How Investors Become Slumlords

• In Event: 411 - Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Refereed Roundtable Session and Business Meeting
  In Refereed Roundtable 60min: Table 07. Housing, Poverty, and Inequality.

Abstract

Landlords broker access to decent, affordable housing for a historically large renter population, through decisions about rents, maintenance, and adherence to regulations. However little is known about the extent to which landlords engage in unscrupulous or illegal “slumlord” behavior (e.g., “soft evictions”, property disinvestment and/or abandonment) that jeopardize renters’ housing security, or the factors that explain variation in landlords’ participation in such behavior. Through in-depth interviews and ethnographic observations of a random and field sample of 61 small- and mid-sized landlords of low- to moderate-income tenants in Cleveland, Ohio over 28 months, we observed a range of such activities. We find no evidence that the profession is inherently selective of unscrupulous individuals, though over time some who had initially engaged in ethical, legal, practices adopted and justified unscrupulous and illegal behavior due to the confluence of two contextual factors: perceived financial precarity and perceived unfairness in interactions with institutional actors who regulate landlord activity (e.g., courts, city government, public housing authority). In situations where landlords face narrow profit margins, it is critical that municipalities ensure the regulatory environment is perceived as fair and that measures meant to protect renters from exploitative landlord behavior not inadvertently place undue burden on ethical landlords who comply with the law.

Authors

• Meredith Greif, Johns Hopkins University

• Kathryn J. Edin, Johns Hopkins University