CHICAGO—Saying he had long ago developed the skills necessary to keep his rental properties one inspection away from being condemned, local landlord Bogdan Popescu told reporters Monday he prided himself on doing all his own code violations. “Why should I pay to hire a plumber or an electrician when I can install a leaky toilet and do the faulty wiring myself?” said Popescu, swinging a hammer as he drove a bent nail into a broken step on a fire escape. “I’m a small businessman, not one of those corporate real estate developers who contracts out their extreme negligence to someone else. My tenants know they can count on me to come by and hastily paint over the black mold in their bathroom or sweep the lead paint chips back under the radiator in their nursery. It’s all about the personal touch.” Last year, when one of his apartments developed a carbon monoxide leak, Popescu was reportedly on the scene personally to fumigate the unit and remove any remaining trace of his tenants’ rotting corpses.