Imagine renting a room in a house, and after living there for awhile, you notice that you’re starting to have some weird health issues. If you discovered mold in the house but the landlord claimed it was no big deal, would you believe him and ignore it or ignore him and take the mold seriously?

In this story, one college student is in this situation, and she knows that she should not ignore the mold.

Keep reading to see how she makes sure the landlord can’t ignore it either.

Cost Ignorant Landlord Over $50k

This story is from a while back when I was in college, which was situated in a rather large city, so rent was not very cheap and landlords thought they could cut corners.

Unlike many of the buildings in the area, the room I rented was within a wooden house.

When I toured the house, nothing stood out as unusual – the room was small but cosy, there were rather large common rooms, and the roomates seemed nice (one of whom was the landlord’s daughter).

Another plus was that they were okay with me brniging my cat and not putting down an obnoxious deposit.

Then, she started to notice some unusual things.

Cut to two weeks later, I’m moved into the room and everything seems fine, except my allergies begin to act up.

I figured this was just due to allergy season being in full swing, despite not usually having allergies act up.

One month in and my allergies are worse, and I start to notice small things around the house that seem to just be MacGyvered – for example, sink piping is duct taped and the bathtub had a crack, which seemed to be glued(?) together.

There’s apparently a really big problem.

At 1.5 months, allergies are again worse and my cat beings acting really weird – they start running into things, acting confused, and having what looks like muscle twithing.

I took her into the vet and was told that they believe she’s ingested a large amount of mold.

Dr. Google confirmed that this is a possibility given her symptoms and fully explains how I’ve been feeling.

I end up asking my friend to watch my cat for a couple days while I look for the source of mold in the house.

This is bad. This is really bad!

Remembering the weird handy jobs performed in the bathroom, I removed the little piece of wood that covered the area between the bathtub and ground (it was elevated on some plastic feet) only to find it covered in fuzzy black growth!

I immediately replaced the wood (which had growth on the back side of it too) and checked under the sink.

It looked like there was old water damage no the bottom of the cabinet, but no mold – that is, until I shone a light into a small hold cut out in the back of the cabinet.

Again, the entire area that I could see in that whole was covered in black fuzz. I don’t know if it was psychological, but I ended up getting watery eyes and sneezing a bunch while on the hunt for mold.

She hoped the landlord would help.

I immediately showed my roomate who then called her dad about the mold.

The dad essentially said it’s nothing serious and he’ll get to it when he has time.

Well, 1 week later and he’s done nothing about it.

Wanting to bring my cat back, I called to ask him for an update, and he said that he consulted with a professional who said it didn’t sound like mold and that I should just keep it covered.

She did some research.

I was mad but this being my first rental I had no idea how to handle it; and for as nice as the landlords kid was, she really didn’t try to help pursuade him.

After some research, I found that in my area mold is a hazard that landlords are required to take care of. While this wasn’t stated in my contract, it was a contractual obligation he had.

I called the landlord with this information and told him that I’ll be witholding my rent until he sends someone to look at the issue.

He flat out laughed and said I can’t do that, and that he wouldn’t allow me to break my lease early.

She decided to do something else instead.

I was mad, and too nervous to bring my cat back into the house.

After reviewing some more local codes, I decided that instead of witholding rent I would report the issue to the municipality in hopes of them taking action.

Within 72 hours, they sent an inspector out to not only check the areas I mentioned finding mold in, but also doing a fill inspection of the home.

They spent at least 2 hours walking around the interior and exterior, looking under every applicance and into any accessible space.

The inspector found a lot of problems.

After the review was done, they told me that the mold damage was far more extensive that I thought.

Essentially, the entire house had become infested due to moist conditions and poor ventilation.

He said that this would require extensive work and that I would not be able to stay in my room during this time.

But that’s not all – the inspector also found over a dozen code and permit violations, each of which would have to be remedied or else a huge fine would be levied.

The landlord was furious!

The inspector sent a letter detailing his findings to the landlord, and I got an angry call with him screaming about how I shouldn’t have gotten them involved and how he was actually planning on coming out that weekend.

I was too timid to boast about this win, but I did state that, per the inspectors findings, I will be moving out, as I am leagally allowed to break the lease if conditions are unlivable.

He said I’m not allowed to.

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And I told him to take me to court in that case.

I’m so glad she got out of there!

I moved all my stuff out that day with some help from friends and crashed with the friend watching my cat during this ordeal.

I was able to get a room in a much nicer house rather quickly, and kept in contact with one of the other roomates from the previous home.

Apparently, the landlord tried to rent out my room again and didn’t take the inspectors letter seriously – even the part that stated that they have (I believe it was) 1 month to take care of all code/permit violations before they would be fined daily per violation, some amounting to over $1000 per day.

It didn’t end well for the landlord.

Things got real for him after about 5 weeks, when he got multiple letters from the municipality detailing all of his fines, and how the rates will go up if he continues to ignore them.

Last I heard, he scrambled to respond to correct all of the violations, but not before his fines amounted to $50k and he was forced to have all tenants move out.

I noticed the house for sale a few months later.

I bet he has trouble trying to sell a home with that many problems!

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a tenant who walked away from their lease after the landlord hassled them over renting month-to-month.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

Landlords like this one are truly horrible.

You seriously would think the landlord would care!

Here’s some praise for her actions.

Here’s another story about mold.

Mold should never be ignored.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a tenant who decided to stop returning his neighbor’s misplaced laundry after two years.