Tenant Shares Catastrophic Flooding in Home After Landlord Wouldn’t Shut Off Water During Storm

A TikToker who goes by Jellabonez (@dudewheresmyvibrator) posted a viral clip detailing the extent of the damage that occurred in the home her and her roommates are renting in Portland as a result of pipes bursting in the middle of an ice storm.

"The ultimate landlord special was mine refusing to turn the water off for four days straight during the Portland ice storm," Jella wrote in a text overlay of her video.

In the 21-second clip, she walks throughout the house, detailing the extreme flooding that took place as a result of what she says was the landlord's negligence.

Her clip shows a home that is entirely flooded and dripping water from the ceiling. Pools of liquid have formed on the floor, with pieces of sheet rock and wood hollowed out/collapsed throughout the home. Debris lays everywhere. There are exposed beams of wood, rendering the home a scene out of Tyler Durden's residence in Fight Club.

In a lengthy caption attached to the post, Jella explains what happened and how her family's life was turned upside down as a result of the damage and how they've lost a bunch of their belongings: "On January 14th due to the combinations of the portland ice storm and negligence from our landlord, our beloved mid-century home of 3 years is being deemed condemned and uninhabitable," she wrote.

Jella continued, "The furnace inside the home burst leading us to suffer through 3 days of freezing temperatures and, not long after the pipes in our home started to burst open causing a flood. the flood had been going for 4 days straight before we were able to turn the water off. This caused many of our personal belongings, furniture and sentimental items to be lost due to water damage."

She went on to reference a GoFundMe link on her TikTok profile page that would help her and other residents of the home replace the items that they lost as a result of the flooding in their building: "Due to this flood, 4 people and one senior cat 20 years of age are also left facing homelessness with little left."

"This fund would help benefit the renters to relocate to new housing, repurchase furniture, a commercial dehumidifier, storage costs for what we can recover, food, repurchasing college supplies, pet medicine, moving trucks, dry clothing, toiletries, new computers and other technology that was lost."

As of this writing Jella has raised $2,945 out of the $15,000 her and her co-residents were requesting as part of their funding.

She also added that the entire ordeal is especially "triggering" for her and the residents of the building as some of them have experienced homelessness in the past, not to mention how one of her roommates lost their Pokemon card collection.

"This event has been extremely triggering as two of the people living in this home are college students who have struggled with homelessness at multiple points in their lives including childhood. one tenant residing here was a vintage furniture collector that took pride in their treasured pieces, another was a lifelong pokémon card collector who lost a large portion of their collection"

Numerous commenters suggested steps she could take in order to ensure that both her and her roommates could place claims that would protect them in the aftermath of their displacement.

One person said as a means of revenge against their landlord that: "let his insurance know when an adjuster comes he will get the claim denied"

Another TikToker said: "You NEED to do a free consultation with a lawyer to see how you can go to claims after the landlord for this"

Someone else wrote: "File complaint w/ city housing inspector.Then Small claims court you can sue for up to $10k, $100 filing fee, no lawyers can participate!!"

And it seems like Jella is already taking that advice as she replied back with: "just filed the housing inspector complaint thank you for this advice."

But there was one commenter who questioned why Jella or her roommates wouldn't just shut the water off herself: "Idk at some point you gotta find where your own shutoffs are…."

Someone else countered back that in their own previous living situation this wasn't possible as their landlord prevented residents from accessing them: "Unless your landlord has them locked up like mine did the gas valves. Called them to come said he would be there in 6 hours so I called the fire dept."

She went on to address some of the comments made about her story being "suspicious," particularly when it came to her water being shut off in a follow-up video. In the clip, she showed where the city turned off the source of their water outside of the home, and the main water valve in her home itself that is supposed to allow/prevent water from flowing in the homes piping system.

Unfortunately, however, she demonstrated how water was still somehow circulating throughout the pipes in the home, leading one TikToker to suspect they may be attached to an old well system. The point of her video was to indicate that she did do her due diligence but that the building owner/landlord didn't get to the root of the problem to ensure that water wasn't flowing through the pipes of the home.