Facing a Slumlord

For years, low-income tenants in Hartford put up with persistent rodent problems, water leaks, mold, and even collapsed ceilings. Upon organizing into the No More Slumlords campaign, they discovered that what they thought were problems caused by a single landlord with bad intentions were actually the side effects of a lucrative business model through which wealthy landlords around the country exploit low-income renters—the vast majority of them Black and Brown—for profit.

Started as a student film, Facing a Slumlord traces the years-long fight by these tenant-activists to not only hold the slumlord who had exploited them accountable, but also to change the systems at the municipal, state, and federal level that had allowed for such exploitation. That fight starts in the city of Hartford, but reaches all the way up to the federal government, touching even the Donald Trump presidency.