In any hour of any day the phone can ring, bringing another tale of woe.

Not surprisingly, most hot line callers are north-siders; the three communities providing the most complaints are Lakeview, Rogers Park, and Edgewater; Uptown and Lincoln Park are also on the top-ten list. There are surprisingly few calls from impoverished communities like Woodlawn, Oakland, and West Garfield Park. “There’s not a lot of calls from these areas because there’s not a lot of people there anymore,” says Carpenter. “Some communities have lost 50 percent of their housing stock in the last 25 years.”

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In the fall of ’93, MTO asked City Hall for help. “We felt they should at least help pay for the hot line, if only because they were referring callers to us and expecting us to run it,” says Carpenter.

Most calls deal with disagreements over repairs and security deposits. “A third of the calls are about repairs–everything from broken windows to back porches falling off,” says Carpenter. “We get a lot of rodent calls: rats and roaches, mice and squirrels, but not raccoons or possums. I’m waiting for that.”

Sometimes landlord-tenant disputes are more about personalities than money. Such was the case with Loretta Smith, who had peacefully lived in the same Lakeview apartment for more than ten years, just above her landlord, before all hell broke loose a few months ago. He had asked to meet with her at 1 PM one day to talk about the plumbing. “I presumed he would call me first, but instead he was pounding on my door at one,” says Smith. “I said I wasn’t ready, could he come back in 20 minutes. He was very angry. I could hear him talking under his breath, “This is ridiculous. A landlord should be able to come in anytime he wants.’ He got so furious his response was to shut off the hot water. I couldn’t get him to turn it back on. He wasn’t answering my calls. I finally took a cold shower.”

Just to play the devil’s advocate, one might wonder why a landlord can’t raise the rent on a tenant who’s on a month-to-month lease, as was Smith. And can you blame him for being upset at her for lugging a heavy machine up his front stairs? And while we’re at it, why couldn’t she have postponed her shower? Smith’s old landlord probably wishes someone operated a hot line for landlords.