re: #1 Achilles Tang

Anyone can come up with anecdotes that show how bad some landlords are, but it is a fact that the landlord is typically the unwilling lender of FIRST resort, not last resort, and the majority of people have friends or family that should help first.

In Florida tenants do have rights but if the landlord is alleged to be in violation then the tenant is still obligated to pay the rent to the court if disputing terms of a lease, including conditions of a property.

There is no law that says landlords are obligated to act as social service providers and pay for property overheads, mortgage, insurance, taxes and more, (none of which will give grace periods to the landlord) while tenants live rent free, and often trashing a property in the process.

Sure, there can be accommodation made between tenant and landlord in many cases, but the thing is that those we never hear of. What we hear of is typically one side claiming the right to keep what they are not paying for.

I suggest that the simple solution is for all those who think tenants should be allowed to live rent free if they claim hardship, to ante up and pay the rent for them; after all that is what they are demanding the landlord do.

My experience with landlords over 20 years or so is that most are complete assholes. I’ve had one guy who tried to keep the security deposit simply because he knew I had taken a job in another state and didn’t really have the means to personally come pry it back out of its “escrow account” (a term I put quotes around because I very much doubt that security deposits ever actually go into any account, other than a landlord’s checking account). Fortunately, I had parents who didn’t mind driving across town to do so. I’ve had a landlord who put me in an apartment with a refrigerator that failed the second day, taking a hundred dollars’ worth of groceries with it. I had to take the cover off the air-conditioning unit at some point and discovered the reason my apartment wasn’t cooling properly was because there was literally nothing between the cover and the outside world except a fan. It was like one of those infamous props in an old Mayday parade. Trust me, if you want sympathy for landlords, I’m guessing I’m not alone here in providing anecdotes about the numerous ways that renters get screwed, routinely.