A corporate landlord in Texas allegedly ordered a manager to make a tenant miserable in order to get them to leave, according to a recently released US House subcommittee report. The Star-Telegram reported that the landlord used several different tactics to get the tenant, a San Antonio woman, to leave.
An email to the member of management laid out several different cruel strategies to get the female tenant to move out, including replacing her air conditioner with a broken unit, having security knock on her door several times each night, and disabling her TV unit from outside using a master remote.
The executive wrote in the email:
"I want this person very uncomfortable sitting in out room for free.
Understand I do not know anything about this person. I am just going down my list of things to make sure you have tried everything possible to get rid of them."
The wording in the email suggests that the executive may use these tactics across the company. This means that the San Antonio tenant may not be the first person targeted for harassment.
There were four corporate landlords named in the government report, each accused of engaging in deceptive practices against their tenants during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The four groups submitted about 15,000 eviction filings, and most of them were submitted while a moratorium on evictions were in place.
Click here to see the full government report.