I chose this old thread to post in now because a legally-significant batch of posts are upthread. I'll need to print all of that plus this post.

The housemate with great references did not work out. The first of what would become so many red flags included declining a sleepover whike i was here, before moving in, to see if we'd get along before brekky. She seemed to have good reasons for all such decisions and we did a small dogworld project together instead to assess chemistry. That went pretty well and it's the last thing that did. Every "do not move this item" was agreed then disregarded. Instead of walking into a retirement home in progress as described above left in vacay-house mode, we arrived after 8 solid hours of driving unable to find items needed for immediate use by two people with different and serious health issues, broken items hidden, security measures removed, scented cad
ndles everywhere making plans to host a chem-sensitive friend, carpets soaking wet and all the clng products the sellers had used on it for years, in the humid air and pumping thru the whole house via central air. It's one of my health issues. No sleep that night. Everywhere I looked was oversized furniture and decor with our stuff buried. She had helped herself to garage storage we'd planned to use for offload what we'd hauled on this trip. She had not used the mower we purchased for our use and instead contracted someone we do not know.... on a property that had been cased and entered by unknown persons during my first trip here.

It was all that and more. It felt like arriving-- not at our own dear little live nest but in a badly run BnB from hell, with no hostess on hand, and the broken hall light fixfure making it hard to find the AC controls was unexpected from a person here to notify us of house trubble in a timely fashion... she later said it had fallen on her head the day she'd moved in.

I'm pretty sure a head injury did not cause her to forget and transgress every agreement and boundary any person in their right mind would have respected or asked questions about. I did however find unopened as well as empty containers accounting for what looked and felt just like an elephant in our living room.

Happily, she completed her move-out ydy with minimal damage to doorways.