“The profits were staggering. In 1966, a Chicago landlord told a court that on a single property he had made $42,500 in rent but paid only $2,400 in maintenance. When accused of making excessive profits, the landlord simply replied, “That’s why I bought the building.” PovertyProfitHousingLandlords Book:Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City Source: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City
“Urban landlords quickly realized that piles of money could be made by creating slums: “maximum profits came, not from providing first-class accommodations for those who could well afford them… but from crowded slum accommodations, for those whose pennies were scarcer than the rich man’s pounds.” Beginning in the sixteenth century, slum housing would be reserved not only for outcasts, beggars, and thieves but for a large segment of the population.” PovertyHousingLandlords Book:Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City Source: Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City