LEWISTON — People who think that being a landlord is a quick way to make easy money are flat wrong, property manager Candis Henson told colleagues Wednesday.

“It’s a huge misconception that these buildings are slot machines for the landlords,” she said. People think landlords are making money hand over fist, and until I got into property management, I guess I thought that too. But when we have tenants that don’t pay rent, the owner still has to pay the mortgage and the oil and the property taxes and trash collections.”

Henson was one of a 14 landlords, property managers and real estate agents who met at The Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce office to discuss the problems of being landlords and what they can do to make it better.

Called the Lewiston Landlord Forum, organizer Adilah Muhammad said she hopes the group will come up with some suggestions for making life easier for good landlords.

“What we don’t want to happen is that there is a meeting with the city, and there is just one person speaking for landlords in the audience,” Muhammad said. “We want to make sure that the city actually takes the information and does something with it. We need a group of people to continually say, this is what we need.”

Wednesday’s meeting was a round-table discussion about what keeps investment out of the downtown. She said she hopes to schedule another meeting in April. People with comments, suggestions or those requesting information about the forum should e-mail her at asmlewiston@gmail.com.

Landlords on Wednesday agreed that financial considerations make it difficult for them to succeed. A glut of inexpensive apartments keeps rents artificially low and many units left unoccupied.

“But the owner still has to make their payments,” Henson said. “They still have to live up to their end of the deal.”

Governments don’t help, according to John Snyder of On The Spot Rentals. Building code regulations tend to ignore damage left by tenants, leaving landlords to pay for repairs on their own. And private landlords with old properties can’t compete with brand new buildings built with federal and state housing grants.

“They can charge $500 for a building that cost $500,000 to renovate,” he said. “Who is paying for that? We are, the taxpayers.”

Local attorney and landlord Tom Peters said it’s clear there are many problems that need fixes.

“The government being involved in housing is one,” he said. “Maybe it’s time for that to stop, for government to stop competing.”

And landlord Jason Levesque suggested that just because the state and federal governments offer financial aid to build new subsidized housing, local groups don’t need to take it.

“Define economic development in the city of Lewiston to not include building affordable housing by the government,” Levesque said. “That’s not economic development. We’ve said the best economic development produces jobs, which produce good tenants which helps with market rate housing. Those are shifts in psychology that I’d love to see happen.”

staylor@sunjournal.com