Who taught: Tami

slumlord

Today’s expression is hot. Very hot! Today was the last day of the orientation for new students of the program where I teach. After everything is done with the orientation, we had lunch together. My colleague, Tami, told me this expression, slumlord. When she first said, the first thing that came to my mind was a lord of a slum. As you may know, a slum is a neighborhood or district where poor people live and thus nothing is really managed properly.

That made me guess that a slumlord is a boss of a slum gang. Well, I was not quite right.

Just like South Korea, people, especially students, rent a room or a house in the U.S. And, a person who owns a house that you are renting is your landlord.

Now, you take only “lord” part from landlord and combine it with “slum” where most houses are falling apart.

Houses in the U.S. are pretty old and if you do not manage them well enough, they can fall apart very quickly in a way that it is like a house in a slum.

Some landlords buy a lot of houses and rent them to make profit. In attempting to maximize their profit, some of them  do nothing to manage their houses. Hence, they are getting more and more similar to houses in a slum.

In fact, there are some neighborhoods in Pittsburgh where you can see those kind of houses and there is always a sign in front of those houses, “For Rent.”

There is one house in my neighborhood and that house does not look good at all. I would be very uncomfortable living in that house.

I want to find out who is the slumlord owning that house. He should do some work on that house.

Oh, actually, this word reminds me of one of my old posts, “Robber Barons.”