Who’s ready for another story on Reddit about a terrible landlord?

Well, you’re in the right place!

Read on and see what you think about this one!

Double my rent? I’ll get you in taxes.

“This is a story about my neighbor. We’ll call him Tom.

Tom is an older gentleman, super nice, and a great neighbor. He’s always been a nice guy to us and is the only neighbor who didn’t judge us for our lack of religion in a very religious location.

Anyway Tom and his wife have been having it rough on their end because Tom had a back injury that caused him to be unable to work. On top of that he got the short end of the stick on his disability pay and has been getting standard social security without disability until the errors get sorted out.

Up till now Tom has been doing okay by finding low income housing and doing lots of odd jobs to make up the difference in pay. It’s been working for Tom for the last few years till a few months ago.

This is sad…

A few months ago Tom’s landlord (LL from now on), without any due notice or change of contract, tried to increase Tom’s rent by 100%. Tom didn’t have the money and had no ability to get that money. It really feels like LL just wants Tom out of there so that he doesn’t have to keep the house at disabled housing prices.

Well Tom is told that he’s got until next month to figure it out and that’s that. Tom is freaking out trying to figure out what’s going to happen to him and his wife.

He’s looking for new locations, but due to having found disabled house previously, he is now at the bottom of the housing list and there is no where in the state that has low enough cost of living. This is because of his Social Security/Disability Mix up.

Well luckily Tom is a very talkative man and shares his stories with just about everyone. His friends have him talk to a lawyer about it because it didn’t seem right, and the lawyer starts looking into it.

If I remember right, his lawyer was also a friend or was just willing to help out due to circumstances because he didn’t really pay them much due to his lack of money. Nice lawyer.

There was some good news…

The first shinning light for Tom was that due to circumstances, he could legally squat in the home for up to six months without paying rent because LL was breaking contract. The next shining light was that even if LL wanted to do something to Tom about that, he would.

Turns out the house, according to the city was a single family home. Fun fact, the house was converted into a duplex and rented as such for the last 21 years… Yeah you read that right 21 years.

LL didn’t want this to go to court because he didn’t want the city to actually come and inspect his property. So instead LL was trying to get Tom to leave of his own volition, or on bad terms.

LL was sending his daughter down to take pictures of the house and watch it. They were trying to find dirt on Tom so they could use it to evict him before Tom got court papers in order.

Luckily Tom had 2 things going for him. He had no dirt for LL to find, and all of us loved Tom and felt that LL was an old piece of **** that was trying to take advantage of people. That being said, LL didn’t get anything on Tom and the court date soon came about.

There was a happy ending.

The story ends on a bittersweet note. The court ended up ruling in Toms favor. Tom didn’t have to pay any rent for the last 6 months of living in the location and he owed nothing to LL for any reason. Tom did however have to vacate the premise within the next 48 hours or so. That’s the bittersweet part.

The great part is that now LL has to pay 21 years of back taxes and fees for renting a single family house out as a duplex, against zoning laws, and I’m pretty sure that on top of that the court is forcing him to reconvert it back to a single family home.

I’ve seen renovation crews coming in and tearing all sorts of things down, they may even be getting rid of the house, but that’s just conjecture on my part.

Either way, it’s costing LL 10-100 thousand dollars to sit right with the law. When he could have had a happy tenant for the next 20 years.”

Let’s see what people had to say on Reddit.

This person weighed in.

Another individual chimed in.

This Reddit user didn’t hold back.

And this person spoke up.

Karma…it’s real, ladies and gents!

Thought that was satisfying? Check out what this employee did when their manager refused to pay for their time while they were traveling for business.