This sounds like the morbidly obese woman I read about on another site. in addition they had to deal with her wiping feces on everything and crapping on the the seat cushions and turning them over. People like this deserve to be homeless.
I just got told about somebody that rented out their new house to a family of Asian immigrants which was actually a hoard of them instead. They put a layer of dirt about three feet deep on the rugs and against the walls in the rooms leaving about half of each room free for sleeping. They were farming food in all the rooms. The owner found this out way to late and the floors and walls were rotted out. So much for a nice new home, and of course they had no recoup of the damages. This somebody my brother knows.
The house my grandmom had been born in on the outskirts of Ft. Worth had been added onto a number of times and was just a marvelous old country place. She’d gotton too old to stay there by herself though so she moved into town and rented it out. A trusting person, some of her renters took advantage of her kindness and gullibility. Pretty soon it became run down and one family in particular trashed it pretty good, leaving all manner of filth, stealing the AC window units, the fridge, etc. Before we could get it fixed hobos from the nearby train track discovered it and moved in. When my dad caught them and ran them off the next day a fire consumed much of the house. We eventually had to bring in a bulldozer and dump trucks and tear it down completely. Now the woods have again taken over and there’s no trace whatsoever of what was once the family’s prized homestead, birthplace to three generations.
How do I feel about irresponsible, shitty tennants? Guess.
I have no issue with the fact that people can be jerks.
But if you rent to anyone, anytime without demanding references and rigorously checking those references, then it’s on you. Yes, you could still get caught out and end up with awful tenants but the chances are very small indeed.
Renting houses is like anything else, it takes work and attention to detail. People seem to think they can succeed at it by putting a ‘for rent’ sign up and taking a cheque from the first ‘nice people’ that show up. Surprise! It’s not that easy.
The most common phrase you hear is, ‘too trusting’. No, too lazy to make a few phone calls and ask a few questions, that’s not too trusting, that’s outright foolish.
Worst I ever actually saw was a house some of my friends rented rooms in. One of their house-mates gradually developed a severe mental illness and became progressively more impossible to live with. He rented out the basement, and one of the first signs of his illness was compulsive hoarding - he’d drag back literally tons of old junk and stuff it in his basement rooms.
Later, he became increasingly beligerent. He was taken away to the hospital a few times and forcibly medicated, but he always came back in a few days. Then he’d stop taking his medicines and get worse again.
Things went from bad to worse - I’ll omit the sorry story of attempting to evict him, which proved legally very difficult - and eventually the other renters just nailed the door to the basement shut (he had a seperate entrance, kitchenette, bathroom). That didn’t keep out the smells though, which were terrible, or the sounds (the guy had taken to screaming randomly in the middle of the night) and so the rest of the people living there eventually just found other places to live.
I felt horribly sorry for the landlord left holding the bag so to speak. He was a nice elderly man and not up to the task of dealing with a twentysomething crazy man. From what little I saw, the legal situation was difficult - the mentally ill person had a family with money enough to hire lawyers, apparently, and no great willingness to have this guy live with them; given that he hadn’t actually assaulted anyone, there were no grounds to incarcerate him in a mental hospital on a more continuous basis; given that he was demonstratably disabled and paid his rent (or rather his family did), it was (allegedly) hard to evict him - even though his hoarding, filth, smells, beligerant demeanor, screaming etc. were clearly nuisances.
Trust me. This guy ain’t taking me to court. He’s afraid of me. And I seriously doubt he’ll take the chance. He left with his tail tucked between his legs and isn’t coming back.
My buddy and I are excellent renters. We’re extremely clean and rather handy to boot, so everywhere we lived, we got the landlord to front us the cost while we laid tile, painted the walls (in a very attractive, modern color), fixed poor insulation in the windows, patch holes, and so forth. We left every place we stayed together considerably better than when we left. We found you can have a really nice apartment for cheap if you just do the repairs yourself.
Screw you guys who think it’s okay to come in when the OP is feeling bad and moralize about what he did wrong. Learn to be nice, or be a fucking douchebag, but don’t hover in-between.