Imagine renting a home, apartment, or in the case of this story, a trailer. If you were renting and something in your renal unit wasn’t working properly, would you fix it yourself or tell your landlord?

In this story, one young person who was renting a trailer tried telling the landlord about an issue, but when she wouldn’t fix it, he found a way to fix it himself. Instead of being happy that he solved his own problem, the landlord warned him not to do that again.

So when an even bigger problem occurred, he took her words to heart.

I can’t say I can blame him.

Let’s read all about it.

Tell me I’m not allowed to make any unauthorized repairs on my residence? Fine by me, it’s your problem now.

It’s about seven years ago. I’m living in a trailer (like, legit trailer, not a double wide) in a trailer park because it was my own place and it got me the hell away from my parents and didn’t cost me an arm and a leg for rent.

Cramped? You bet. But living on my own was a freedom I can’t understate.

Now, about the landlord…

That price came with its own price, though: The landlord was…kinda lazy.

Hell, I didn’t even get a tank of propane when I signed the lease, I had to pay for it myself!

But rolled into the rent was all utilities besides electricity, which, oddly enough, the landlord was responsible for adding that to our rent every month. (This led to some interesting issues that eventually got resolved but that’s not within the scope of this sub.)

Other than that, landlord paid everything.

The outdoor lighting was an issue.

My trailer already had issues, mostly parts of it breaking from just old age. But one of the bigger things was the outdoor lighting.

You see, there was this very small step that went up to the concrete platform my trailer sat on, and it was small enough that I have no idea why it was put there but big enough that you’ll easily trip over it.

The landlord had put down those cheapo solar lights to keep it lit, but those had since died.

I brought it to the landlord’s attention. Promises it’d get fixed. This went on for weeks.

He tried to solve the problem himself.

Finally after a particularly bad day at work, I decided I had enough once I tripped over it for the umpteenth time. Went to the Homeless Despot and picked up some better solar lights and stuck them where the old ones were.

Finally, bliss and not having visitors and myself trip up on their way to my front door.

…or so I thought.

Couple days later I come home from work, my solar lights are (crudely) ripped out of the ground and tossed aside, and there’s a notice taped to my door that essentially said RESIDENTS ARE NOT ALLOWED TO MAKE THEIR OWN REPAIRS OR MODIFICATIONS TO ANYTHING ON THEIR PROPERTY, IF YOU NEED ANYTHING PLEASE CONTACT $LAZYLANDLORD

The landlord was never going to fix it though!

(For those curious, for the entire year and a half I lived there, no, they never replaced the lights. I did, however, stick a directional light on the one outdoor light I was allowed to replace, and aimed it right at the offending step.)

This becomes relevant later. I just sighed angrily, and went about the rest of my day.

Now, remember when I said things were breaking on my trailer from old age?

A few months later, I come home from work to hear running water near my trailer.

This is an even bigger problem.

I round the corner, and notice that the big water hose feeding my trailer water had basically disintegrated from being old and worn, and was spewing water everywhere.

I also remembered that 1. The landlord pays the water bill, and 2. They were lazy and never did anything, and 3. When I did try to correct for their laziness they went HAM on me for daring to make my life somewhat better.

So I turned around, went back to my car, called my mom, and asked if I could stay the night at her house, to which she agreed.

He intentionally did nothing to solve the problem this time.

Sure, I knew exactly where the shutoff valve was for the water line going to my trailer. Could I have engaged it? Sure.

But seeing as the last time I did something good I was screamed at for making “my own repairs”, nope. Landlord was going to pay for ALL that water. And her laziness too. (Seriously, that hose should have been swapped LONG ago, and wasn’t.)

Never Miss a Story

Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.

The landlord did try to hassle me over it (the irony is she lived directly adjacent to my trailer, so her not noticing the GUSHING WATER is next-level laziness), but I pointed out that she specifically told me I’d get a paddlin’ if I tried to do anything on my own again, and figured I’d leave water issues to the “professionals”. And maintenance of the water system was never spelled out in my responsibilities to the property.

She eventually got relieved of her job a couple months after that whole thing went down. Her replacement was much better about things.

The landlord really did sound lazy. Also, it’s ridiculous to complain about tenants solving their own problems if the lazy landlord doesn’t plan on fixing anything.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

I don’t think I could live this long without hot water!

Another person shares their thoughts.

This person shares their opinion.

One person is picky about the phrasing.

To answer the last question, sure a landlady might be more specifically correct, but I would think a landlord could be male or female. Kind of like using the word “guys” to mean men or women. Some male words are almost gender neutral anymore.

Anyway, back to the real point of the story. That was a smart way of handling it. If the landlord doesn’t want OP to fix repairs himself, and if she doesn’t actually fix anything when it’s a problem for him, he needs to make it a problem for her.

Well played!