An update on my tenant fiasco after they set fire to my house:
I learned that the reason he was fired the day he set the fire was because he was caught on video stealing cash from our mutual employer repeatedly. So add that little nugget of joy to my dilemma.
He ended up paying the $750 in back electric bills but for a spell was illegally squatting in my home after the 60 days I generously gave him to find a new job and an apartment. Sadly they did their very best to make my time at home as uncomfortable as possible. It's a shame that they went that route, but I stuck to the high road.
I didn’t take it lying down. I prepped documents, police reports, fire reports, photos of the squalor they were living in, etc for the court and threatened them with eviction. Every day in the house with them was an endurance trial and an ongoing risk of fire. The threat of an eviction on their already abysmal credit score was sufficient to get them to leave on their own. I got tired of letting people walk all over me and broke the patterning of abusive contacts in my life.
They left piles of broken furniture, animal feces, and trash everywhere in the attic when they left. I'll be hiring a cleaning crew and billing him for the labor and for outstanding rent and utilities.
I’m now king of my castle for the first time with an entire tidy, quiet house to myself. I wasted not a second and cleaned up the sty they’d made of my home and have finally restored its neoclassical beauty.
Nightmare over. Looking forward to new beginnings.
This is what they left behind.