"Slumlord" landlords really don't do much good for anyone. Sure, they provide "housing" in the barest sense, but really, they're just doing the bare minimum possible to maintain a structure that they can charge top dollar rent for to desperate tenants in areas with limited housing available, making as much profit as possible while they "land bank" the land the structure is sitting on as an almost entirely safe investment.
We found ourselves living in one of these places just out of university when we were desperate to find any available housing with our current lease expiring and new jobs set to start. It was a pretty dingy building in an otherwise nice area in Seattle. Not much had been done to the building for a long time, and a fair amount of asbestos probably lingered in that popcorn ceiling, but that didn't stop us from paying top-dollar rent for the place. "It will do for now," we thought to ourselves… until we started getting uncharacteristically sick, and the black mold started erupting through the paint in the corner of the bedroom.
Yeah, it wasn't a great place to live, and I can't imagine it was great for the neighbors, either. The building was unsightly and in disrepair, tucked amongst a neighborhood of cute little houses with perfectly painted trim and immaculately maintained gardens. Meanwhile, there our apartment was, looming ominously over them, the brutalist 80s architecture and dilapidated state of the building doing its best to sell the appeal of a "dystopian eastern bloc."
These types of buildings and the attitudes of their owners make for a miserable existence for those around them. This landowner shared how they handled their "slumlord" neighbor's poor attitude when their neighbor refused to help share the cost for the removal of some troublesome trees on the property line, when push came to shove they made sure they got their money.
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