The Slum Landlord

Hogarth would be proud of our next candidate: The Slum and its cohort, The Slum Landlord. This comes complete with Gin Lane, or, more accurately, Cider Close.
Our local newspaper, ‘The Haringey Independent,’ excelled itself on Friday march 7th, ‘Migrant workers’ slum cleared out,’ it howled. Turned out a bunch of Polish men had set up camp under the arches next to the car park near Seven Sisters Tube station. The paper said about thirty people had been there for four weeks, but a small number have been there for some months, certainly since last summer. Directly related to this is the reintroduction of Lord Land-Scumbag, or The Slum Landlord. These are the buy-to-let vermin who bought up properties on the cheap, and let them to ‘asylums’ and migrant workers at extortionate prices. In order to pay the COLLOSSAL rent, a two bedroom flat, such as the one next door to me, will house anything up to twelve people. Two in each room including the living room, sleeping the day shift, and another two in each for the night shift. The charmless Goksun Guest House on the corner of my street also does this. After he’d finished his shift at the shop opposite, Jamal went to his bed which had just been vacated by Mehmet, only minutes before. Mehmet would then come downstairs to do the day shift.