Location: California
Hello! My mother is technically the landlord, but I’m posting this on her behalf because she’s not tech savvy. Due to the HCOL in our town, she’s currently renting a bedroom in our family home to two young adults. One is a recent college grad, and the other is currently in college.
My family has had a history of hosting for exchange students for about 7 years. They ended up renting to local students because the home stay program was undercutting them financially and seemed to be pocketing a lot of the extra fees that the exchange students were paying for. Overall, scummy all around— we didn’t think it was worth fighting.
The room my mother is renting is fully furnished, just because that was required for hosting exchange students.
This is the first time my mother has dealt with tenants that just seem to be irresponsible and messy.. They constantly do not clean up after themselves, they leave the bathroom a complete mess, and there’s a severe odor permeating from their room into the hallway. It had gotten so bad at one point I could smell it strongly from my room.
The bedroom they rent has a window facing the backyard— while my mother did not step inside their room, as she doesn’t want to be intrusive on their personal space— she did get a glimpse inside from the window and noticed one of the mattresses was completely DESTROYED.
I’m not sure what even happened, but it seems like there was a huge spill and they attempted to just pour copious amounts of baking soda piles to save it. Like there’s genuinely baking soda mounds covering the entire mattress. From the gigantic stain and the powder, my mother assumes the mattress is good as destroyed at this point. The weirder thing is, there were waterproof covers on these mattresses, and it seems like they purposely removed them too.
I told my mom she should consider sending a 30-day notice as we have given them multiple warnings about cleanliness in shared spaces. Their bedroom isn’t a shared space, so this wouldn’t directly apply. They’re on a month to month lease, so I assume my mom would be able to do this. However, she has a fear that they may get defensive if we give them a notice, as they have been somewhat hostile about communicating in general. We’re kind of on the fence on what to do…
Comments
If you are noticing they are not taking care of property that is, by definition, leased to them, and after trying to reconcile this, they turned hostile, I would recommend giving them an eviction notice.
To add a barrier of safety, call the non-emergency police line and see if they will let you have an officer come by to be there when presenting it, as well as documenting it if they decide to be destructive later. (Cop can be subpoenaed as a witness, would be my guess)
I hope the lease agreement dictates damages, and if so, once they leave, assesses the damage and take what is left from their security deposit, and if it is not enough, asks them to pay. If they do not pay, take them to small claims court.