Bad Tenant- Mold Issue- Breaking the Lease - Landlord Forum thread 342771

Bad Tenant- Mold Issue- Breaking the Lease by melanie (CT) on February 4, 2016 @15:45

I have a tenant who has repeatedly broken her lease.
She smokes in her apartment, smokes weed in her apartment, her brother moved in without consent or notification to us, him and his friends smoke weed on the property. She continually keeps taking down the smoke detectors. She has a Pit-bull (we don't mind the dog, but it is not trained and insurance won’t cover the dog) and the dog has created damage outside, and inside. She takes forever to clean up the dog shit so the whole yard smells. She leaks oil on our property and never cleans up around her car or staircases when it snows. She is disruptive to the other tenants, both with noises and the smells of cigarettes and weed. Her brother made a small fire pit on the property (we are the bad people because we removed it of course).

She moved into the apt just 6 days after we closed on the house because she couldn't take it anymore from her previous landlord. We did light remodeling of the apt, adding a second bedroom for her. Since she moved in we have put a new floor into the kitchen as well as the bathroom and installed a new vanity. Both areas look horrible after just 6 months.

For the other apartment my fiancé who is a contractor completely gutted the apartment and redid almost everything (to which we got a wow they get a nice new apartment while i get a shit apartment) before those tenants moved in approximately 30 days after the closing.

Throughout the year we have also had trees removed from the property, a brand new retaining wall on the side of the property, a new fence put up on the barrier of the property, new water heaters, brand new windows for the whole house, and a new roof.

We told her that her rent was going to go up (hoping she would move out). She stated she was not going to sign another lease, wanted a month to month. We told her we didn’t want to do that and finally told her that we didn't want to renew the lease either. So New Year’s Eve was the last day of her lease. She didn't move out.

Now in Mid-November to Early December she demanded an exhaust fan stating that there was mold starting to grow on the walls. My fiancé told her code was a window or a fan. she has a window. (She refused to open the window asking are we going to pay her heating bill?)

So she was served for the eviction around the 13th or 14th. On January 28th she called the Health Department. At least that is when they came out to the property. The 2nd floor tenant told us. So now it is February 4th, I haven't heard anything from the health department. What is the protocol for that?

Now I saw she posted on Facebook yesterday that: “Well Lexi had to be picked up early and brought to the dr. For yet another ear infection in less than a month but no, the mold in my house is safe says the landlord. We shall see what the judge thinks in a couple weeks... Lexi NEVER goes to the dr. More than once a yr other than her annual, it’s this house, i wish i had the money to just leave now.”

She has called my fiancé a slumlord to his Face as well as through text message. She fights with him through text messages and states that she wants to discuss it with him in person but then when he goes to try to talks to him she doesn’t say anything, states it is a bad time or just doesn’t say too much when it was such a huge issue the day before.

I have been trying to find out how to deal with this situation and no one can give me a straight answer as to what to do. It seems that all the rights go to the tenant. Each website is to protect the tenant. I tried to call the Legal Clinic and they even stated they only help the tenants.

Help Please!!! Any suggestions would be helpful.

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Re: Bad Tenant- Mold Issue- Breaking the Lease by Garry (Iowa) on February 4, 2016 @16:56	[ Reply ]

First, you both need to stop all forms of communication with the T until your court date. The more you communicate with her, the more likely you are to say something that may be used against you in court. You did not say, so is the rent up to date, and are you filing for eviction based on non payment of rent, or filing against her for holding over into January ? If you wanted her out so badly, why did you not let her go M2M, so you only needed to give her a 30 day notice to move? Sure, you can jump the rent way up. But if she decides to pay it, you're stuck with her. Yes, you would have more rental income from her, but usually the costs to repair damages far exceed any extra rent you get from the T. You should call the health dept. yourself, tomorrow, and find out what they discovered at your property last week. If they found anything, find out from them what you can do about it, and fix it immediately. And your Ts will need to bring a letter from their Dr. stating EXACTLY what caused Lexi's health problems. If Lexi is a student, it's just as likely that she could have caught something at school, as that the mold caused it. Also , take the Facebook page you quoted us, to the judge. Her last words were----"I wish I had the money to just leave now" That says she is probably out of money to even pay your rent. Yet, if the mold really IS causing health problems for her family, she has the obligation as a parent, to protect her child, and she should move out asap, even it's to a homeless shelter.If she does, she would owe you no rent from the time she moved out, till she moved back in again, after the mold problems were fixed. For now, stop communications, unless its to fix the mold problems, and wait for your court date.

Re: Bad Tenant- Mold Issue- Breaking the Lease

Re: Bad Tenant- Mold Issue- Breaking the Lease by Joel on February 4, 2016 @17:55	[ Reply ]

I have incorporated the LPA MOLD Addendum into my lease agreement. It has been a huge help.