Tom and Barb Lucier's
"Tenants From Hell"

During our twenty-five plus year "career" together as do-it-yourself residential landlords in Tampa, Florida, my wife, Barb and I had our fair share of so-called "Tenants From Hell!" Here's a sampling of some of the whacky tenants we rented to over the years:

The Linacres:

We had a three-bedroom, one-bath for rent. We ran an ad in the local newspaper. A woman called and said she was interested in seeing the house. I met her at the property. She arrived in a van and had parked it around the corner of the house, which at the time I thought was kind of peculiar. She liked the house, had the cash and I made a decision to rent to her. What I didn’t know was that everything she owned was in the van. She moved in with her husband and four children. She paid the rent on time for about eight months. One the ninth month, I went to collect the rent. She told me her husband had gone to Clearwater to pick up his check and that he would be back in a few hours. I told her I would come back. When I returned, he still wasn’t there and she promised me that if I came by the next day, she would have the money. The next day I arrived to find the front door wide open. Their electric must have been turned off weeks before as the food in the refrigerator had gone bad. There were clothes, snack wrappers and just plain garbage all over the house. It took us hours to haul out all the stuff they had left behind.

The Hones Family:

This couple moved in with their two children. They paid the rent on time for many months. Then one day we went to collect the rent and they told us John had lost his job. We gave them a week to move. After a week we went back to the house only to find them still there. They refused to move out. We took one of the breakers out and left them with no electricity. They were gone the day after.

The Lee Family:

This woman moved in with her two children. Her husband was a long-haul truck driver and wasn’t at home much of the time. When her lease expired, she moved out. She had really left a mess at the house. The new carpet we had put down in the bedroom was deep burgundy and she had evidently dripped bleach from her hair as the carpet was white in many places. She had left garbage outside and failed to clean the house. She couldn’t understand why she didn’t get her deposit back and took us to court. She cried in front of the judge about her husband being gone and she had to do everything herself. The judge didn’t buy it and she did not get her security deposit back.

The Van DeWalles:

These tenants moved into our three-bedroom, two-bath house with their two boys. The husband was in the military. The woman was always calling about a problem with the house. Anything that happened, she would always tell us that her boys didn’t do it. Once they broke the toilet tank and they did replace it. The woman was always complaining about some ailment when I went to pick up the rent and eventually I stopped asking her how she was. I started referring to her as, “medical problems.” The husband complained to us that she was always on the phone calling her mother long distance and running up the phone bill.

Frank and Mom:

These tenants were a man and his elderly mother. They moved into our three-bedroom, one-bath house. They paid their rent on time and lived in the house about three years. The man had great expectations about buying the house and adding a second story. Before the third year ended, we sent them a letter telling them the rent was going to be increased by $25 a month. In the meantime, the man’s sister came for a visit at which time they discussed the increase in rent. She tried to stick her nose in it and tell us that our house was unfit for her mother and brother to live in and how dare we raise the rent. It ended up that they moved out.

The Scruggs:

This couple moved into our two-bedroom, one-bath house. They paid their rent on time. After about six months, when we went to pick up the rent, we noticed that more people were in the house and that they had a dog. They claimed the people were there visiting them. They were still there after many months and we told them they had to leave as the house was too small for the additional people and that the rental agreement they signed stated only two people would be living in the house. They did move out.

The "Tar Baby Family:"

This couple moved into our three-bedroom, one-bath house with their two children. The man was a roofer and he was the tar guy. He also rode a motorcycle. On one occasion, when I went to pick up the rent, I saw his motorcycle and all the parts laying on the floor in the living room. I told them they had to move it outside. They left in the middle of the night and the floors, walls and just about every place in the house was marked with tar.

The Harris Family:

This tenant was separated from her husband and she moved into our two-bedroom, one-bath house with her two children. She paid the rent on time, but at some point her husband moved in with her and after that, she stopped paying the rent. Her electric had been turned off and she had run an extension cord to the next door neighbor’s house. We had to evict her as she was not going to move out. Her husband kept calling us demanding that we give her back the deposit. They destroyed the house by taking out all the plumbing fixtures in the kitchen and bathroom and putting holes in the walls and letting the dog use the carpet as a bathroom. We were just glad to get them out of our house.

Ms. Sandra Davis, the "Nutty Professor:"

This single woman aka "The Nutty Professor," moved into our two-bedroom, one-bath house. She lived in it for a year and then moved out. She did not clean it, but claimed she did. We ended up going to mediation. It ended up that we split the security deposit as the judge couldn’t decide who was right or wrong.