The Landlord Who Tore Up the Lease

In 2019, a landlord named David Perez in San Antonio bought a small apartment complex on Guadalupe Street — twelve units, mostly elderly tenants on fixed incomes. The previous owner had been raising rents every six months, and the residents lived in constant dread of the next envelope slipped under the door. Perez called a meeting in the courtyard. He brought a stack of the old leases and, one by one, fed them through a paper shredder.…