Peter Rachman, a landlord in London during the 1950s and 60s, was so despised, a word needed to be coined to describe his strain of poisonous neglect. Rachmanism. The Oxford Dictionary defines Rachmanism as “the exploitation and intimidation of tenants by unscrupulous landlords.”
His properties were notorious, as referenced in the single “Sheriff Fatman” by Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, with the lyrics, “There’s bats in the belfry. The windows are jammed. The toilets ain’t healthy. He don’t give a damn. Just chuckles and smiles. Laughs like a madman. A born-again Rachman. Here comes Sheriff Fatman.”
Rachman inspired numerous songs and built the modern stereotype of a wicked landlord.
Although Iowa City might have its own Rachmans, handling the conflict between landlords and tenants is about as effective as trying to eat soup with a fork. Rather, we need to see the constant conflict as an opportunity to bridge a gap because we need more landlords.
According to previous reporting from The Daily Iowan, 72 percent of students live off-campus. The landlord-tenant issue affects a majority of Iowa City residents, and as a UI student, I generally sympathize with the tenant in the relationship.
Before I spoke with Iowa City Attorney Christopher Warnock, who has represented six landlord-tenant cases in the Iowa Supreme Court and is the founder of the Iowa City Tenants Project, I had a completely different viewpoint. That quickly changed.
Warnock’s Iowa City Tenants Project seeks to educate and empower tenants and landlords about their individual rights and responsibilities. I’d gone in person to three separate law offices and faced their receptionists before one recommended I reach out to Warnock. So there I was, interviewing him sheepishly over the phone, and the first thing I asked about was tenant rights.
Warnock clocked the type of article I was writing instantly and told me I could broaden my perspective on the topic. I was looking at it from one skewed side. Warnock spent the next roughly forty-eight minutes on the phone with me explaining what the issue truly was in his opinion, and despite what notions I had before going into the interview — friends and partners who claimed to have suffered from everything from midnight check-ins to black mold — it was hard not to agree with him.
Warnock believes there are bad landlords, without a doubt, though he didn’t allude to who, but he believes there are bad tenants, too. Current thoughts on the issue seemed hypocritical.
“Right now the current mythology is the landlords are bloodsucking evil vampires and tenants are the victims,” Warnock said. “That’s like chomping on a hamburger while talking about how disgusting slaughterhouse workers are.”
The truth is, in the current system, we need landlords, and if anything, we need more landlords. We need to diversify the market if we have any hope of solving the current housing crisis. Currently, the market is overwhelmed by a few key players.
Tracy Barkalow owns 5 percent of the properties downtown. Meanwhile, Apartments at Iowa’s website has 710 properties listed. Apartments Near Campus has 148 properties. The Clark family owns both of those companies. What should be a diverse market instead seems to be played like a game of Monopoly.
We need a mindset balanced between tenants and landlords.
“We have to be fair to both sides, and it has to be practical,” Warnock said.
Instead of vilifying all landlords, we should offer incentives to ethical and independent ones, such as tax breaks or renovation loans, capping benefits once the landlord reaches a certain threshold of properties. This way, more independent landlords in Iowa City will gain a boost, chipping away at the monopolies.
Madison, Wisconsin’s Rental Rehabilitation Loan Program is one example of how this could be done. The program offers landlords who charge no more than fair market rent in buildings of up to 20 units a loan to make major repairs to their properties, allowing older, more dilapidated properties to be made habitable and incentivizing new people to enter the market.
Rachman died in 1962, but gained immortality because of his namesake stereotype. No doubt there are still versions of him out there alive and kicking — kicking the hell out of tenants that is. But if we want Rachman to truly die, the stereotype of the bad landlord needs to die with him.
Stop wasting energy making effigies to burn. Instead, work toward bringing more landlords into the fold, finding fair rights for them and tenants, and in doing so, we can lessen the hold the current real estate lords have on the market. Hate and blame won’t build us a city we can live in, but action will.