Abby Connolly
While many people have issues with their landlords, it’s extremely unfortunate when people have such negligent or stubborn landlords that they ignore a problem that eventually makes their home uninhabitable.
One woman based in Portland recently documented a horrific flood in her home, which she shares with three other people and a senior cat, on TikTok. The worst part of the incident is that she believes her landlord’s negligence played a big part in the damage.
Bella Jones (@jellabones) was renting a mid-century home in Portland with three roommates. In mid-January, a brutal ice storm hit Portland, and it led to the house’s furnace breaking down.
The heat had stopped working, and Bella and her roommates were freezing. She informed her landlord but didn’t hear back for a while. A pipe in Bella’s bathroom burst because of the cold temperatures outside and inside her house, and the water that flooded out began freezing over.
“The fire department came and shut off the water from an emergency valve outside of the house,” explains Bella in one of her TikTok videos.
“I told my landlord that I needed to evacuate and go to an Airbnb or hotel. He [told me] before I did that to try and shut off the water from inside of the house. But, he did not know where the valves inside of the house were.”
Bella did everything the fire department told her to do to shut her water off and prevent further pipe bursts. They also turned off her water from the outside of her home and the main water valve in her home.
However, unbeknownst to her, water was still flowing through her home from a source her landlord was supposed to shut off. So when Bella left her home for a few days and returned, more pipes had burst within her house, and she came home to a horrible flood.
In her most viral TikTok video, Bella’s house can be seen covered in water with holes in the ceiling and many of her items destroyed. The damage was so bad that the home became uninhabitable.
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