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5 “Tenant From Hell” Stories

Landlord Advice

We want to add a light-hearted theme to the DIY Landlord Advice section. We’ve all had those “Tenants from Hell” – tenants who often make us question whether or not we should really be in the landlord field. Some tenants can be a huge nightmare – others can cause a lot of problems but we can always see the funny side.

If you want to submit your stories please do so via our contact page. We will never post your name or e-mail address and we recommend changing any names used for privacy reasons.

So please submit your stories – in the meantime here are a few famous cases of “Tenants from Hell” that I’m sure many of us can relate to(although on a much smaller scale):

Hoarder– the 16 story building, located at first Christopher street, has been in Jimmy Silber’s family for decades now, since the 1930s and the land lord, Jimmy, had for the most part managed to maintain a good relationship with his tenants as a great landlord that kept the pristine 16 story building in perfect condition. Dolores Miller moved in to share an apartment with another lady and things seemed initially fine, until the lady was diagnosed with Dementia, carted off to a nursing home and Dolores chose to stay.

Dolores was a hoarder, the kind that didn’t simply store furniture and newspapers as that would have remained her business; Dolores hoarded food, large rotten piles of spoiled food that would, over a period of time diffuse a pungent stench of rot and filth throughout the building to her neighbors on all sides. Dolores’ hold on the apartment stemmed from her claim that she was Walsh, the former tenant’s lover and thus deserved her apartment. It took $100,000 in legal fees to finally evict Dolores in March of 2003

The serial evictee– Nina Baum is the best example of what could be described as a serial evictee; being the kind of tenant that has lived in and been evicted from some of the most expensive and Porsche establishments around without putting up a fight. Her happy story began with her marriage and ended with her divorce at which point she would harass her husband to no end till he acquired custody of their daughter.

Soon Nina began a pattern of moving into apartments, and living in it without paying a single coin of rent before accepting to be evicted for failure to pay, each time launching some sort of rumor such as sexual assault against those that sought her removal. It has taken over a dozen law suits from dozens of complainants to begin to curb her irritating activities.

Domestic violence faker– in 2002 Latonya Malone attempted to acquire an apartment under the section 8 subsidized schemes, a mechanisms only available to those victims of domestic violence. Because of the long waiting list, Latonya’s solution was to fabricate a domestic violence case against a nonexistent culprit. A year later the police were not too happy to learn of her deception.

Chevelle Richardson attempted to do the same thing but for her daughter, with section 8 rules tightening up to include only minors too old to stay in foster care. The repugnant nature of these liars particularly irks law enforcement as it masks other real victims of domestic violence.

Scammers– Jones scam revolved around the ads she put in the newspaper regarding subletting what she described as her luxury apartment for less than half of what it would go for on the market given the hard times. Of course that was a lie and nearly a dozen people were scammed of $800 security deposits before catching on that they would not be getting that luxury apartment.

Killers– Shayne Sinclair made quite the mistake when he attempted to collect three weeks worth of unpaid back rent from a boarding house in Brooklyn. For his trouble, attempting to collect the rent, he was stabbed by Irving, the sixty year old tenant. This isn’t a particularly unique story and many a landlord and tenant have fallen afoul of the murderous hand or lying tongue from a lunatic tenant hell bent on getting their way despite the rules set in the law.

Submit your stories via our contact us page. And remember – our eviction notice template is just a click away!