Imagine owning a house that’s part of an HOA, and you decide to rent it out. If your tenant was horrible, would you be honest if another landlord contacted you asking for a reference about this tenant?

In this story, one landlord is in this exact situation, and his former tenant contacted him with a sob story about how much trouble she’s having finding a place to live.

Now, he’s wondering if he should help her out even though he doesn’t want to. Let’s read all the details.

AITA for giving negative references for my former tenant and making it hard for her to find a place to rent?

I [56M] rent out a house my late brother left me.

I had a long streak of good tenants, until the one before the current one, who was named Jamie.

Jamie was a 30 year old, low-income single mom of three kids. To my knowledge I was the first person she’d rented from, as she had lived with her mom and boyfriend before that.

She was a nightmare of a tenant (no regard for the rules, late with payments, destructive of property, moved in multiple people without my consent, very rude, and many other things).

Not following the rules was the biggest problem.

Perhaps the worst thing about her was her disobedience of the HOA rules: though they were explained clearly to her many times, she violated the rules on an almost daily basis and racked up a fee of $800 by the time she was gone.

She refused to pay this fine and I had to cover it in full.

I was able to evict her after four months of her living there.

Jamie wasn’t the brightest.

A little while after she was evicted, I began getting calls from prospective renters inquiring about Jamie, meaning that she was putting me as a reference (probably not the smartest move).

It’s likely she was expecting me to give a “neutral reference”, where the landlord simply confirms the dates that the tenant lived there and says nothing else.

Well, she was wrong.

I gave terrible (but completely honest) references.

Jamie seemed to learn her lesson.

Five or so prospective renters contacted me over the course of the next couple months and I told all of them the truth about Jamie.

These calls stopped after a while, indicating she wised up and stopped listing me.

But then Jamie called to ask for a favor.

Just recently, I received a phone call from Jamie. She told me that she has been unable to find a home due to not having any previous landlords to list as a reference (landlords see this as a big red flag), and that she lost her job shortly after I evicted her. She said she and the kids had to live with her mother, who is in her words an “abusive narcissist”, this whole time.

Jamie told me that this is greatly affecting her mental health and that she has reason to believe her mom may soon kick them out, and they have nowhere to go and she fears they could become homeless.

She was begging me to start giving “neutral references”, so she can have someone to list as a reference and have a better chance of finding a place to rent.

OP was not willing to do that.

I told her no, reminded her of what an awful tenant she was and made it clear that if anyone contacts me about her, I will give an honest answer.

She continued to plead with me, and eventually broke down crying.

I had to hang up on her.

AITA for not giving “neutral references” for Jamie, and thus making it a challenge for her to find a new place to live?

Jamie made bad decisions, and now, she’s realizing there are consequences. I don’t think OP did anything wrong. Let’s see if Reddit agrees.

She got herself into this mess.

One person might consider helping her if she pays the fees.

Another landlord shares their experience.

She’s learning her lesson the hard way.

This is not his problem to solve.

If you liked that post, check this one about a guy who got revenge on his condo by making his own Christmas light rules.