Imagine happily living in an apartment building for many years, but then you find out the landlord is planting evidence to try to evict you. Would you call him out on it, move out before he could evict you, or get revenge?

In this story, a group of renters get together to get revenge on their awful landlord before he can evict them. The drama escalates when they move out and he takes them to court.

Let’s see how the story plays out.

Let us paint the walls however we like while secretly trying to evict us? Okay!

Background: my cousin, her wife, and their two kids lived in a rented apartment along with five other resident units in a European country.

It’s not completely upscale but it’s definitely not slum, and it’s a really beautiful place.

And by lived, their “landlord” decided to evict as many residents as he could so he could “renovate” and bump up the rent by 3x. Pretty bad.

This all occurred starting back in September.

The landlord seems to be planting evidence.

Now “scum lord”, as my cousin passionately called him, had tried to keep it a secret, but another tenant, who did work on the apartments for a reduced rent, found paperwork when he was fixing a broken window at Scum Lord’s residence (a very, very nice house).

He shared it with the other residents, because that paperwork were drafts of eviction notices for random things. Example: pictures of the residents of apartment 3 have been leaving garbage in the hallway.

According to my cousin, who lived in apartment 3, they kept finding bags of garbage outside their door. Not theirs, but ones full of fast food take-out and very… unsettling magazines.

My cousin is vegetarian. She and her wife try not to eat take out. It’s definitely not their garbage.

Nobody wanted to get evicted.

But back to the story: basically, my cousin, her wife, and the other residents came together in their courtyard and realized that their landlord was faking these sorts of things to get them all evicted… with “photographic evidence”.

None of them were very happy. Especially since; one apartment was apparently being rented by couples who just had their first child, another held an elderly couple who had nowhere else to go, three families including my cousin’s who’d been living there for over ten years, and the maintenance guy who couldn’t find anywhere closer to work and didn’t have a car.

And rent prices were already skyrocketing. These guys literally had no where else to go.

One person had an idea.

Of course, they found this out while Scum Lord was out of town, so they couldn’t confront him.

As they were stewing over this, my cousin’s wife (let’s call her Ali) had an idea. She and my cousin had been planning to repaint their living room because the paint was peeling, and Scum Lord had said, in EMAIL: paint it.

He didn’t specify how it was painted or what colour was used.

Ali suggested that they all get permission to repaint their places, but in HORRENDOUS ways. Then move out quickly.

Almost everyone agreed to the revenge plan.

Everyone except the older couple jumped on board, which as my cousin explained to me, they didn’t want to start a fight in a losing battle.

The older couple later managed to move into a retirement community that one of the families found for them to go to.

Anyways. The rest of the residents agreed to it, and Scum Lord was sent email requests for repaints.

And he basically said “go for” in each one. I guess he thought he could get free paint jobs done from them…

I bet this was like a dream come true for the kids!

So, while juggling their normal lives, my cousin’s family and the other four units all have to find new places, start packing, set up everything for the painting and repaint their walls.

My cousin decided to be extra vindictive, and buys a ton of black paint, along with varying neon colours. She and Ali then painted on as many layers of black paint that they could (after using primer of course), in every. Single. Room. Even the bathrooms and ceilings weren’t spared!

They finished in about mid-November… and they then let their kids (5 and 8) loose with the neon colours. I’m talking handprints, random swathes of paint, got footprints on the ceiling, and just every random thing those two kids wanted.

It, according to my cousin, was a GLORIOUS, HORRIFIC disaster. She told me there was even a butt-print! (Though she could’ve been exaggerating).

Moving out didn’t mean they were done with the landlord.

She didn’t know what the other places were like, only hearing that maintenance guy painted rainbows everywhere, that the family in apartment 5 had just thrown different coloured paints on the walls at random, etc.

Thankfully they (cousin’s family) managed to find a place before Christmas, which was smaller but it was in a good area of their town. They sent their moving notice and booked it.

Two weeks later after they settled in their new place, Scum Lord is blowing up their cells… he was mad by all the new looks. He then wanted to sue them and threatened court.

Cousin and Ali obliged.

They had a lot of evidence.

Court day comes and Scum Lord actually had a lawyer, and was suing all five of the former resident families at once. He claimed a whole bunch of stuff, including all the reasons for the evictions…

Maintenance guy destroyed him. Provided proof about the fake eviction evidence (ex. apparently some of the garbage included receipts from Scum Lord’s own purchases, that damage to the sink in apartment 6 was actually from Scum Lord trying to fix it, etc).

Then, they all provided the email printouts of the paint requests, pointing out how Scum Lord never specified how it was to be painted or the colours.

It worked out well for everyone but the landlord.

The judge threw Scum Lord’s case out and ordered him to pay restitution for damages.

My cousin’s family got the restitution, and she watched in glee as Scum Lord struggled to undo the paint damages before apparently giving up and tried to sell the building.

So far, there have been no takers!

Wow! They were smart to get revenge on the landlord and move out before he could evict them. His biggest mistake was thinking he could win in court!

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Here’s another story about a maintenance guy.

This person knew what to expect and loved it!

This sounds even more extreme!

One person took a slightly different approach.

Some revenge is hard work but well worth it.

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