One of my relatives, a cousin of sorts is paying rent to live in a small house. It's not a bad house, but it is kind of dilapidated-looing on the outside and such. He lives in a neighborhood in a small town where a few of the nearby houses on his street are for rent. The person who owns these particular houses is mildly notorious for lagging in getting repairs done on said houses. It took months to get a replacement for a old, creaky side door installed, complete with the creaking, rotted wood doorframe torn out and replaced with sturdier stuff. There's still some things going down in the tiny bathroom that warrant attention tho, and there's been one excuse after excuse after flat-out non-answer after another.
Apparently, the word on the street, the scuttlebutt is that said owner is known to stall in paying off repair people, esp. the solo freelancers (as opposed to the local repair people, contractors and plumbers outfits that consist of a handful of people) and that the owner is stingy with said pay. So said owner finds it difficult to hire people to do jobs on the houses because they don't want to put up with said aggravation, low pay and again, from what I hear, frequent reamings and naggings that would come with the work.