Executing Revenge on a Slumlord

So.....as a lot of you may have gathered from my older posts, my husband and I have not been loving living in Portland. The city is pretty, clean and relatively safe, as well as cheap as far as real estate is concerned, but we have no family here, hate the long dreary winters and feel generally unstimulated by the city.

This prompted us to put our house on the market so that when the time comes for my husband to get his job transfer we won't be stuck trying to orchestrate a long distance move as well as a house sale. Our house sold in 7 hours and we were off & running to find a suitable rental.

After a couple of awful drive-bys and open houses, my husband and I found a house on craigslist in the Beaumont area of Portland which is a great area for families and has no shortage of coffee shops and eateries within walking distance. At the open house the bungalow, built in 1928, looked adorable and was tastefully furnished by the former tenants. We took a look, trailed by the landlord, liked what we saw and put in an application. Two days later we were approved and on June 1st we moved in.

Horror of horrors......upon moving in we immediately started to feel shafted and sick to our stomachs. The walls in the basement and upstairs bedroom (which was to be our 4 month old daughter's nursery) were covered in water damage and black mold. All of this had been artfully camoflauged by the former tenants belongings. Only two windows in the entire house opened, and most of the windows had large cracks in them. The windows that opened would slam shut at random and posed serious danger to little fingers. The place had not been cleaned and was filthy, and the wiring in the master bedroom was so old that if you turned on the AC and the computer or a lamp at the same time one of them would inadvertantly shuf off.

We were appalled. We felt like idiots for not noticing all of these things, and felt ripped off and amazed that anyone would rent this place out to a family and charge $1500 a month for the shithole. The thing is, like I said, everything looked great at the open house. Furniture, drapery, decor....all of it hid the mold and busted windows. We have been homeowners for so long now that we just didn't think to look in detail at the house as if we were going to buy it. Our rental history in the past had been positive and we just didn't expect to deal with sheisty landlords in such a "nice" part of town.

Two days after moving in my 2 1/2 year old and the baby started coughing day and night and getting red, inflamed eyes. Our pediatrician confirmed that these were symptoms of a reaction to the mold & mold spores in the house and that mold can be highly toxic to children. Four days after moving in and talking to a very despondent landlord, we were moving back out and into our current location getting our full security deposit back and only half a month of rent. Yes, the bastards charged us for 15 days of rent when we only lived there for 4 days. But we wanted to cut our losses and get the hell out with the least amount of drama so we acceded and moved out. Two days later the house was back on craigslist for rent. These people are slumlords, without conscience and just plain dirty.

So, even though they ripped us off with the rent, acted illegally by not disclosing that the property was infested with mold, and are gong to do the same to some other unsuspecting family, I am going to make sure that the karma gods get a little nudge. I'll be reporting them to the housing authority here in Portland.

I don't understand what makes people act like these landlords do, especially when they too have young children. They could care less that the conditions of the house can cause severe illness in the children that inhabit the space or that they can be injured by broken glass and falling window panes. They deserve to be sued by future tenants. I am not one for exacting revenge or being resentful, but the hell these people put us through is still fresh & hard for me to get over.