The Gantt Report
By Lucius Gantt
I don’t care who you are or where you are reading this column; if you’re Black and have had to rent a house, a condo, or an apartment, you’ve had landlord issues.
Every renter assumes he or she is renting a safe and healthy home that has every appliance in working order.
The Russian Babayka, Trump, thinks he is above the law, but no group feels more above the law than America’s landlords!
Landlords routinely ignore judgments ordered by judges in municipal and other courts that hear landlord-tenant issues. They criminally neglect to maintain and repair heating and cooling systems, stoves, refrigerators, leaky windows, garbage disposals, and more.
Landlords feel they can raise your rent at anytime and say the increase is because the “market rate” increased.
But guess what? When most landlords increase the rent, they decrease the maintenance of the rental property.
When the rent goes up, renter health and safety will go down, and critters begin to come around.
Most ghetto and barrio rental units often turn into rat and roach Rivieras!
When renters complain about maintenance and refuse to pay rent, landlords will file lawsuits against you.
The senior and student renters usually get scared of the legal and monetary threats and run for the hills, but the savvy hustlers will take pictures of the bad conditions, get witnesses, and sworn affidavits from their neighbors, and fight evil landlords in court.
I want The Gantt Report readers to understand why it is so easy for landlords to rip off tenants.
You see, governments, state, federal and local, pass housing laws and allegedly monitor and regulate landlords.
Hmmm? How can wicked and satanic landlords get to operate as they please. They can do what they want to renters without a worry in the world because they refuse to recuse themselves from debates and votes on landlord-tenant laws.
Lawmakers pass laws that are super friendly to landlords because many elected officials are landlords!
And guess which tenants get away with housing murder, so to speak and will never ever get sued by a landlord, the lawmakers.
If you don’t know, thousands of state legislators and hundreds of members of Congress and thousands more of state and federal legislative aides and staffers rent housing when governments are in session.
Am I right? Are you following me?
To beat the game, you need to understand the game!
Affordable housing is a crisis in America. The very worst housing is in Black and brown communities.
Black elected officials represent most slums, ghetto, and project dwellers.
They could easily sponsor and vote on laws to make landlord-tenant relations fairer to both parties.
It is not fair for tenants to pay full price for housing with few or no working appliances, with gunshots ringing out daily and nightly, bad plumbing, and with dirty parking lots that smell like the best blunts.
When a landlord-tenant issue goes to court, the tenant must continue to pay rent to slum landlords but why can’t both parties put up money and let the judge decide who gets paid?
I don’t advise tenants to do this, but when a devilish landlord threatens to take me to court, I say, “Let’s go!”
Why? Because I can stretch a case out and make a landlord spend 10 times more than what he expects to get in a court case and most landlords won’t do that unless they really hate you.
Senior housing in your community is the most affordable housing you’ll find because your rent is based on your income.
I hope you live long enough to get it.
