The Problem With Slumlords

Slumlords, just the sound of it makes you think of broken down tenements in places like New York City. You know, the types of buildings we see in movies with boarded up windows, garbage in the hallways and essentially unfit living conditions.
We’d like to think we are sheltered from those types of properties and I suppose for the most part we are. The problem here isn’t so much large apartment style blocks that fit the description, but rather similar situations on a smaller scale.
Smaller apartment buildings, various sizes of plexes and even single family homes are much more apt to fit this description in our locale. These are the types of properties that only get neglected and receive zero maintenance over the years, yet the landlord continues to collect checks each and every month.
Or more accurately, the “slumlord” continues to collect checks each and every month and I have some real problems with this. First, by neglecting these properties the “landlords” are putting tenants at risk. Whether it’s due to the headline grabbing issues like mould or whether its simple safety issues like a lack of smoke detectors, tenants can face life threatening issues.
Second, the disrepair of these properties gives other landlords who do maintain their properties a bad name. It becomes a generalization, but when slum properties hit the news, it often causes a backlash that even affects landlords who do maintain their properties. We all get painted with the same broad brush stroke.
Third, it has a real affect on the values of properties surrounding the problem property. Your curb appeal goes down drastically when the neighbouring property looks like a war zone. After all, who wants to live next to a slum?
Perhaps the biggest problem that will be coming up is we are ripe for more properties like this to appear. After years of higher vacancies in the city and surrounding areas, the vacancy rates are getting down to the same low percentages we saw during the mid 2000’s when the market was crazy.
The most recent statistics showed Calgary’s apartment vacancies at the 2% rate and this is predicted to go even lower in 2012. With extremely low vacancies, even sub standard housing will look attractive compared to living on the streets.
It’s not as if these properties haven’t always been around, it’s just that they weren’t all occupied when people had choices of where to live. As the choices of where to live get taken away, with the reduced number of available rentals out there, many renters will be forced into taking what they can get and essentially suffering through it. The people and the families stuck in this situation end up risking their lives and their health just for a place to call home.
Realistically, we already have this happening to many low income families. It’s an unfortunate side effect of our growing economy. People may have dreams of living in ivory towers, but when the minimum wage pay check roles in, those dreams give way to surviving and that requires cheap rent.
Which in turn creates a new cycle where the property owner receives such low rent because of the state of the property that often, even if they wanted too, there isn’t enough money left over to upgrade or repair any issues.
Which creates a whole new cycle of problems for 2012. If the vacancy trends continue, I feel pretty safe in projecting there will be a spate of news during the year calling for more legislation controlling rental properties, more talk of rent controls to “protect” tenants and of course more committees to look after the problem which end up costing all of us. So slumlords aren’t just a problem for tenants, they are a problem for everyone.