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Landlords are often defined according to the physical appearance of the accommodation rented by tenants. Means (1883), quoted by McCrone (1989), describes landlords of Britain as following:

Going through these rooms we come to one in which a hole, as big as a man’s head, has been roughly covered and how ?... a piece of board from an old soap box has been fixed over the opening by one nail, and the tenant has been given a yard and a half of paper with which to cover it, and for this expenditure perhaps 4d, at the outside 3d, as well has been put upon the rent.

Landlords are also defined according to the scale of letting, the distinction being between small-scale and large-scale landlords. Pennant (1990), in his definition of small-scale landlords compared with large-scale landlords, has included a combination of those owning a single property, one or two properties and those with more than two buildings. Cullingworth (1963) defines a “small landlord “as one owning one property. Large-scale landlords have often been referred to those owning more than ten properties (Basset & Short, 1980). Sometimes the definition of landlord is based on how properties were acquired, distinguishing between those who have inherited and bought properties (ibid). Similarly, Gilbert and Varley (1991) differentiate between large- and-small scale, the former denoting the owner occupiers. They wrote, “In certain Colombian cities, landlords are mainly owner occupiers and even absentee landlords rarely own more than two or three properties” (Gilbert & Varley, 1991:133). In some cases a distinction between large and small landlords is based on the type of accommodation being rented and the number of tenant households. These authors further contend: “Half-a-dozen landlords owned two or three rental properties ... larger operators e x is t... one landlord owned eight flats and a house for rent” (1991:134).

Green (1988) suggests three types of landlord, entrepreneur landlords, who operate on a large scale, small-scale landlords who own less than ten rental units (usually rooms rather than houses) and live on the same plot, and the state which provides subsidised properties for renting.

The various definitions of landlord have an impact on policy. They raise a number of questions. If the criteria are based on lettings, for instance, is a landlord who rents part of his house the same as those who have built several houses and let them to tenants? Is a farmer who has 220 families living on his land, and rental payments are made in the form of labour, the same as an entrepreneur who has built hostels for his workforce? If they are the same, what forms of policy interventions should the government adopt, and who are the beneficiaries? Which landlords are in greatest need of government financial support? And who are the non-beneficiaries? How are decisions going to be made as to how much support landlords receive?

One other problem that is created by several definitions of landlords is that no distinction is made between landlords operating in developed countries and those in low-income settlements of developing countries. Little attention has been given to the production of rental accommodation. Because of the over-concentration of these definitions on rental housing, and trying to define landlords by physical appearance and the quality of the housing, the conceptualisation of landlords not only creates confusion but implies homogeneity among landlords. As Section 1.7 demonstrates, it is at the production level that forms of landlordism should be analysed, and the forms of landlordism and the rental accommodation they produce cannot be understood by whether landlords rent flats, houses, and so on to tenants. For instance. Green’s definition of landlords includes even the subsidised housing provided by the state. Again, as it will be argued in the following chapter, it is through the analysis of housing production that we are able, first, to distinguish between housing produced as commodities, and housing that is not and, second, to locate the production of low-income housing in developing cities and hence low-income landlords. The production of housing in developing cities is on a small scale, some is owner built, some built in stages on untitled land, without observing building codes and housing standards. If fundamental differences exist between the production of housing in the developed cities and production in self-help settlements, surely low-income landlords cannot be the same as capitalist landlords? If they indeed are, the definition of landlord should be flexible enough to accommodate forms of low-income rental housing produced by low-income landlords on small scale, in unregulated settlements. Even the definitions should be able to spell out clearly what constitutes a capitalist landlord and what a low-income landlord.

Secondly, another conceptual problem relates to the lack of distinction between landlords operating in self-help settlements and those operating in the city centres Gilbert and Varley (1991) have repeatedly argued that, because of the lack of space in the city centres, tenancy is dominant in peripheral settlements, or self-help areas. When describing the large-scale landlords they suggest that “there were more large properties in the central areas, although some were also found in self-help areas” (1991:138). The location of tenements seems to be a distinguishing feature of landlords. Again, because of the failure to go beyond the description of the houses being rented , whether in the city centre or on the periphery, we are unable to distinguish between the form of rental accommodation, the landlordism in the central city and that found in the periphery. Do the large-scale landlords operating in the city tenements rate the same as those operating in self-help settlements? One other problem relates to the forms of rental housing produeed. The large-scale landlordism in central areas has resulted from the conversion of houses into rental accommodation, and rental aecommodation in self-help settlements is the consequence of the construetion of self-help housing. Although Gilbert and Varley have in their writings implied the increasing location of low-income rental aecommodation in peripheral settlements, the failure to link the production of self-help housing with the development of tenancy and landlordism, in particular, creates difficulties not only in distinguishing between landlords operating in city tenements, but also between the forms of rental aecommodation they produce. Above all, policy implications based on this misconeeption are even greater. Is, for instance, a landlord who has converted his house into tenements the same as the one who has produced low-income rental housing, through construetion, in the self-help settlements? Can they be served by similar government policies? If not, what are the underlying similarities between the two?

Under the consumption-oriented approach, the production of low-income rental housing and the role o f landlords as producers are both insignificant. The emphasis is on tenants, the stage at which the rental accommodation is consumed, the percentage of their income that goes on rent, how often the rent is increased, the relationship between tenant and landlord, and the extent of evictions and mobility within tenant households. Landlords are treated as consumers of housing, rather than the producers. The rise in landlordism is associated with profits from renting spaee, implying the continuance of landlordism where renting is profitable, and the reduction of rental stock where landlords are dissatisfied with rents.