Landlord Blues: Renting out the house from hell

Tenant: Individual room let to single, unemployed man, Peter. 
Duration of tenancy: 18 months. 
Monthly rent: £180.

We thought that the next inmate, who was going to move into Gethin’s room, looked more promising. He’d seen my 50p advert in the newsagents’ window (not my £50 one in the local newspaper). Although thought he sounded dodgy at first when he said he’d split up from his partner in mid-Wales (unverifiable) and was now living with his sister (the worst tenants do this after being thrown out by their landlords for non-payment of rent) and had just lost his job but was in any case, self-employed usually as a carpenter (the word ‘self-employed’ had become anathema). He also used the dreaded word ‘desperate’ which usually made us run a mile. 
I met up with him at his sister’s house the next day though and he seemed a nervous, shy but pleasant type. I could actually see him shaking, which I presumed to be the result of his relationship breakdown, so I felt a bit sorry for a man in his 40s going through that. His mum and sister were present and the mum showed me her wage slips as she was going to be his guarantor and his sister had already submitted his benefit claim on-line. 
‘Crikey’, I said to him, ‘you’ve got a good team working for you’. Having a guarantor made him a pretty safe bet.  The only thing that was nearly a deal-breaker was when he asked if there was a TV aerial in the room. I ‘phoned Adrian and he said that this was something Peter would have to sort out himself, but I over-ruled him as it was worth sorting one out to secure the tenancy. 
‘I can’t live without my soaps,’ Peter had declared, in a defiant tone. I recalled how Gerald had once suggested we install TV aerials in all the rooms.  Adrian had given his usual answer: 
‘It’s not a Travelodge.’ 
The TV aerial negotiation settled, Peter moved in the next day and we had a second ‘paying’ tenant there. Hooray! Although I did worry about him as he looked so fragile and I thought he might be lonely up there with just Jason for company and, being unemployed, he would constantly be at home. I needn’t have worried as the two had a lot in common.
It turned out that Peter’s shaking hands were more likely caused by alcohol withdrawal. And it became clear that we now had two alcoholics in the house; one of whom, Jason, regularly broke doors and windows and then, when sober, politely offered to pay to sort out the breakages.  The other one, Peter, sometimes made attempts on his life and would then be sectioned under the Mental Health Act, but the rent always came in, so it was better than having a teetotal, mentally stable non-payer. There was, of course, a fair amount of drama and, fortunately, we only saw the tip of the iceberg, not being present to see all the rows and drunken episodes. 
We'd get a glimpse from time to time, for example, I received a call from Peter one day, as he and Jason had fallen out and he was now ‘in hiding’ at his cousin’s having been threatened with violence. He had mentioned to Jason – probably in a drunken moment, that he'd been in trouble with the law after an incident involving 15-year old girls lifting up their blouses, being photographed by himself and other men, one of the girls crashing one of the men’s cars and our tenant ending up on the Sex Offenders Register (he said the girls had been willing participants but when they’d crashed the car reported the men to get out of being prosecuted over the car).  Jason’s girlfriend was now refusing to come to the house if there was a sex offender there and Jason allegedly threatened to beat Peter up or have his mates beat him up if he didn’t immediately vacate the house. Peter stayed out of the way for a couple of days and then the men kissed and made up.