An immediate search for excuses, scapegoating their culpability on someone else, and whining about how mistreated they are.
______________
And an appeal for someone else to support them.
They justify their behavior by claiming they are “helping” those who have little other options. The city knew about this and did nothing.. these two collected rents and were basically slum lords of the worst kind.
People died due to the negligence... while I do have sympathy for any human suffering, you cannot absolve yourselves of your own culpability in this.
How can you complain you are being scapegoated when you were happily engaging in illegal activities that cost people their lives? I know rents in that area are insane... so it’s not hard to see people would take something over nothing... but that doesn’t mean you have no culpability for your part in it.
I have a friend who had her niece died in a similar situation, when an abandoned warehouse that was being squatted in caught fire in NO, not all that long ago. In that case there was ok on charging rents, just folks squatting where they should not have been...