Kicked out because I couldn’t afford rent, not realizing I had been conned all along

Hello everyone,<br><br>I have a bit of an older story, but I am posting it in the hopes of getting some feedback about how my brother and I handled this experience and what we could have done differently.<br><br><br>In the early 90s, my brother and I were both in college and lived together (at the time, we were 19 and 21) in a small town that had a lot of rental properties owned by a local businessman. We were renting a property that had three bedrooms, and decided to split it with another guy who was a coworker of mine. We all had crappy cars, but we always managed to make our rent payments, even when our cars broke down from time to time.<br><br><br>Well, one day, the local businessman got busted, and it turned out he had been using his business to extort people. He would rent these crummy houses, and then, if a tenant fell behind on rent, he would threaten to take them to court and have them evicted if they didn’t sleep with him. As one of the residents, who was just a teenager, found out, he would also force young girls to sleep with his friends for money as well. Obviously, he was expelled from town and ended up facing criminal charges.<br><br><br>So, as my brother and I were living in one of the houses he owned, we were told that we needed to move out within 60 days, because someone had bought the house. We found a new place, and were doing okay. However, we then received an eviction notice. At the time, we were both working multiple jobs and didn’t have a whole lot of extra money to spend on a lawyer, so we just decided to move out and avoid the notice. We didn’t realize just how bad the situation was, but now I understand that we could have fought the eviction in court, and would likely have won. <br><br><br>However, as we learned later from one of our former neighbors, this wasn’t something that only happened to us. All of the tenants in the properties owned by the local businessman were being evicted, and many of them were forced out of their homes, too. It was a bit of a mess, but my brother and I decided to suck it up and move on with our lives. We lived in a small apartment for the next year as college students, and were eventually able to find an even better place, which was cheaper. We learned that sometimes in life, you just have to deal with difficult situations, and that you can’t always do the right thing.<br><br><br>Has anyone else had a similar experience with a shady landlord, or have any thoughts on how we could have handled it better, or differently?