What does it take to get rid of a 70 year old pimp?

To move forward, I need to take a step back and explain a little bit about my business partner, Steve. Steve owns a remodeling company and his building is about a block away from the apartments. So it’s a great fit for us. I have a background in business management and Steve understands construction. Between us we have the skills to run this micro business and what we don’t know we can probably figure out.


One of the interesting things about Steve’s business is that nearly all of his employees are from the neighborhood. I’m sure that has good and bad associated with it, but for our little adventure, being known in the neighborhood, at least by association is a good thing.

We closed on our purchase in the middle of July and before the month was out we ran into our first tenant problem. Our building we call “649” is a 2 story brick building built in 1900 that was a very large house with a nice courtyard in the rear. Over the years, it’s been converted a number of times and in it’s present shape it is now configured as 4 one-bedroom apartments. Unit one is accessed from the street. Units 2, 3 and 4 come in off the side entrance with 3&4 on the second floor.

When we bought the building Rick and his girlfriend live in unit 1, 2 & 3 are vacant and unit 4 is occupied by a guy I'll call Pops. Pops is a thin, gray haired old man, probably over 70, who smokes heavily and since his electric is cut off, likes to sit outside on the street during the day. Good old Pops, likes to leave the side building door open for ventilation during the hot summer days and it's the side door access that is causing some trouble.

We ran into a few speed bumps with Pops right away. He hadn’t paid July’s rent which was included in our deal when we closed on the property. Pops had a reason for not paying saying that he was going to make some money soon and gave us a promise for some part of it in the near future. What we didn’t know is how Pops made his money. Apparently, our geriatric tenant liked to break into apartments 2 & 3 and let female "associates" sell their wares out of our building. Yep, Pops was a 70 year old pimp hustling for cigarette money. Actually, the girls were junkies doing tricks for crack and Pops got a cut for being nice and letting them into the building.

This all came to light one Saturday night when all hell broke loose. I guess the tricks were making a lot of noise in the building and woke up our tenant in Unit 1, Rick. Rick came out of the building in his underwear ready to fight. The next thing you know the cops are there. Unfortunately for us, nobody go arrested and things calmed down for the rest of the weekend.

I’m in Steve’s office on Monday and in walks Rick (at least he had clothes on). He was very animated about all the “going-ons” over the weekend and wanted us to do something. Unfortunately, since there were no arrests we couldn’t kick Pop's out for breaking the lease. Rick wasn't too thrilled with our lack of action but we knew we had a problem that was going to need a creative solution.

I’m not sure exactly how the idea came up, but I got to thinking that we should treat this like a business problem. How do you get rid of a competitor? You take away his business. How do you do that? - You provided better services or drive away the customers. Opening Eric’s land of pimpdom across the street wasn't really an option, Instead we decided to make it hard for the "customers" to get some privacy when they did the nasty.

With a plan in place, we went to apartment 2 & 3 put in new locks and sealed each door with a thick slab of plywood. Hurricane Katrina wasn’t going to blow down that door and for damn sure neither was a 70 year old pimp. The following weekend came and went. When I ran into Rick he was all smiles and talked about how quiet the neighborhood got. It seemed that the girls didn’t like doing it in the hall and found another place to operate.

It’s funny how something like getting rid of the ladies can make a difference. Fran, my Partner’s office manager stopped by the corner store to buy a soda. This is the same corner the girls used to work. The middle-eastern owner asked if Fran’s boss had any thing to do with getting rid of the girls – when she said yes, he was so excited and told her about how his customers could come more frequently now since they could avoid the working girls. He was so pleased, when Fran tried to pay for her drink, he refused her money exclaiming “Free soda for you”.

While the commotion slowed down, it took a while to get rid of Pops. We had to hire a lawyer and go through eviction proceedings. Fortunately (in an odd way), since Pops never paid any rent we were able use that as the reason to kick him out. In the end, it cost us a bundle on an attorney and we looked like mean landlords when we said "No" to the judge when a very clean, frail looking old man asked the judge if he could stay. But by getting rid of Pops, we cleaned up a corner and hopefully made a difference for a few good folks who live and work there.