It's certainly a challenge being in charge of someone else's housing situation. While it might be pleasant to make some extra income while also giving someone place to stay, the management is frustrating. Suddenly, whenever they have a problem, you're the one in charge of fixing it. Too many problems? Then you need to do the hardest thing imaginable: Kick someone out. It's not always easy, but sometimes the reasons certainly justify the ends.
Reddit user, u/xyvz-_, wanted to know the worst reasons when they asked:
Landlords, what is the stupidest reason you've had to evict someone?
Who Knew A Shower Curtain Could Carry So Much Financial Weight?
Had to evict someone for not using the shower curtain.
They took a long shower and flooded their bathroom, which ran down and flooded the apartment below them.
We lost the downstairs tenant as well. Plus insurance wouldn't cover the damages since it wasn't from a burst pipe or other plumbing issue.
Then when they were evicted they asked for their damage deposit back.
That's Not How Tile Works...
Not a tenant, but a recent home buyer I had the pleasure of dealing with. Two story townhouse. Owners were throwing the hose through the second story window to clean the bathroom. Just spraying it down. Submitted a warranty claim for the water damage downstairs. "It was tile so we thought it would be waterproof."
Claim - denied.
Something So Small, But Leading To Something So Large
Stealing light bulbs.
Whenever a bulb in his commercial suite went out, he'd wait until the building was empty and steal one from the hallway with an office chair.
He got caught once or twice and told to call maintenance instead. It wasn't like they charged for bulbs or anything.
The final straw was when he let himself into another tenant's suite with a coathanger to steal a bulb he couldn't find in the public spaces in the building.
He might have gotten away with it too, had he not fallen off the unfamiliar chair he'd used to do the job, breaking both it and half the sh-t on the desk behind him in the process.
He was locked out of the building and all of his sh-t was in off-site storage before he was even out of the hospital.
They Get Down To Business Super Seriously
Broke a their toilet multiple times.
I'm not talking about clogging the b-tch.
They must have been doing some weight lifting on the toilet because the bowl was breaking off of it every month or so. We were spending more money replacing the toilets so often than the rent they were paying. Had to evict them after 6 months straight of breaking toilets. Also their excuse every time was that their 3 year old child would just sit on these toilets and the toilet would break. We were buying normal toilets from Home Depot or Lowes.
I'm not sure how they broke them but they were. I've never broke a toilet by sitting on it before and I'm much heavier than that toddler
Doing Bad And Doing good
This happened two months ago. Had a tenant move in and sign the lease- just him and in it specifically said no subletting. He was a recovering alcoholic who did really well in programming while sober. A month in he fell off the wagon, lost his job etc.
To make up rent he turned the home into an unofficial half way house/boarding home. Normally it was a 3 bed 2 bath, he put doors on living rooms, cut a whole through a closet to make a second entrance to the master bath(hall closet and master bath closet backup to each other) and had bunk beds in a large back hall to the deck. Had enough room to sleep 8 not counting the couches which he may have charged people to sleep on.
The neighbors gave me the heads up something was going on after the large uptick in traffic in/out of the house. He was charging his "tenants" various rates depending on their room/bed and bathroom access(whether you got the master bath or the other one) and actually made money after paying me rent. He went peacefully but the security deposit only covered about a third of the damages.
When You Got The Shot Take The Shot
My parents rented out a small rural home. Tenant hunted thru the screen door, so there were random holes in it.
Left the carpet covered in dog sh-t. Left some of his furniture there, namely a couch and mattress covered in... something... and just reeking of booze.
My dad loaded the furniture and carpet up on his backhoe, dug a giant hole on the back 40, and buried it all.
People In Glass Houses And All That
They threatened another housemate and their guests with a knife for being too loud, while he was watching an action movie turned all the way up.
Just Because You Can Do It In Movies...
My dorm mate freshman year got evicted for rolling through the hallway on an office chair blasting a big fire extinguisher.
Boxed Out For Our Own Good
My dad's the landlord but I'm technically second voice of the property. We own the house next door for renting purposes.
This tenant was the definition of "I'll pay you eventually." She only talks to my dad if she needs help, otherwise she avoids us. But I'll get back to that.
This woman had a dog and all that time we thought it was hers. She treated it like garbage, barely took care of it. One day she left this little puppy in the snow and my mom was furious. Before we could call over the dog to give him some warmth, the tenant walked out, grabbed him and slammed the door. She would keep using "pet fees" as an excuse to hold off on rent and we learned that A) she was lying and B) the dog WASN'T EVEN HERS.
From what I put together, she held her ex's dog hostage and took it out on him by not taking good care of him. My dad, after realizing it went to confront her and she hid from him, then drove away, claiming she had a party to go to. My dad blocked the driveway with his car and said he's move it once she pays her rent. She was so hysterical; it got to the point where she got her dad involved, but he ended up taking OUR side.
Her dad paid the rent, sent the dog back and we were done with her.
EDIT: I see a lot of people were skeptical about my dad blocking the driveway. To clarify, he wasn't blocking her IN, he was blocking her OUT from when she returned. Also she didn't likely go to a party, she was just trying to avoid him. And this is in Canada so the laws slightly vary. It definitely would've been illegal if he blocked her in. Either way, this didn't last very long, so it wasn't something that put her in danger.
For The Benefit Of All Old Ladies Everywhere
My landlord had to evict the two young men living in the basement apartment.
They got into a habit of terrorising the poor old lady living on the first floor. And they would also always turn the heat of the building up to 45C. It was a huge fire hazard. Let's say we were happy they left.
The Nerve Of Some People
Tenant left all the windows open [in] rain storms apparently and didn't clean up water that blew in and every single window in the house was rotted and had black mold.
They asked for their deposit back. 😑
Did They Think People Wouldn't Notice?
Had a tenant who started gutting the apartment and selling off the appliances that came with it.
Easiest Game Of Chicken Ever
I can answer that.
Tenant was growing weed in the house.
Other tenants were complaining.
Called in and told him to get rid of it.
I don't care about it being illegal (it is where I am), but I take the complaints from the other tenants seriously.
He said he would.
Couple of days later the other tenants call and say the plant is still there.
So I met him and said if you don't get rid of the plant now, I'm calling the cops.
He said 'call them'.
So I did.
Arrested and evicted in one easy motion.
What an idiot.
Put Yourself In These Shoes
Ugh, we went through this too. The tenants jerked us around for four months before we were finally able to give them the boot and somehow we were still the bad guys. They owed us thousands of dollars and left the property in awful condition! We bought the property to make money, not because we wanted to give people free housing, and contrary to popular opinion of landlords, we aren't uber-rich mansion barons. We have a mortgage on our primary home and our rental properties, we have jobs, we have bills, and it would cause problems for us if one of our properties didn't cashflow for months on end.
People have a lot of opinions about what happened whenever it gets brought up, but they always clam up really fast whenever I ask if they'd like to give a stranger $2,780 worth of free housing out of their own pocket. Everyone wants to pretend that of course they'd let them stay for as long as they needed, but no one wants to say that they'd be cool with giving up almost $3k for no reason.
A College To Never Want To Shower In
Was an RA back in 2004. My male showers kept clogging in the bathroom on my co-ed floor. Facilities would have to be called in to address it, and after the 3rd time, they investigated a little. Guy comes to me, "So normally we find hair, "conditioner", or other stuff like condoms clogging the drain...yours though, it's feces. Sh-t. Human waste. Someone is sh-tting in your shower." I immediately went to the 3 wrestlers who lived on my hall (having wrestled most my life I knew how rowdy they could get) ready to accuse them, and they flat out told me, "if it was us, we'd be sh-tting in the hall."
I took them for their word and left it all alone till a week later when someone clogged again. Shut down my bathroom, forced everyone over to the other wings bathroom until we figured it out. The next morning, my co-RA woke up early to go brush his teeth and noticed a STRONG scent of human sh-t in the bathroom when he walked in. He thought this odd as there were no feet under the stalls, but the shower was running. Knowing what I was dealing with, he waited outside the bathroom until the person showering came out.
It was the guy who lived next to me in a solo room. Extreme OCD (we're talking fully cleaned his room daily top to bottom). We found out over time that the toilet seats were "too dirty" so he was sh-tting in the showers and forcing it down the grate with his shower sandals.
He was fined by the school for the OT paid to the facilities people (as this usually happened after their hours) and after another incident, forced to move off-campus.
Best part: Dude was a student worker in the cafeteria. I never ate at his station again.
