LogFAQs > #944479700

Jen0125 posted...

From what I've learned about black mold at my job you're only affected if you have an allergy to it and most people don't.

There's also the question why he didn't just move out and break the lease if the place was so bad. In general, to the extent you want to withhold rent, the amount withheld should be equivalent to the cost of the repair the landlord hasn't made after being notified and given a reasonable opportunity to fix something. And nothing he described made it sound like the property was in such terrible condition that it violated some warranty of habitability. The complaints about being "haunted" and some of the outlets not functioning make it seem that he just didn't want to pay rent and stay there as long as he could get away with it.

But since this is an AMA, I'll ask this in the form of a question:

Why didn't you just move out and break the lease instead of refusing to pay rent and forcing the landlord to evict you if the place was so terrible?

I evicted a guy that actually owned a house and was living in a rental to take advantage of the arbitrage between the income gained from renting his house and the cost of paying rent on the rental unit. He tried to use covid policies as an excuse to stop paying rent for the last two months before the lease expired while he was just a malingering dickhead that thought he could get a free place to live and I wouldn't do anything about it. Wrong. I commenced an eviction action - which he actually fought and lost - got a judgment, took his security deposit, and placed a judgment lien on his house for the remaining amount he owes me. All he did was get an eviction on his credit record and a lien on his house that I'll eventually foreclose on if he doesn't pay. It's going to up costing him a lot more than if he just paid the last two months of rent because I'll get to collect interest and fees. People are dumb.