Getting Greedy - A Cautionary Tale

A few years back, the landlord of the old private accommodation where I lived found out about a new, swanky property development nearby. Thinking that the whole area would get a boost in status, he decided to go back on his contracts, hiking up the rents to drive the tenants out so he could doll up his apartments and bring in new, rich customers who'd reflect the increased status of the area.

The development went downmarket in the first three months. Crime soared, customers stayed away or went to the town next door, thrift shops opened in vacant units which the council had earmarked for fancy goods - handbags, shoes, the usual shite.

And the council have regraded his apartments, deemed them barely fit for human habitation and told the landlord to fork out thousands on repairs. Worse, since the new neighbourhood is worse off than intended, even before taking into account the detail they'd apparently not noticed before that the apartments stood on the bank of a river that is virtually an open sewer, the council have regraded all the apartments - and set a rent cap far lower than it was before.

So he's now housing a tenant who doesn't even pretend to want to take care of the place: and he is only there because (a) he'd otherwise be living in a cardboard box; (b) the council pay his rent; (c) if the place was unoccupied, someone would have broken in and turned it into a cannabis farm, like half the vacant industrial units in the vicinity of the old apartments.

He can't sell them; he can't use them; he can't even demolish them because it'd cost him more to knock them down than to keep them going.

See what happens when people get greedy? :)