy is to get basic houses out near the big industrial plants and rent them. 

More points of entry and access ought to result in a more resilient economy, but it can also play the other way - by having so many small operators, each could be loathe to part with his/her money, meaning that the system can freeze up pretty easily because of the lack of well-fortified employers that can absorb economic shock.