 We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These words from the Declaration of Independence are familiar to many of us, and yet it took 143 years for women to get the right to vote and 189 years for black people to get the right to vote. And still today, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are still only words for many people. Here in Boston, life expectancy varies by 30 years depending on where you live. In Roxbury, with many poor and black people, life expectancy is 59 years. In the back bay, wealthy and mostly white life expectancy is 91 years. It's tough to have liberty when you are in prison. The United States incarcerates 716 people for every 100,000 people. Our rate of incarceration is more than five times higher than most countries in the world. Millions of people in our country don't have health care, a decent job, good education, a home they can afford, and that makes it pretty hard to pursue happiness. So on this show, you are going to meet people who are making it possible to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. People today who are making the words of the Declaration of Independence come true. Welcome. My name is Michael Jacoby Brown, and I'm your host where we hold these truths. Today, we're very lucky to have Peter Gilman Shapiro, author of a terrific book, The Good Landlord. Peter is himself a small landlord, and Peter, can you tell us a little bit about your background and how you became a relatively small landlord? Well, thanks for inviting me in. Sure. It's great to have you. Yeah, I was among many small landlords who didn't think they were going to become small landlords, and I did my traditional work for a year, schooling and work, and when my dad offered a little bit of money to me in the late 80s, I ended up buying a three-family. I could have bought a one-family. I wasn't really thinking about rental housing. You were here in Boston, right? In Jamaica Plain. It's a section of Boston where I've been living for some years, and my dad got interested. He said, hey, why don't we try investing? It wasn't a thought in my mind, and then I ended up buying three triple-deckers. I bought an old lodging house, and I had the benefit of a great broker, and really made it happen over a number of years, and that's how I unexpectedly became a small landlord. Many people, actually including myself, I'm a very small landlord, a teeny tiny landlord. I own one building, one apartment where I used to live, but many people end up becoming small landlords find it kind of challenging to manage their building. Stuff goes wrong, they don't know who to call. Can you explain what it's like in more detail? Right. It's a funny thing, because we're talking about small landlords, and later on, I will distinguish what I call small landlords from larger owners. But for many small landlords, the term people often use is accidental. They backed into the business. It might have been because some guy or woman is good at plumbing or electrical, and a building that needed a whole lot of work, the owner said, here it is, a tender loving care special, TLC special. The person bought it because they knew how to fix. Or your family owned a building that you inherited, a number of you as family members, and one of you ends up taking responsibility for it. For so many owners, it became something they never expected to do and never prepared themselves to do, which we'll discuss what are the challenges of being a landlord, which I should say more about. You were saying how small landlords also like yourself, how are they different from the big landlords? What's it really like to be a small landlord like yourself owning a few buildings? Being a landlord, particularly one who does most of the work themselves, isn't what it's cracked up to be. It is not often an easy sit on your duff waiting for the cash to come in kind of business. In fact, it can be darn difficult. I have been a landlord since 1990, and I could not count on 10 hands a number of times that after 12 midnight, I get a call from a tenant who's either locked out or some water has leaked into their basement or bathroom or whatever. There's the ongoing repair issues. There is everybody in the world who comes through your buildings, who have all the ills and joys of life coming through. They could be dealing drugs, they could be running their businesses, they could be having parties, they could just be doing their daily life of cooking and doing their private stuff. It's just a very challenging day-to-day responsibility as a landlord to keep your building maintained, keep the peace, collect the rent. These are people that you know. They're not like big landlords who have tons of buildings and probably don't even know their tenants, right? Yes, which is one of the features we'll talk about here. Small landlords could be up to nine units, so you may have bought your own one family and then you bought another three family, you moved out of town maybe, but you still have your two three families or you live local to your three families. So it's very a personal and relational kind of business. I happened to work for the city of Boston as the city's housing mediator. I spent all day talking to landlords and tenants about their daily lives and keeping their business buildings going. For so many of these landlords, they have ongoing connections with their tenants who go to their jobs and come home and play with their kids and fix their cars up in the driveways and everything about their lives is known to the landlord. So you develop these very personal relationships and that affects your business relationship. Sure. No, I get it. And how can you say small landlords, then there are lots of them, including me. I own one apartment in Jamaica Plain where I used to live. They can play an important role you're saying in maintaining safe and affordable housing, something that we really need, especially in Boston where rents are going so much up so high. Can you explain how small landlords can play a role in that in maintaining safe and affordable housing? Right. Landlords often, because they're small and they know their tenants, want to do the right thing and keep people housed. They also are very distinct from the larger owners. And a couple of examples are they often do their own work as much as they can. Many of them who are lower moderate income may not have a whole lot of money to invest in their buildings and improve them and therefore be able to get higher rents. Now, we know there are a lot of small owners out there or investor owners who can buy buildings and kick tenants out, fix these units up, jack up the rents or flip them for sale. But we're talking about a class of small owners who end up caring to keep their buildings going. It's a source of income for them. They don't need to gentrify these buildings. So they do their own repairs. They get to know their tenants. They know their tenants are not made of money. So they don't need to jack up the rents if the tenant landlord situation is stable. And then when tenants fall under and they become vulnerable to eviction, many of these owners, it's not the first thing in their mind that they're going to kick these tenants out. In fact, they really spend their time trying to kick these tenants from being evicted. So they are very much more flexible in eviction cases and all that. Yeah. I think you said a small landlord's because they have personal relationships with their tenants. They're not just a number. They also often, I think you said, I feel a moral responsibility not to get every last dollar out of the building. Maybe you can tell me some stories or what your experience has been like, because I know you've been a small landlord for a number of years. And what's it been like for you or others that you've talked to, other small landlords? Yeah. Well, I mean, I recently took some Ecuadorian Americans into this lodging house I own. I took two families in and it was interesting because they didn't have a lot of money, did not have checking accounts, credit cards, a friend of mine who had been working with them to help them with access services connected them to me. And the first beat for them was, let me help you out. We can mow, we can do carpentry, we can help you deal with keeping the trash going for... That's the first thing they said? They said to me, I'm not just here to be by myself and pay the rent and not have any contact with you. Let me be part of the community. Really? And it made me so welcoming to them and it made me want to keep the rents reasonable. So when we thought about the rents, it was a very hard thing to try to think about a maximum rent because they had been so forthcoming. It's funny because all of it goes through Google translator. They don't speak a word of English so we always laugh because we have many... Our body language tells more than our words because they... And we're often on the phone with my friend doing the translating because they have questions about how to do some repairs. They've done some roof work. Really? Yeah. They've done some fencing work. They keep the trash area clean because many of the other tenants may not care to keep the place looking nice so the curb appeal is something people care about. So you feel an obligation with them? I feel responsible. And I'm not speaking just for myself because I spend all day talking to landlords. They say, this is a woman who I knew when I grew up and when she asked me for housing, I knew she wanted to stay in the neighborhood. So, of course, I wanted to give her a place to live in. This is some other small landlord talking. For example, I know her because I've been in her house and she has been very helpful to this owner, to this tenant, I'm sorry, who ended up having two kids and had some work going on that ended and then she wasn't able to pay her rent in a timely fashion. This landlord lowered her rent a certain amount to make it affordable. She was flexible to the tenant. She got her the tenant's parents involved who helped out because she knew the family. That's not an unusual story. And those are stories that we frequently don't hear. We do not hear. Those are unheard stories. We hear the bad stories about landlords, the victim people. Yes. And there are those stories. There are different kinds of small landlords. And we know how incredibly difficult it can be if a tenant does not have habitable, affordable housing. So because of that, when you talk about the morality, for so many owners, they put their tenants first because they know the value the housing provides and people need affordable housing. Although you're not saying that all small landlords have the morals and personal relationships that you were describing with the Ecuadorian family or this friend colleague of yours. Yes. No, I spend some, don't. There are, and we hear too much about that and there is a sizable proportion of these small buildings are being bought out by investors who have very little interest in the community and the concerns of their immediate tenants and looking at it from a profit lens. What you're saying is it's a complex story. It's not all bad. It's not all good. But if, as you say, Peter, that small landlords can play those that do have the personal relationships and the moral responsibility that some do, some small landlords do, what can government or the public or other people do to foster that and help those small landlords that do have those personal relationships that do have that moral responsibility? What can the government or public policy do to support those small landlords in maintaining the safe and affordable housing that some small landlords are, as you say, really maintaining? It's a really good question because almost half of our residential housing units in this country are owned by small owners. If you call a small owner somebody who owns fewer than nine units. Half of the rental housing is owned by we don't realize how large a population of buildings are in our small buildings owned by small owners who are not corporations, many of whom, particularly in inner cities, maintain these stable relationships with their tenants. So because of that, that's why public policy really can be extremely, can help us preserve affordable housing and prevent homelessness for tenants. Most, virtually all, small landlords don't have the same things that large owners have. So I'm going to say what they are and why public policy, some resources to help small owners would make a big difference. You look at the large owners, whether they have affordable dollars in there to keep rents affordable or not, have a battery, you know, army of professionals, you have property managers, lawyers, accountants, maintenance supervisors, bookkeepers, they also have resident service coordinators. The big ones, right. The big guys. And when I say the resident service coordinators what I mean is that part of the job of keeping a building going is keeping tenants stable so they can do what they're supposed to do, which is pay the rent and not cause damage and call the police, you know, for noise issues. So if more of that kind of assistance were available to small owners, even, you know, some large owners now who work with small owners use Medicaid to get services to tenants in housing who can't maintain themselves with food and sanitation. So helping owners, if we could bring the cost of property management down and make access to handy people, make access to legal assistance, affordable, all the costs that owners don't have to pay for those folks will be pushed back into helping these tenants keep their housing because owners don't have a lot of these extra dollars to take. So if it was like a government service for a handy man or handy woman, instead of calling the plumber to do a job that maybe a handy person could do, for the plumber might charge $300, someone else could charge $50 or $100. But a lot of landlords are saying don't have those relationships. Because as we discussed earlier that many don't understand how to hire and supervise, they don't understand how to negotiate on legal issues, which we'll talk about in a second. But just on the fixing, and there are public programs and more of these kind of programs such as the city of Boston and many city and state programs across the country incentivize the owners to keep their rents affordable by giving them rehab. So the city will do this where they'll diagnose your problem, get a rehab plan, get the building fixed, and for every year that you keep your rent affordable, defer the cost of the payback. So over 20 years, 5% a year, you got $40,000 a rehab into your property, you've kept your rent affordable for a person in need. That's a public program that could be expanded because it's a positive incentive. Many owners will keep their rents affordable. They just need help managing their properties. So on the rehab side, and then on the legal side. So what I'd spend all day is providing legal education and problem solving assistance on tenant landlord issues that drive landlords to drink. They don't know how to deal with an unauthorized occupant or a wall that gets bashed in by a friend who was a little loud after hours. How do you put a tenant on notice? How do you negotiate so you don't evict but you put consequences out to tenants by helping landlords understand their rights and responsibilities and help them work out these issues because it's complicated. That is complicated business and you don't want to have to hire a lawyer if you don't have to. That's $600 or something. $600 an hour. You're more expensive than plumbers. Not that we don't value lawyers when we need them. But lawyers can play a role but much of this work can be done by legal assistance, management assistance, and much cheaper you're saying. Way cheaper. Way cheaper. Right. Then that helps the small landlords and then they pass the savings on to the tenant. The city is helping them. They can more likely maintain their housing. Even for example. Right. I mean for so many owners who may have bought their buildings when they had jobs and good credit, now they have some equity in their property but they can't get a loan. Let alone a home equity line. And they don't know how to get capital into their building to get money so they can fix their buildings. So just to help them figure how to get financial. And that stuff is really complicated. I mean just personally I'm trying to get a loan out of my building and I've got master's degree from the world's greatest university supposedly. And it's driving me to drink. You know I'm just about. I mean I might even have a beer after this. But seriously Peter. Are there other things we only have a couple minutes that I think this is important what you're saying that there are a lot of small landlords and you're making it clear not all of them are like you or like your colleagues who are caring and trying to keep the rents low. Some are let's say as unscrupulous as the biggest landlords. But are there other things that you could think of because it's important what I think you're saying that so much of rental housing is owned by small quote mom and pop or whatever landlords or other things that the public can do government can do to maintain those rents low with those quote small mom and pop landlords that want to be moral and want to maintain their property well. Are there other things you can do. Well there I mean there's been a ongoing conversation across the country and increasingly now in the city of Boston around controlling rents. Whether we call it stabilization or rent or just cause eviction is the piece where you prevent evictions except for cause so the owners can't possess their buildings. There are many other important schemes that should be explored that may prevent the worst excesses of the market. We know that on one end of the market we have you know small or large owners who don't have the personal relationships for whom it's primarily a business with a bottom line and who may not be as sensitive to the needs of the tenants and that is an understatement so for certain owners helping protect the tenants from rent increases and evictions is really critical on the small owner side the trick is to keep small owners stable so public programs that supervise and help owners get through the rehab process to help them manage their conflicts it help them get financing that help them deal with their estate. Okay all that stuff would be helpful yes and Peter Gilman Shapiro has literally written the book particularly for small landlords this book is called The Good Landlord I've read it it's terrific it's been actually very helpful to me because I am one of those teeny tiny landlords I literally own one apartment where I used to live in Jamaica Plain and it's been really helpful for me and I think anyone that owns an apartment whether you plan to be a quote landlord or not can really benefit from reading this book it has a lot of good information about how to mediate disputes how to deal on a personal level with your tenants and you know I can speak just personally for me it's been it's been really helpful the book The Good Landlord a guide to making a profit while making a difference is if there's a bookstore near you you'll can probably find it you also can find it on Amazon well we're not going to talk about the a word you know because we'd rather support the you can find Peter at TheGoodLandlord.com Peter at TheGoodLandlord.com you're responsive and so I really appreciate you taking the time to come in because I know you mediate a lot of very difficult disputes with tenants and landlords in the city of Boston which has hired you for many years to do that and you know I just really appreciate what you're doing because as you say a lot of people don't know that so much of rental housing is owned by these mom-and-pop so to speak small landlords like yourself yeah who have these personal relationships with their tenants that is allows tenants to keep their housing not be evicted before and pay for the rest of life because we know how high a proportion of our income goes to housing so it's such a critical aspect that of our people's lives when they have affordable decent housing they can have schooling they can be part of a community they can go to school and make friends and develop their lives in ways that we want for everybody especially for tenants who may not have access to buying. Well thanks Peter again I'm Michael Jacoby Brown your host of We Hold These Truths and we're very lucky to have Peter Gilman Shapiro author of TheGoodLandlord who's let us learn a little bit about how small landlords are actually playing an often not widely understood but important role in maintaining safe and affordable rental housing so thanks a lot for coming here Peter and it's great to see you and thanks for all you're doing thank you okay and we'll see you at the next installment of We Hold These Truths thank you very much again I'm Michael Jacoby Brown I'm your host for We Hold These Truths and thanks a lot for watching our program thank you