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Tenants fed up with landlord's inaction decide to take matters into their own hands: 'Send an invoice'

"They're lucky to have tenants like you."

"They’re lucky to have tenants like you."

Photo Credit: iStock

A landlord's contractors neglected to clean up nasty construction debris from a tenant's space, so the residents cleaned up the mess themselves.

In a post on the r/mildlyinfuriating subreddit, a user shared a frustrating story about a construction job gone wrong. 

"They're lucky to have tenants like you."
Photo Credit: Reddit
"They're lucky to have tenants like you."
Photo Credit: Reddit

"Contractors threw renovation waste from [the] upstairs apartment out the window and into our side yard," the user wrote. "Left it there to rot for a year. Moldy dry-wall, rotted flooring, old window screens, etc."

The user added that the pile was about 12 feet by eight feet.

"Today, my girlfriend and I finally gave up waiting for a clean up crew and got rid of it ourselves," they said. "Also went ahead and laid down garden soil to try and revive the plant life that was suffocated under the pile. Took about 25 50-gallon contractor bags and 5 hours."

In a follow-up comment, the user also explained that they had made multiple requests to address the problem. 

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"Will definitely be contacting my landlord. Who knows, maybe we'll get a rent discount," they said. "The craziest part was that we reported the pile to the city multiple times and nothing was done about it. But there's that paper trail as well."

Unfortunately, the story of landlords or homeowners associations making life unnecessarily difficult for tenants is all too familiar. 

Some have prevented electric vehicle charging (which saves drivers money at the gas pump), while others have sprayed toxic herbicide on plants (which can have adverse health effects on humans) and destroyed healthy trees (which negatively impacts local ecosystems). 

🗣️ How much money would someone have to pay you to tear out your lawn?

🔘 $10K or more 🤑

🔘 $5K to $10K 💰

🔘 Less than $5K 💵

🔘 I'd do it for free 😇

🗳️ Click your choice to see results and speak your mind

However, plenty of people have ultimately won over their HOAs or landlords, and if you don't know where to start, The Cool Down's guide can help. 

While the original poster's situation was upsetting, other Redditors expressed their support.

"Hopefully you'll get some good karma coming your way," one user wrote

"Send an invoice. Your receipts plus your labor at minimum wage. They're lucky to have tenants like you," another user said

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