Big landlord finally shows up before city councilors

Aren't you?

How did the City Council come out looking bad in this? Because one of them got campaign contributions? The article is also hardly a bastion of disinterested journalism. Not sure whether this guy just charmed the author or what...

either most Boston City Councilors aren't as smart as they make themselves out to be, they really just don't give a shit, or Anwar Faisal is an extremely crafty, sly and sleazy individual who's clearly aware of various laws and how they're supposed to work, and knows how to get around them to avoid suffering consequences of the wrong-doings that he's committed. Or, perhaps it's a combination of all three of the above. Who knows?

All too often, when people are confronted with wrong-doings they've committed, they tend to use the race or ethnicity card in order to avoid punishment, which, imho, makes it extraordinarily difficult for people with legitimate grievances that need redressing under perfectly legitimate anti-discrimination laws. Having done my own research on Anwar Faisal just out of curiosity and read about what he's done as a slumlord, something tells me that he's a pretty slimy person who'll do/say anything to get around the laws and elude punishment.

From what I understand, however, Anwar Faisal has made a fortune and formed a huge empire by being a big slum lord and by totally taking advantage of vulnerable tenants (namely college students, who are either new here in town and/or who are desperate to move off campus and live independently of dormitory rules), or even poor people generally, who don't know the ropes, and deliberately and knowingly violating all the rules. This guy, along with other slumlords, really knows how to work the system, which makes it possible for him to do all that.

This is not to say that many of the college students (though certainly not all.) don't engage in the kind of behaviors that help put them at risk, in already super-substandard housing, because a lot of them do, but guys like Anwar Faisal should either be forced to clean up their act and at least maintain decent, safe and secure residential places, or be forced out of business.

His lawyer was a dick, because those are the kind of lawyers who defend people like Anwar Faisal.

The exact wordking: "defending his company's practices with the utmost sincerity."

From what I've heard, Faisal really is that lacking in self awareness that he can believe the crap he says.

Either it's bought and paid for, or so badly reported that it would've gotten a first-year journalism student weeded out of the program.