Currently dominating the news and the internet is the story of a homeowner who rented a large, beautiful house with five bedrooms, four bathrooms, a three-car garage and a spacious basement in Colorado Springs. The home had been rented to one tenant for many years without incident; the tenant died, and upon her death the daughter moved in. This is when things took a turn for the worse. The daughter quit paying rent, put a $38,000 new roof on the dwelling but refused to pay the contractor who then put a lien on the property.

The property owner evicted the tenant around Halloween 2019. A property manager allowed the tenant back into the premises within two weeks of her departure. In April 2020, when the property owner began working with a realtor to list the property, the damage caused by the tenant was discovered. The tenant spray painted the walls with graffiti, left feces on the floor, two dead cats locked in a bathroom, and other damage. The homeowner has tried for a year to get her insurance carrier to pay for the damages without success, and has filed a complaint with the insurance department.

While we don't know the carrier, the policy language or the exact details of the situation, we can look at the standard homeowners policy and explain coverage. We're looking at the ISO HO 00 03 05 11 Homeowners 3 – Special Form, a popular form in use for insuring dwellings.