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There was a brief time when my wife's family money allowed us to buy, but after the separation and divorce, I was back in rental land, like most everyone else. Everyone around me rents. Some are good tenants, and others are bad. Let's talk about the bad.
Often you can tell the bad tenant by the yard. Unkempt. Trash covered. Not just playthings or dog toys, but the ripped trash bag that's been sitting by the front step for two weeks, the spare tires leaning against the front porch. There may be a planter hanging near the door, but the plant in it has been dead since you first saw it. There's a dog chained up in the yard that all the neighborhood kids are afraid of.
The house or apartment itself is just as bad. The storm door hangs crooked and won't latch, so it bangs in the wind. Screens are torn, or loose and dangling by one corner, or missing altogether. Windows are cracked, or broken and patched with cardboard and duct tape. The tenant won't pay to fix them, and won't call the landlord to fix it, because if the landlord came over he'd see the inside of the place.
Inside, the first thing you notice is the smell. The smell of stale booze and dog shit and cat piss. The wall-to-wall carpet is frayed and dingy, and you can't tell what color it originally was. The drapes, which are all closed, are tattered and every other hook is torn out. There's garbage everywhere, and you can hardly tell what is and what isn't garbage.
You don't want to venture any deeper into the house, afraid of what you might see in the kitchen or (gahh!) the bathroom. It's amazing, because you know these people have steady jobs, even good jobs. It's easily within their wherewithal to change this.
The problem is, they think because they are renters they have no investment in this place. What it really is, they are lazy. They don't separate out the recycling from their trash, even though there is a six-bin recycling center for newspaper, aluminum, steel cans, plastic and glass right beside the dumpster. They figure they're not going to get their damage deposit back, because all landlords are crooks, so they don't try to prevent damage. Someone else will come in and clean it all up after they move out anyway.
Bush is a bad renter. He moved in and treated the country as if he owned it. He doesn't care what kind of work will be needed to clean up after he leaves. The neighbors are scared of his dog, and a decided stench emanates from his front door. He does all he can to keep the landlord from setting foot inside because, down inside, he knows he has no right to treat this rental in such a way and doesn't want to hear anyone telling him so.
He doesn't recycle.
Do we have grounds to evict him?
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