Way too easy to oversimplify about "slumlords"

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There are standards and then there are pie in the sky standards. We become more aware of the distinction as we get older. We hear this term "slumlord" when we are young and conjure up the most negative image. It's not a real precise term of course. There is a pejorative air to it.
As with many issues, there are genuine/egregious bad actors, next to which we see a major gray area. It's like sexual harassment: there are egregious cases and then there's Chris Matthews. The danger now, of course, is for the MSNBC program host to get hauled into the whole #MeToo thing. A good cause gets identified and then it gets pushed beyond reasonable boundaries.
We learn from current news reports that Matthews engaged in conduct that many of us would see as awkward, stupid, misplaced, whatever. A big part of the problem is that he is a man in an influential position. Take away that influence and his behavior could just be dismissed as boorish, whatever. A reasonable person could not judge his behavior as prima facie sexual harassment.
We learned about three years ago of a judge, of all people, in the St. Cloud area being an alleged slumlord. I feel the word "alleged" must be used very often as a prefix here.
 
Two sides to the coin
"The other side of the story" with "alleged" slumlords is that they take dilapidated housing and at least make it livable on affordable terms for economically deprived people. The real world has a wide swath of economically deprived people, who we don't wish to notice or think about much. Each day can be a challenge for those people.
It is certainly "nice" to try to set high standards for housing everywhere. But it's pie in the sky. Try making regulations more stringent, and housing gets out of reach for a lot of people. You can't expect property owners not to make reasonable judgments in their own interests, as we all do. Judge Vicki Landwehr and her husband got a ruling in their favor the next year. I won't cry foul about this.
I have heard about supposed slumlords being very defensive or edgy about allegations coming at them from anywhere. They'll have a very capable lawyer at the ready. I heard about a situation where a neighboring resident wanted to buy a dilapidated property just to tear it down. The alleged slumlord bristled at this, got defensive.
 
Get rid of poor people?
We cannot solve the issue of "poor" people in our society by just tearing down all housing deemed substandard or undesirable to be around. There have been news reports lately from around the U.S. about how economically challenged people are basically being chased out of mobile home parks. Well fine, but where are all these people supposed to go?

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Alleged slumlords know that if local government gets too carried away with regulations promoting the highest possible standards - standards which in theory look oh so nice - hardship and anxiety will be imposed on the less-well-off.
Owners of rental property know you "can't let the camel's nose in the tent" with this sort of thing. Thus I fully understand their defensiveness.
Years ago there was a letter-to-the-editor binge in the UMM student newspaper - a binge with "orchestrated" written all over it - taking to task a local family that owned rental properties. I know the husband-wife property owners and consider them fine people. They manage property that hopefully is going to suit the students adequately in this transitory time in their lives.
You can go through the property with a fine tooth comb and probably find "issues." Some issues might appear genuinely worthy of attention. But how practical is it, for the municipality or the government to start clamping down? To impose the pie in the sky principle? Farmers used to live without electricity. My family once spent time at a lake place with an outdoor bathroom. I had an uncle at Lake Amelia near Villard with an outdoor bathroom.
Unthinkable? Well maybe now it is. Just like it's unthinkable to see cigarette smoke in any public place. Just think of the reaction if you were to "light up" in a public place now? But it wasn't that long ago when it was quite accepted. So we definitely have higher standards imposed in many areas of our lives, but we must guard against standards getting so high, poor people are imperiled even worse than they are now.
 
Rose by any other name. . .
"Poor" is sort of a fungible term anyway. I laugh as I remember a news report about our Stevens County commissioners: a commissioner expressed great surprise at certain names on a "hardship" list supplied by the ambulance service. "I know some of these people," the commissioner said, and he sure didn't have the impression they were economically challenged.
We love to posture about ourselves that "life is rough." Oh, and then there's the phenomenon of people who are "insurance poor," yes they spend so much money on insurance. A local banker friend once said to me "insurance is something you spend a lot of money on, and you don't ever want to use it."
Where would cable television be without the ads they sell for "Medicare supplement insurance policies?" Here we see an argument for government-run health care, i.e. expanded Medicare or "Medicare for all": You cut out the need for advertising/marketing. I suppose you wouldn't need highly-paid company executives either.
 
And now, the water softeners
Our City of Morris announced higher standards for the kind of water softener you can have in your home. It's an old refrain: government wants lots of "nice" things. They want everything around them to be "nice." They threaten legal action as our City of Morris did with the softener matter.
I'll state one thing emphatically: I do not like being threatened. Anyone on the council who is in business had better be careful because they might suffer. My life does not revolve around water softeners. It may be an important matter to local government which sees things "pie in the sky." As for the common citizenry, please remember that "the majority of people lead lives of quiet desperation."
 
Addendum: Remember when the LaFave house was donated to UMM? This was a house inhabited by local elites and yet it could not be utilized for UMM's purposes until so much work was done on it, obviously costing much. A public discussion arose about this. Why not just build a new house? Such was the cost burden. Well, if regulations are so stringent that a fortune must be spent on a home of the "elites," it's rather scary isn't it? Don't let the camel's nose in the tent.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com