Landlord Hannibal Buress

About

Landlord Hannibal Buress refers to a series of memes about comedian Hannibal Buress being a predatory landlord. The memes stem from the fact that Buress owns a building in Chicago which he Airbnbs out, as well as his late October 2019 comments on the US Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders and his proposition to introduce a national rent control standard.

Origin

In July 2016, comedian Hannibal Buress purchased an apartment building in Chicago with the intention of renting out the apartments via Airbnb. ^[1] At that time, the building housed three tenants whose leases expired in August 2016, September 2016 and May 2017. After purchasing the building, Buress offered the tenants two-month free rent and asked them to move out by October 2016. One of the tenants asked for a two-week extension and was allowed to reside for several additional days. On October 27th, 2016, Hannibal Buress described his experience in a podcast episode (available below; 20:36 mark).

Everybody agreed to leave by the end of September, so it was cool. But then there was one tenant that asked me could he stay two weeks more, and I was about to start the work on the units. I gave him an extra couple of days. And then I got somebody buying furniture and doing the design and painting it for me, so she handles it while I'm out of town. And she sends me pictures of the place, and the dude had left – you weren't even sure if the dude moved out – he left a treadmill in that shit, the refrigerator was full, some boxes of stuff in the room. And I wrote him: "Dude, that's how you're gonna leave the place?" He says: "Sorry, you know, I didn't have time to clean it out." "You should have been operating as if you're going to move out when we agreed you're gonna move out, you shouldn't have been operating as if you were going to get two weeks extra!" "My bad, man…" I just wrote back: "Fuck you!" And I ended up going back and forth roasting my former tenant. He's just a dirtbag, he's a real dirtbag.

On October 27th, 2019, Buress made a tweet addressing the old age of the US Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders (shown below, left).^[2] On October 30th, 2019, Sanders tweeted "We need a national rent control standard now,"^[3] with Buress quoting the tweet and commenting "wrong" (shown below, right).^[4] Both tweets have since been deleted.

Spread

In the thread, multiple users responded to Buress with memes mocking the comedian for being a landlord. For example, Twitter user @AccordnToJordan tweeted a Who Killed Hannibal? meme which gained over 260 retweets and 2,400 likes in two days (shown below).^[5]

In the following days, multiple Twitter users posted memes in which they presented Buress as a predatory landlord, with memes about the comedian also being posted in left-oriented political communities such as /r/ChapoTrapHouse subreddit.^[6][7][8]

Hannibal Buress' Response

On October 31st, 2019, Hannibal Buress tweeted a video in which he talked about his property and addressed the accusations.^[9]

It's kind of wild seeing young white kids get upset at you for owning property, also with minimal information.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References