[bsder]

Yeah, I was pretty much accepting a government run amok story until this comment. If you can't get the heater or AC up and running again in 24 hours, your residence qualifies as uninhabitable, sorry.

However, as someone who grew up in a similar town, I understand that housing in these kinds of areas is a delicate balance.

While you can talk about "slumlord", the issue is that most of the people in these houses are stuck in the area, probably have fairly low fixed incomes, likely have bad credit (or possibly lost their house in the crash) and very few other choices. Most "slumlords" in such an area are not exactly raking in the dough, and, if rent goes up too much, the renters are out a home and now have to go live with someone else.

In reality, wiping out a few houses doesn't really help that much in these kinds of sparsely populated areas. In reality, the whole town needs to be wiped out or consolidated with another town to make much difference.

Unfortunately, that has its own set of issues.