Having a good landlord is like winning the lottery. Honestly, there just aren’t that many who aren’t trying to scam you out of your money while refusing to abide by rental laws just to save a few bucks. It’s inhumane.
So imagine you’re already in a precarious situation and end up needing a roof over your head, so you head to a trailer park. And well, the landlord just doesn’t care if you’re living amid dirt and bugs. So what’s the natural progression, you ask? Well, you get some petty revenge for all the years they’ve neglected you. So here’s what this person did on r/ProRevenge.
Good landlords that actually follow through on their word are hard to come by
Kampus Production / Pexels (not the actual photo)
A family realized this when they were forced to move into a trailer park and ended up with a landlord who didn’t even care that the trailer was infested with bugs
Swastik Arora / Pexels (not the actual photo)
Oleg Ivanov / Unsplash (not the actual photo)
Kindel Media / Pexels (not the actual photo)
Under U.S. law, landlords are required to repair issues that affect the safety or integrity of a rental home or trailer
This story has so many legal issues that it is actually wild. For starters, the landlord is not following the Implied Warranty of Habitability. This legal principle requires landlords to keep their properties in a safe, sanitary condition fit for human habitation. This means that if there are cracks in the walls, leaking roofs, water intrusion, rotted support beams, or similar issues, the landlord must address them.
Legal specialists also stress that, in almost all U.S. cases, landlords must deal with pest and bug infestations. This is especially true when the infestation was already present before the tenants moved in or when structural defects allow pests to enter the property, as the narrator explains that some pests enter through the heat vents in the floor.
The tenant also mentions four distinct types of pests in the story: cockroaches, bed bugs, rats, and opossums. All of these can pose serious health risks, and health specialists especially warn that roaches and rats can contaminate food and spread diseases, including Salmonella and parasitic worms.
Kampus Production / Pexels (not the actual photo)
The narrator, however, wasn’t entirely correct and committed several unlawful acts
We’ve now established that the landlord was definitely in the wrong, but the tenants also committed several offenses. For starters, beyond interfering with an investigation and tampering with the valves to conceal illegal waste, the narrator damaged another person’s property without consent. This could be classified as malicious destruction of property under U.S. criminal law.
Instead of retaliating with dangerous water damage, the family should have used the formal legal protections available under U.S. law. For example, they could have sent a formal written notice detailing every structural and safety issue to create a paper trail. Then, they could have filed an official report with the city or county building inspector or health department.
By doing this, the OP would have had a stronger legal position in a possible court case, and it could also have pressured the landlord to address the safety hazards within an allotted time. Unfortunately, the narrator and their family took a risky and morally questionable route that could have been avoided. But would you have done the same? Let us know!
Readers were mostly skeptical regarding holes in the story, with many pointing out incongruities
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