Snidely Whiplash, Thou Art Avenged

Leonard Samia (artist's conception)

One of my Adieu to Boston posts last summer mentioned that when I lived in Allston, I had the pleasure of being a peon/tenant in Leonard Samia's sprawling fiefdom of slummery. We knew he was a sweetheart when a balcony on one of his other Boston properties collapsed (killing a tenant, I believe). While stoutly denying responsibility for the accident, he pulled his guys off the repair job they were doing on our house, leaving us without siding or insulation for several months of winter, in order to "fix" the crappy unsafe balconies on all his other properties (for "fix the balconies," read "nail boards over any doors and windows that open onto them").

But his crapulence extends even farther than I knew. My old homey Joe just sent me this link to Sunday's Boston Globe: Landlord with Boston ties lashed for Katrina evictions. Apparently Samia also owns some of the most rundown parts of New Orleans. And even though his apartments survived Katrina intact, he's used the chaos from the hurricane as the perfect moment to evict his low-income tenants and do a little profiteering on skyrocketing post-Katrina rents. Wow. He's like the villain in some 19th century melodrama. Or The Simpsons.

''In a situation where horrible landlords are a dime a dozen, [Samia] stands head and shoulders above everybody else in the worst landlord category," said Quigley.

(The picture accompanying the article, my buddy Steve points out, looks a little like our Allston place.)