that truly sucks.

You are attempting to be a Doctor and you don’t have proper backups in place? Sucks for sure, but you can’t feel too bad.

Doesn’t the squatters law or whatever it is protect people from just having their stuff dumped out on the street?

It’s the external hard drive that he lost… so he did back his stuff up. Maybe he still has the laptop with the research on it and is just worried about someone stealing his work.

don’t you think that if you lost “years of doctoral research” you’d post a reward worth more that $250?

Note that Marco was subletting, so he may have been paying rent. It was the lessor who was scamming the landlord and this sap was just caught in the bigger scam.

Not matter, it sucks to be him.

housing is not a god-given right- it is a state given right. marco should definitely go after the person he subleased from. regardless, he had rights as a possessor in this city. landlords don’t have the right to throw people out without the involvement of the state- self help is illegal. Perhaps the marshalls did this but without notice and an opportunity to redeem the tenancy he most certainly was illegally evicted. Landlords who operate in dc are foolish if they don’t build non-payers into their business plan and budget. a nonpaying tenant is a business loss plain and simple but just like we don’t allow a business owner to break the knees of a non-paying customer so too should landlords have to go through the legal process to get justice.