Any landlord can share such stories.  After 25 years as a landlord, I've seen about every imaginable abuse of rental property.  Of course, it's impossible to charge enough security deposit to cover the kind of damage Mr. Johnson describes.  We've had fantastic tenants, we've also had horrendous ones.  If the legislature is going  to "protect" tenants from nasty slumlords, let's also include features to protect landlords from those very nasty tenants.  Gary Crum