The Landlord’s plight is misunderstood due to a fictional narrative. Landlords are viewed as powerful, entitled and privileged ‘big bad wolves’. This greedy perpetrator hunts and victimizes tenants to feed their insatiable appetite for wealth and greed. They spit out innocent tenants and hunt for the next prey. This narrative has harmed Landlords and inhibited their timely protection against professional tenants. When the Landlord cries out for help, the system is slow to respond.
The Landlord’s health and wellbeing are negatively impacted by the lack of solutions to address this abusive situation. There is currently a denial over the impact of the psychological, financial and emotional abuse that occurs by a professional tenant. Recourse for Landlords to handle blatant abuse and aggression by these tenants is often too late and wreaks havoc on their health.
When a tenant blatantly and purposely harasses, destroys and willfully takes advantage of Covid19 crisis to live rent-free, a Landlord is left to handle this crisis with little empathy and timely response by the government and law enforcement. There is a detrimental impact on a Landlord’s health and well-being because of the absence of support and timely recourse to handle tenant abuse.
The negative impact on a Landlord’s health and well-being is as follows:
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- Physical stress –heart palpitations, teeth grinding, sleeplessness, irritability, inability to concentrate, panic attacks and anxiety.
- Financial stress – financial burden negatively effects personal and family circumstances.
- Mental stress -shocked, hopeless, anguish, confused, depressed and suicidal
- Anger and Rage – resentment of paying their own living costs and that of a total stranger is damaging. Rage leads to actions to take matters into their own hands. This dangerous state of mind needs to be acknowledge and addressed by increased response time.
The victimization of Landlords by professional tenants has to stop. The negative impact on the Landlord’s physical and mental health caused by unethical tenants needs to be highlighted so that professional tenants are not empowered to abuse the system. Any member of society who is being abused needs protection and timely recourse. Only by shining some light on this injustice can we more into equitable resolution.
John, Landlord
