An Inclusive Litany

5/4/03

The Rent Stabilization Board of Berkeley, California, which administers that city's scarce rental housing stock, sponsored a "poetry slam" allowing the city's tenants to rant about their landlords. The winner of the $100 first prize denounced the "platonic master/slave relationship" between landlord and tenant and recalled how his last landlord was so bad that he "chose to be homeless for nine months just to escape the memory."