Recently, we asked the BuzzFeed Community to tell us about their worst experiences with landlords. Honestly, all the submissions we got were DEFINITELY awful experiences, but these were probably the worst. Read at your own discretion..........
1. The COVID Water
"About a month into the COVID pandemic, our bathroom sink started flooding from the drain up. Apparently an emergency room nurse lived above us and was washing her uniforms in the sink when she got home, but that water was rushing down the drain to the clog and coming back up through our bathroom sink. This was really before anyone knew exactly how it spread. My roommate and I couldn't get in touch with our landlord or super for THREE DAYS and had to stay up all night scooping COVID water out of our sink and into the bathtub so our apartment wouldn't flood."
2. The Rat Queen
"We told our landlord there were rats in the basement, and she told us we were just being 'whiny girls' about it and she waited two weeks to call an exterminator. We ended up catching over a dozen rats — two of which were the size of kittens. When the rat babies took over the kitchen, our landlord told us to 'just eat in the places that don't have rat poop,' which didn't exist."
3. The Bathroom Incident
"I once had a landlord that ignored my maintenance requests all the time. One time, the bathroom door doorknob broke off while I was in the bathroom, locking me in. Luckily, I had my phone with me and was able to call my apartment’s emergency maintenance line. No one answered for two hours, so I had to break down my door to get out. My landlord called back 12 hours later and asked if I was still locked in my bathroom. I was a single woman living alone at the time and the experience was very traumatic."
4. Mold Maintenance
"I had a landlord who rented out her old four-bedroom house to five people. We had literal black mold in our bathroom that was out of control. We begged her to get someone to come look at it, and instead, she came to clean the bathroom and painted over the mold. She told us that if it came back, we would have to pay for a professional cleaning agency to come in and clean the bathroom."
5. Pregnant and a Pelvis Fracture
"We were renting an apartment while I was pregnant with my first child. The wood on the stairs was rotting, but the landlord wouldn't fix it. I just avoided the three stairs that were bad. Little did I know the second from the top was also bad, but just wasn't squishy like the other three. I stepped on it and fell through. I was seriously hurt and had to spend time in the hospital because I got a hairline fracture in my pelvis."
6. The Poopsie Oopsie
"There was literal, actual, sewage backing up into our basement. Water full of poop and god knows what else. It took a call to the health department and going full Karen to get them to fix it, and they tried to blame it on me flushing tampons (???) before their own handyman discovered the tree roots growing into their pipes. Then they acted like they were doing me some huge favor by stopping the POOP WATER FROM BACKING UP INTO THE HOUSE!!!!!!!"
7. The Shady Sons
"The apartment my now-husband and I were renting was upstairs in a house. The people that owned the house lived out of state, but their sons were living in it. We gave our rent money to the sons every month as requested by their parents. After about two years, we found out the house was in foreclosure because the sons were using our money to gamble instead of putting it towards the mortgage! We then only had a month to find a new place."
8. The "Lesson"
"I had a bike that my landlord hated. No matter where I put it, he had a problem with it. He wanted it only in my apartment. One day, I came home and it was gone even though it was locked downstairs on the sidewalk with other bikes that did not live in his building. A few weeks later, he told me he took it 'to teach me a lesson.' He literally cut the lock off of it and took it."
9. The Polar Vortex Perpetrator
"During the polar vortex of 2019, it was -40 degrees with windchill. Our lovely landlord company said that they legally only had to heat our building to 55-60 degrees..... in a polar vortex! Our walls and windows completely were encrusted in ice crystals. My roommate and I spent the entirety of the polar vortex under piles of blankets with heating pads. Our parking lot also turned into an ice rink, and the landlord still didn't do anything. They loved to live on the edge of getting sued — turned out they had been sued in a wrongful death lawsuit in the past."
10. The Curious Case of the Missing Vicodin
"I walked in on my landlord rifling through by medicine cabinet for the Vicodin I was prescribed for knee surgery. I guess I should’ve kept my mouth shut when she asked me if I was on pain meds the day before."
11. The Tile High Club
"Years ago, my landlord said he wanted to do some work to the bathroom, and I thought, 'Great, I’m off on holiday for two weeks,' so I told him go ahead, but to have it done by the time I got back. Fast forward two weeks to when I returned jet-lagged, smelly, and exhausted from international economy flights to find the entire bathroom ripped out. Like not even a tile on the wall! When I called the landlord, he did not pick up. And he left no note, no email, no text to explain."
12. The Shattered Shower
"In a house I used to rent, the glass shower door in the bathroom was glued in, and one night I was taking a shower and when I went to get out, the door came off the tracks, fell on top of me, and shattered. I had to call my friend and her husband to come get me out of the tub and to the hospital where I spent five hours getting glass picked out of my body from head to toe. When I told the landlord, he pitched a fit and demanded I pay to replace the door."
13. Boiling Over
"Our apartment had a boiler furnace that heated our 4-unit apartment building. We couldn’t adjust the heat ourselves aside from opening or closing the vents. Our first winter in that apartment was FREEZING because the boiler was straight up broken. We contacted the landlord, he looked at it, and then literally said, 'There’s nothing I can do. IT’S UP TO GOD!!!' So our entire building rallied together and threatened to withhold our rent if he didn’t fix the problem — he ended up just reimbursing us for the space heaters we had to buy."
14. The Mansplaining Maintenance Man
"I had a landlord who was subletting his house as a duplex. The heat in the house didn't work, and when I called and told him that it didn't work, he kept insisting that I, a woman, was not turning on the heat properly. He finally came to look at it and realized that the whole entire unit needed to be replaced."
15. The Flat Crasher
"My landlord broke into my flat while I was visiting my mom for a week, ate my food, drank my alcohol, and smoked my old roommate's cat's catnip thinking it was weed. His wife had left him and kicked him out, so he thought it was OK to just move in by smashing the kitchen window and making himself at home."
16. The Backyard Parolee
"After my friends and I signed a lease to live at this cute duplex together, we discovered that our landlord hid a lot of the truth from us. Mainly the fact that our 'maintenance man' was a drug addict who was violating his parole and living in the backyard."
17. And lastly, The Panera Gift Card
"At some point, my old building's management decided to replace the roofs on all the buildings. Great, right? Not for me! For whatever reason, the roofers decided to use the outlet on my back porch for all their tools. I found out and asked them not to use my outlet. They said they were told the apartment was vacant. Anyway, they said it wouldn't happen again. Next day, they had all their stuff plugged into my outlet again. I complained to management who said they would take care of it. The roofers tore it off and just kept using my power. I went to management again and they just brushed it off. This went on for two weeks. The next month my power bill was over $600. When I contacted management, they said there was nothing they could do and gave me a $25 gift card to Panera."
Submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity.