Jeanette, a single mother with four children, rented a house in South Los Angeles with a rotting fence. When she finally asked her landlord to fix it, she was informed that the fence’s poor condition was actually her dog’s fault, and that she needed to pay $500 within two days or face eviction. The only way she could cover the cost was through taking out a payday loan.

A couple months later, Jeanette’s employer shifted her pay schedule, and she asked her landlord for a rent extension. The landlord refused, demanding payment under threat of eviction. Jeanette took out another payday loan. “I just feel like I’m sinking deeper and deeper into debt, and not getting much for my money,” she said at a community meeting on Monday.

Jeannette’s landlord doesn’t live in her community. She rents through Invitation Homes, a division of Blackstone, the large private equity firm. Blackstone has become the industry leader in a new Wall Street scheme, where rich investors have spent more than $20 billion buying up over 130,000 distressed single-family homes and converting them to rental units. They’ve even sold bonds backed by the rental revenue streams, similar to the mortgage-backed securities whose failure nearly blew up the economy in 2008.

When Wall Street firms began buying rental units in bulk in 2011, experts warned that they had no history of managing large numbers of rental properties spread over hundreds of square miles, and would skimp on costs at the expense of tenants. Now, according to the first survey on the practice, those fears are being realized. Tenants report that Blackstone’s rental management resembles that of a slumlord. They rent properties with significant maintenance problems, fail to keep contact with their customers, and violate state and local laws.

The report, put together by economic justice groups Strategic Actions for a Just Economy (SAJE) and The Right to the City Alliance, sampled tenant reactions from Invitation Homes rentals in South Los Angeles and Riverside, California. They canvassed 292 properties in these cities, eventually surveying 51 families about their experiences. Between 85 and 95 percent of the respondents were people of color, and many of them used to be homeowners.