The next tenant in the Dragon House was recommended to us by a casual acquaintance.
Janet was a single mom, with a good rental history. She told us she wanted to move closer to her kids’ school.
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It wasn’t the first time we’d heard that excuse, so we made sure to call her landlord. I asked him lots of questions and he assured me she was always on time with her rent.
The convenience store where she worked had positive things to say about her, so we knew she had a steady job.
Armed with two great references, we decided to accept her as a tenant.
She ended up being our worst tenant yet.
Janet had two teenage boys but she didn’t know how to parent.
She wanted to be their best friend so there were no rules. She was the cool mom. She wanted to hang around with their friends, to the point where it was seriously inappropriate.
She reminded me of the movie The Graduate, where a young college student has an affair with an older married woman. Only in our situation, the young men were in high school. Just a little bit creepy if you ask me.
Janet’s parenting style, if you could call it one, was to open her doors to all the kids in town and let them do what they wanted.
She’d provide the place and the booze and they could party all they wanted.
Our beautiful little house had turned into a frat house. The neighbors would call to complain about the kids on the roof in the middle of the night, drinking and throwing bottles. When we called Janet, she would make up some excuses and shut them down.
Sometimes the neighbors would call the police, but they couldn’t do much. The town didn’t have a noise bylaw, so we couldn’t get her that way.
Each time there was a complaint, we would take our official clipboard and visit Janet. After a review of the rental rules, we would give her an ultimatum. We told her she had to stop causing problems with the neighbors or we would evict her.
It was an empty threat.
The Landlord-Tenant Act in our Province is very lenient toward tenants.
We couldn’t serve her notice because of noise complaints from the neighbors. The complaint had to be from another one of our tenants. We didn’t have any tenants nearby, so there was no one to file a complaint. A catch-22.
She had to do something illegal first. And we would have to catch her doing it.
Janet would sleep with any guy who looked at her twice.
A guy we hired to do repairs on the house called her a ‘piece of work’ and refused to go back to finish the job.
When my husband repaired the sink in the kitchen, she walked in wearing a skimpy nightgown and leaned against the countertop, giving him a suggestive view. He refused to ever go there alone again.
She didn’t care what people thought. She would answer the door in a housecoat with a shirtless teen standing beside her. She would greet us with a coy smile and he’d look embarrassed and sheepish.
Halloween was a nightmare. It got so we dreaded holidays as they approached.
New Year’s Eve was coming up and we contemplated our options. We even considered spending the night camped in her front yard, so we could shut the party down.
In the end, it was a new boyfriend that lured her away.
He wanted her to move in with him and she gave us her notice. We spent that month holding our breath, afraid he would change his mind.
At the end of the month, she moved out and we breathed a sigh of relief.
We didn’t want to make that mistake again.
There must have been some clue we’d missed. We’d checked her references so carefully.
Then we realized — of course her landlord gave her a good reference. He wanted to get rid of her!
He wanted someone to take this problem off his hands. If he had given her a lousy reference, she’d never leave.
Lesson learned. Ask for references from several different landlords. Don’t just trust the one where the tenant is currently living. They’ll say anything to get the tenant out.
Next up: Truck hunting with a shotgun as a Sunday activity
This is a fictional series that explores the challenges of being a landlord. It also reveals the idiosyncrasies of various tenants. Some of the scenes are based on true experiences. None of them are entirely fiction.
Paid subscribers can access the entire archive of my stories from the beginning, along with my poetry and every article I’ve ever written here. If you aren’t a paid subscriber, you can access the archive for free with a 7-day trial.
It's kind of odd that the legislation favors the tenant and not the landlord. I thought it was the reverse.
I used to watch episodes of the old Abbott and Costello TV show. On the show, they lived in a rooming house where the landlord would physically assault and verbally attack Costello whenever he felt like it. (Granted, they were always behind in paying him rent...) I know it was meant to be played for laughs, but I always wondered: "Could he get away with that now?"
Reading your case, I would have to conclude: no.
Ugh what a nightmare. I'm not sure if you've ever watched the series, Worst Roommate Ever. It was soooo bad and in America the landlord's rights are almost non-existent.
There are several documentaries about terrible tenants. Scary out there.