Landlords offer an easy target

September 3, 2006
Ken Hartnett, editor emeritus
New Bedford Standard-Times

Nobody is going to throw flowers when inner-city landlord Steve Economos walks down the street. His is a hard life in a hard job in a hard city and the record shows he is not perfect.

Yet, he is one of New Bedford's indispensables. Some people talk about poverty and wring their hands; Steve Economos deals with it, every day of the week.

It's late Wednesday afternoon, the same afternoon the mayor and the secretary of state are announcing historic tax credits for the developer who wants to convert the Wamsutta Mills into housing for the upwardly mobile and educated population we would like to have.

Steve Economos is dealing with housing for the growing numbers of people already here, the people who have more problems than prospects, New Bedford's poor.

He is sitting in an empty apartment in a newly renovated building on Crapo Street in the South End, hoping a prospective tenant will soon come along to fill the vacancy. He owns 120 rental units, most of them in New Bedford's challenged neighborhoods. His business depends on cash flow to pay the banks. His margins, he says, are narrow. His business is mom and pop. He has two full-time employees, himself and his wife, Eileen.

He wears jeans and a white T-shirt. His sneakers are splattered with paint and he hasn't taken time all year to fix the air conditioner in the van outside that doubles as shop and office. He tries to make his housing work.

Most times it does.

Sometimes it doesn't.
When it doesn't, he is the man left owning the slum property; he is targeted as the slumlord, a word that makes him bristle.

It's an unfair rap," he says. "It's really easy to label people and point fingers. We're an easy target."

What people remember are the properties gone bad, like The Mansion on Ruth Street, overrun by druggies in what became a landlord's worst nightmare; the ramshackle buildings near the mouth of Brock Avenue at Warren Street; the old place at Union and Orchard, scraped clean but left unpainted.

But the 37-year-old landlord doesn't run away. He is in New Bedford to stay. He has agreed to an interview because he wants people to know the reality of a landlord's life.

He offers his visitor the only chair in the apartment and takes a seat on the floor. He pauses after each question and answers quietly, in short sentences. "I love doing this; I love my tenants. I love the city. You have your bad days, like any other job, but rarely do I ever have a day I just don't want to go to work."

Sometimes the tenants disappoint him, despite the care he takes with reference checks.

Drugs are often the problem.

A landlord never wants to rent to a drug dealer and never would intentionally do so, he says. They don't pay their rent. Their money always goes either to feed their own habit or someone else's. And they are like termites in a building. They drive out the decent tenants who are already there. And the eviction process takes too long.

A landlord can check a woman's references back through high school and be left with a massive problem when the boyfriend begins dealing from the apartment you rented to that apparently reliable, responsible woman.

The building on Crapo Street is an example of how hard it is to keep dealers out. Mr. Economos says he rented an apartment to a single mother who had three good children, all boys under the age of 10. But in a few years, the boys grew up and the street claimed them. Before long, the house was scarred with spray-painted gang graffiti and sneakers were hanging from the utility wires outside, an indication of a drug site.

Good tenants began giving notice. Vacancies couldn't be filled. By the time the offending family departed, the building was a loser, in need of new tenants and refurbishing inside and out.

It is stable now, but the street outside is the same. As Mr. Economos talks, he keeps apologizing for the raucous, angry conversation going on across the street. It is late in the day. The language outside is raw and ugly. You wish someone could come along and tell those people to keep it down. But there is no one who can. And that's the reality.

Mr. Economos started out to be an airline pilot and went to Daniel Webster College in New Hampshire to prepare. Airline deregulation flooded the industry with veteran pilots, and he looked for something else to do after graduation. His father owned a Greek restaurant on South Main Street in Acushnet, but the family was based in Brockton.

Back then, Mr. Economos says, New Bedford was like Beverly Hills, compared to Brockton. In his mind, it still is, except for the all those gettable jobs within easy range of Brockton, which don't exist around New Bedford.

Bring jobs to New Bedford and you'll not only bring up income, you'll begin to make a dent on the drug trade dragging down the neighborhoods, he says.

He knows the real problem is poverty and he doesn't simplify the situation.

While New Bedford's overall population has fallen 6 percent, its percentage of low- and moderate-income people has increased by 7 percent over a decade. He has no doubt that about 25 percent of the population is disabled; he sees them.

The three-bedroom apartment he is trying to rent goes for $650 a month, plus utilities. Gas alone spiked to more than $250 a month at times last winter; this year, it could go sharply higher. Many, if not most, of his tenants depend on government support in a city where about 60 percent of the population is at or near the poverty line. That means Section 8 certificates to help cover the rent and SSI checks from Social Security. The most one of his tenants is likely to receive is a check for $800.

Each month requires a balancing act between rent-generated income and costs, including paying the banks for mortgage and rehabilitation loans or the heavy cost of de-leading apartments so they can be rented to a family with children.

De-leading costs, he says, stretched out the time it took to repair his properties on Brock Avenue. He says he hopes to tackle the exterior of his three buildings beginning in late fall. His hope is that his rehabbed buildings will have a catalytic effect on the neighborhood and the abandoned properties near his own. The Union Street property will get new siding in a project he says he'll begin in midmonth. Catholic Social Services has bought The Mansion and has ambitious plans for its reclamation.

We leave the Crapo Street building together. A middle-aged tenant, possibly disabled, is standing outside. He calls good-naturedly to Mr. Economos and says something about him being a "pretty cool guy," no matter what other people might say about him.

I ask Mr. Economos what that was all about. He says that was the tenant's way to thank him for getting rid of druggies and fixing up the building.

It was the closest thing to a bouquet anyone likely will ever toss Steve Economos' way.