Imagine having an awful landlord who accuses you of doing things you didn’t actually do. Would you prove him wrong, ignore him, move out, or find a way to retaliate?

In this story, several housemates share a rental house together. The landlord has accused them of doing some pretty crazy things, and they’re sick of his drama. But a recent discovery one of the housemates made could be the perfect opportunity for revenge. The only problem is that one housemate would rather keep living in the house than get revenge.

Is it better to get back at the landlord or keep living in this house? Let’s read the whole story to decide.

WIBTAH for reporting my landlord without my housemates consent

I live in a house share with a group of 4 others. We didn’t move in as friends, but have become close since.

We’ve lived in this property for 5 years.

Our landlord has always been an absolute nightmare (leaving us with a broken boiler over winter, never checking gas, using unlicensed workers to fix up issues etc) but recently it’s been escalating.

Here are a couple examples of the landlord jumping to conclusions that were very wrong.

Our house was broken into recently and our landlord is convinced we staged the break in ourselves.

I have no idea why, because we literally reported it to the police and obviously would never do something like this.

Then, during a house visit, he bumped into my friend who was staying with me for a few days. He is convinced (despite our contradiction) that this friend is living with us illegally.

This is not the case. I literally just had a friend over.

OP learned something really interesting.

As a result, he is now trying to enforce regular check-in’s without warning, trying to ban us from having visitors altogether and is harassing us daily to admit to what he’s accusing us of – breaking into our own house and illegally subletting to others.

I called a government helpline for advice on what to do, which is how I found out that the property is NOT a registered HMO, which means our landlord has been renting out the house illegally.

If I report him to our local council he will lose the house, and me and my housemates will eventually be evicted (with a grace period to find somewhere new).

But most importantly – we will all get our rent back for the year. Which is about £10k each. Thats a lot of money to anyone – particularly a group of 20-somethings in one of the most expensive cities in the world.

The landlord did something unexpected.

Now after finding out about this, my housemates and I sent a letter of complaint to our landlord, telling him to stop his harassment. Our assumption was, he’d tell us to back off and we could confidently report him to the council for breaking the law, knowing we had at least tried to negotiate peace.

However, in response to this email… he agreed to stop all demands and accusations.

Totally unexpected. My housemates seem happy about this, but I’m… not.

I don’t trust him. At all. And I want him to pay for the stuff he’s put us through, literally. I want to report him anyway.

One housemate really loves living in this house.

2 of my housemates could be swayed to join me on this, I think. But the 3rd (I’ll call her Lucy)… she lives and dies by this house. It’s her baby, and she is more than happy to deal with this behaviour so that she can live here for as long as she likes.

So, I’m considering reporting our landlord to the council without Lucy’s permission.

It’s making me feel really weird though – because it means she will eventually be kicked from the house she loves so dearly. I don’t know if karmically I can live with that, even though I know it’ll be for the best – she’ll walk away with the exact same compensation as the rest of us.

I don’t know what to do. I need advice. Would I be a jerk for this. What do you think.

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That’s a tough situation, but the landlord deserves to be reported. The drama probably isn’t over if they don’t report him, and it would be amazing for all of them to get their money back.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who is caught in the middle of family drama after cleaning out her hoarder father’s home.

Let’s see what Reddit suggests?

They don’t need Lucy’s permission.

But it may not work out the way they hope.

This person would want the money.

Nobody has to know who reported the landlord.

I wonder what’s so great about this house that Lucy wants to live there forever. Based on some of the comments, even if they do report the landlord, she may be able to continue living there. They may not actually get evicted, and they also may not actually get their money. Or, it might be a lot harder to get their money than they expect.

Let’s take Lucy out of the equation. The real question is if it’s worth reporting the landlord even if they don’t get the money or don’t get it for a very long time. If the answer is yes, simply for revenge sake, than it’s worth it. If it’s all about the money, they might be disappointed.