<\/p>\n
My father, Toby, owned<\/strong><\/span> a modern “apartment community.” The complex was “garden-style,” meaning three-story buildings grouped around a parking lot and pool.\u00a0 The buildings had mansard roofs and looked like McDonald’s.\u00a0 The place had an Anglo name.\u00a0 Jamestown.\u00a0 Should have been Jonestown.<\/p>\n The development looked genteel but wasn’t.\u00a0 One guy peed in the heating ducts and poured aquarium gravel in the toilet on his way out.\u00a0 Some tenants used the hollow-core doors for karate practice.<\/p>\n A high school wrestling coach, who was also a multi-millionaire, bought the complex and turned it into condos in 1977.\u00a0 Worked out for everybody. \u00a0As the banker said to Toby, “You made your money, and he made his. Be happy.”<\/p>\n I used to repair<\/strong><\/span> the complex’s roofs, mostly replacing lids on vents.\u00a0 The lids were called Jap caps because of their coolie-hat shape.<\/p>\n There is no more peaceful place than a roof top — at least a flat roof.\u00a0 You can see everybody, and nobody can see you.\u00a0 That’s why cops in The Wire<\/em> go on roofs so often.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n “I’m in real estate.”<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n I say that whenever I don’t feel like saying “I’m a landlord.”\u00a0 If I say “I’m a landlord,” people often hear “I’m a slumlord.”<\/p>\n I don’t sell houses or flip properties.\u00a0 I collect rent, evict people, charge late fees, and look for cats in apartment windows so I can charge pet fees. Does that sound like a slumlord?<\/p>\n When I vacationed at the Michigan alumni family camp, I introduced myself at the meet-and-greet as a landlord and klezmer musician.\u00a0 People laughed at the “landlord” part, particularly the campers with advanced degrees.\u00a0 “Landlord” was so bad it was good. “Klezmer” was cool — the arts.<\/p>\n I came across a<\/strong><\/span> Yiddish anti-landlord song in the klezmer business. “Dire Gelt” (Rent).\u00a0 The lyrics, in brief, are: “Why should we pay rent when the stove is broken?”<\/p>\n I’ve heard that line before about the broken stove.\u00a0 Not often.\u00a0 It’s usually “My bathroom ceiling is falling in.”\u00a0 It’s all about water damage in the landlord biz.<\/p>\n And it’s occasionally about animals.<\/p>\n What bugs me: tenants who ask for a hotel room because they saw a mouse.<\/p>\n Mice are good people. I’ve had mice in my house. I don’t run to a hotel every time I see a mouse, and my bank doesn’t give me a reduction on my mortgage payment. My father, Toby, owned a modern “apartment community.” The complex was “garden-style,” meaning three-story buildings grouped around a parking lot and pool.\u00a0 The buildings had mansard roofs and looked like McDonald’s.\u00a0 The place had an Anglo name.\u00a0 Jamestown.\u00a0 Should have been Jonestown. The development looked genteel but wasn’t.\u00a0 One guy peed in the heating ducts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-landlord-biz","category-toby-stratton"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1400"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8634,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1400\/revisions\/8634"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\n—<\/span>
\n1 of 2 posts for 4\/21\/10.\u00a0 Please see the next post too.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"