“There are no laws right now where landlords have to be licensed,” she said. “To be a Realtor you have to be licensed, to be a social worker you have to be licensed ... but to be a landlord, where you have people’s lives in your hands, you don’t have to be licensed. How is that fair?”

The current system puts the onus on residents to speak up, she said.

“It is a system set up for the slumlords to succeed, not for the tenants,” she said. “Something needs to change in the laws to protect the residents.”

But Chatelain argued that the current complaint system is working well for the most part and that the Yale Park situation is an outlier.

“It’s a very unique situation as I understand it,” he said, noting that Anderson, the owner, isn’t one of MOPOA’s 500 members. “It’s not representative of the vast majority of rental properties in Omaha.”

Indeed, Yale Park has a long history of trouble. Anderson was sued in 2015 and ultimately settled with a family for $407,000 after a young tenant was badly burned in a gas explosion while Anderson was trying to repair an HVAC unit himself, according to court records.