I had one who was the meanest lady ever on the phone but the sweetest lady in person. It was weird. On the phone she'd call me and my housemates thieves and crooks and would be nothing but sugar when she'd come by.

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by Tyrone Green

Dark and lonely on a summer's night.

Kill my landlord. Kill my landlord.

Watchdog barking. Do he bite?

Kill my landlord. Kill my landlord.

Slip in his window. Break his neck.

Then his house I start to wreck.

Got no reason. What the heck?

Kill my landlord. Kill my landlord.

C-I-L my land lord!

I was a witness in a case filed by the state against my landlord, on behalf of his aggrieved tenants. I only lived there for three months, but what a three months that was. First of all, the house where the apartment was, I found out, had been condemned the whole time I lived there. Because the dangerous boiler in the basement was a fire hazard. Nice. The electricity was totally fucked up (which resulted in my electric bills being about $14 a month in August with the AC going, and my upstairs neighbors getting bills for about $300). We had to call the city every day to get the heat turned on once it got cold out. Mushrooms grew out of the bathroom floor. Oh, and the LL disconnected the carbon monoxide detector because it kept going off. I have a newspaper article about it somewhere, I'll see if I can track it down.

I wanna kill my landlord, murder in the first degree
If there's something wrong he wants to blame me
Wants to be a threat so he carries a gun
Well I pack a mag cause I can't trust 911
Son of a gun, I'm the one who cuts the grass
Wash the windows and he still wants me to kiss his ass
But I laugh cause America's not my home
My landlord took me away from where I belong
But it's a sad song so I face reality now
Pick up the phone and now here comes the Mau Mau
To the rescue, down with The Coup
Yo landlord, I've got a little message for you
I'm going cuckoo, fuck a machete or sword
E-Roc is on a mission to kill my landlord

Oh, and the landlord's name was Adolph. I'm just sayin'.

Slimy little man takes my deposit and a pet deposit, then tries to charge me the pet deposit again on my departure. He then proceeds to wait twenty-odd days before coughing up a refund check... which bounces... and then tells me it's not worth his time to come hand me a money order. I advise him that he will think it would have been worth his time later, when he is paying twice my deposit and legal fees. He brings by the money order. I go out to dinner.

In my Roaring 20s I took off to Michigan for a summer with a couple of friends. We were gonna play music in bars and for money and live large and have adventures. We moved into a house rented by the friends of one of my buds. A typical suburban college-town house, a nice one, roomy.

The fact that this house was already full of people when we arrived didn't bother anybody.

The three of us fellow-travelers lived in one room. In fact, we slept on one extremely large pallet made out of a few futons put together. [This was pretty much chaste, all you prurient folks; we were just living a bit of a crunchy 90s 'it's all good' lifestyle].

Other people were similarly crashed all over the house; the guy whose name the lease was in, a painter and musician, the people in his band, girlfriends, friends of girlfriends, people who drank too much and crashed, people who were in between their semester abroad and their summer session at the college, people's sisters, etc. It was hard to get a bead on the house population. Many mornings you'd be introducing yourself to new people in the kitchen while you made toast and coffee. It was possible to buy enough cigarettes and food to live on, simply by cashing in the cases of returnable beer bottles for the 10c MI deposit.

Anyway, one day the landlord happened by to put in a new faucet or something. Most people were out; I was there, and so was the guy whose name was on the lease. The landlord went into the house and peered around a bit, becoming progressively angrier each time he looked into a bedroom and noticed more and more twin and double futons, foam pads, mattresses, and duffel bags. It was not the kind of flophouse he wished to run. He went ripshit, red faced, veins bursting, etc.

"How many people do you have here?" he screamed at Lease Boy. "Your lease is for. three. people. What do you, think I'm an idiot? Doesn't matter what I say? What are you doing -- telling your buddies 'Hey everybody! Come live on Dorothy Street! Don't tell the landlord! Is that the deal?" Eventually he left.

We named our band "Don't Tell the Landlord" and played several good gigs at this bar under that name.

It has a happy ending, too. He came back and apologized and recognized that we were all nice people who were broke, young and stupid. At the end of the summer, we decided to have a Thanksgiving dinner because we'd really had such good luck during our adventure. We invited him, and he donated the turkey and stuffing. We sat down and broke bread at the backyard picnic table.

Highly edited (I swear) newspaper article from 2000. The state won the case on appeal.

Current and former tenants of Wilmington landlord Adolph J. Pokorny testified in court Tuesday about apartments without heat, leaking ceilings that collapsed, defective wiring systems and squirrels living in the walls.

During the first day of a landmark civil trial, tenants testified Pokorny broke promises to make repairs and threatened retaliation when they complained to government inspectors.

A structural engineer told Magistrate Thomas E. Cole the problems included dangerous electrical systems and gas heaters that no licensed contractor could have installed.

If the state prevails, Pokorny faces the prospect of the state's taking over two of his 32 city properties, which he said include 170 units.

He also could be ordered to pay tens of thousands of dollars in fines, and to pay for engineering studies at his properties.

Pokorny, known as "A.J." or "Jay," said he would testify today after prosecutors conclude their case. He said the charges have no merit. "I'm being made a scapegoat for every landlord in the city. When my units get inspected, a SWAT team comes out," Pokorny said.

Before calling tenants to the stand, prosecutor Richard W. Hubbard had engineer Klas C. Haglid testify about his tours in October and last month of four properties.

"All the roofs were leaking, none of the top floor fire detectors worked, and parts of the ceiling had collapsed in every unit," said Haglid.

Hubbard introduced 51 photos Haglid took of faulty wiring, a rickety balcony and fire escape, crumbled retaining walls, worn-out shingles, dangling smoke detectors and other defects.

Haglid said one electrical box had a hole that posed an electrocution hazard.

Pokorny, who sat at the defense table, scoffed when Haglid said . . . a fire escape was dangerous.

"I've been on that fire escape 1,000 times," he said to a reporter sitting behind him. "It's strong as an ox."

amro, who briefly lived on the second floor at 2010 Woodlawn last year, said the kitchen leaked so badly she had to catch the drops with a bucket whenever it rained.

Then there was the mold and fungus.

"Mushrooms actually grew out of the bathroom floor," amro said.

Laura Philon and Mitchell Alper, who rented the third-story unit at 2010 Woodlawn in 1996 and 1997, said they went months without heat and complained repeatedly to Pokorny, to no avail.

"I went to bed wearing two sweaters, and socks on my hands," Philon said.

Philon and Alper said the electrical wiring was faulty, forcing them to pay nearly $1,000 for electricity used by other tenants in the building. They won a court judgment against Pokorny.

"Could you explain why you stayed so long when you've painted such a terrible picture?" Modica asked Philon.

She said she liked the neighborhood, which borders Rockford Park and is home to historic mansions.

"I didn't want to leave. I wanted these things fixed," Philon said.

While witnesses testified Tuesday, a city police officer waited in the lobby of the courthouse to arrest Pokorny for failing to appear at a previous court hearing on housing violations.

Pokorny, who knew the officer was waiting, was placed in handcuffs when he emerged from the courtroom and taken away in a squad car.

miko, I love your story.

Jrossi4r, you beat me to it. I salute you!

I'm a landlord. *hmph*

I won't hold that against you Wolfdaddy, it takes all kinds after all. Hehe.

Seconding the Fris, that's a cool story miko. I love happy endings.

I'm an evil slumlord. I live in a duplex and rent out the other half. One of my tenants was the most popular morning DJ in town (and one heck of a nice guy.) I kept introducing myself to his friends as "Dave's evil slumlord" which would crack everybody up.

Occasionally, he would talk about me as his evil slumlord on the air. One day my boss calls me into his office. Dave and one of his show-mates are talking about the back porch. The sideman is complementing Dave about the fine porch and how excellent it is to pee off of.

Dave protests vociferously and worries out loud that his evil slumlord will find out. My boss had called me in to hear it because it was a running gag for the entire morning show.

So I faxed Dave a message threatening eviction if his buddy didn't start pissing in his own back yard and signed it, you guessed it, "Evil Slumlord."

Hahaha, warbaby! I hope you know that I seriously *heart* you. Even more so now.

That's awesome, warbaby. My landlord won't let me have a dog, or install energy efficient windows, so my gas bill for a 1BR apartment is over $200 in the winter. And I keep the thermostat at 60. Those windows are the bane of my existence. They are 80 years old, original to the house.

And I can remember growing up how cool it would be to get the title of Slumlord. Now its not so cool.

sciurus, if you promise to put the original windows back in when you leave they'll probably be okay with you replacing them. And I feel ya, I lived in a house near the beach that had single panes and no sealing around the windows, and those things would rattle and whistle in the breeze.

Also, have you plasticed them? You better have, young man.

See, if you had a big fuzzy dog, it could sleep on you and keep you warm at night.

Yeah, I plasticked 'em. They still bleed heat like a sieve. I'm big and fuzzy, I should try sleepin on myself.

I'm afraid I haven't any horrible landlord stories to share. I've been extremely lucky, I guess.