Plot

Naïve 29-year-old Elgar Enders buys a building in a black Brooklyn ghetto to evict the tenants and upgrade it. But instead, he grows fond of the tenants and falls in love with a mixed-race girl while his wealthy parents disapprove.

At the age of 29, Elgar Enders (Beau Bridges) "runs away" from home. This running away consists of buying a building in a black ghetto in the Park Slope section of Brooklyn. Initially, his intention is to evict the black tenants and convert it into a posh flat. But Elgar is not one to be bound by yesterday's urges, and soon he has other thoughts on his mind. He's grown fond of the black tenants and particularly of Fanny (Diana Sands), the wife of a black radical; he's maybe fallen in love with Lanie (Marki Bey), a mixed race girl; he's lost interest in redecorating his home. Joyce (Lee Grant), his mother has not relinquished this interest and in one of the film's most hilarious sequences gives her MasterCharge card to Marge (Pearl Bailey), a black tenant and appoints her decorator.—alfiehitchie

Twenty-nine year old Caucasian Elgar Enders (Beau Bridges) still lives at the estate of his parents, William (Walter Brooke) and Joyce Enders (Lee Grant), and off their vast wealth with their blessing, although his ultra-conservative father hopes that someday Elgar will have some drive and make a name for himself, much as he believes his eldest son, William Jr. (Will Mackenzie), has done. Elgar decides finally to move out, and buys a tenement house in Park Slope, Brooklyn, a rough neighborhood seemingly on the verge of gentrification. He plans to tear it down and build a new house for himself. Although they have no idea of his plans, the tenants of the building, exclusively black, do not welcome their young, lily-white new landlord with open arms. They believe he is just another white slum landlord who wants their money, although most of them are indeed several months behind in their rent. Despite their antagonistic beginning, Elgar, after spending time with his tenants and learning their stories, decides to be a proper landlord and fix up the building for them and for him to live in. Elgar's transition into a liberal-minded lover of his black brothers and sisters is not without its problems as he deals with some tenants who are indeed deadbeats, his parents who just don't understand and agree with this phase of his life, and race relations where the color of one's skin does affect how they are treated in life and in turn how they interact with others. The latter is epitomized by his relationships with Lanie (Marki Bey), a biracial woman whom he initially believed was white, and with husband and wife tenants Copee (Louis Gossett Jr.) and Fanny (Diana Sands) to whom he gets a little too close.—Huggo