Landlords spurred the 1970s arson wave. A Temple professor explains why in new book 'Born in Flames'

When he was a teenager, Joe Willis recalled, he started doing odd jobs for his Philadelphia landlord. He'd paint an apartment, wash a car, empty trash cans. But the work wasn't frequent enough to make rent, and he soon fell behind. That's when his landlord offered him a different job to erase the balance: set fire to a vacant apartment. MORE: In 'Mounted,' author Bitter Kalli explores the connection between Blackness and horses

This arrangement was not unusual in the 1970s. Willis, who used an alias to share his story, was a "torch" — a hired hand that slumlords contracted to set their neglected properties ablaze and collect property insurance policies worth much more than the buildings themselves. Though this wave of arson is most associated with the Bronx, where an estimated 250,0