Not necessarily the house could be condemned and protective services could take your kids level of uninhabitable , but definitely below the threshold for what is considered to be reasonable to expect from a rented dwelling . First , not everyone can just suck it up . Tenants with small children , elderly tenants , and tenants with certain medical conditions could be seriously harmed by trying to live in those conditions long term . Second , renters get more protection . Last winter we had a bad ice storm and it damaged my electrical service , leaving us with no heat . The insurance company wasn ' t required to put us up in a hotel , because the standard for them was that it has to be below freezing temperatures to be considered truly dangerous , absent factors like I mentioned above . But if we had been renting the place out then we probably would have been on the hook to put our tenants in a hotel , because it definitely fell below the standard for reasonable enjoyment of their home .