Landlord Caught on Ring Camera Telling Tenant the Rent Hike Is 'Because Your Generation Can't Stop Buying Avocado Toast'
**Dallas, TX** – In what can only be described as the most aggressively 2019 take to survive the pandemic, a Dallas landlord is going viral for all the wrong reasons after a tenant’s Ring doorbell camera captured him explaining that the $400 monthly rent increase was, and I quote, “a direct result of your generation’s crippling avocado toast addiction.”
Yes, you read that right. The year is 2025. We have AI that can paint like Van Gogh, cars that park themselves, and apparently, landlords still think the housing crisis is caused by brunch.
The video, which has since been scrubbed from TikTok but lives on in the sacred archives of Reddit’s r/LandlordHate, shows a man in a polo shirt and khakis—let’s call him “Chad from Finance, but Evil”—standing on the porch of a modest two-bedroom apartment in the Deep Ellum neighborhood. The tenant, a 29-year-old graphic designer named Marcus, is standing in the doorway with the kind of dead-eyed expression you only get after your third rent increase in two years.
“Look, Marcus, I’m not trying to be the bad guy here,” the landlord says, leaning against the doorframe like he’s about to give a TED Talk on fiscal responsibility. “But I’ve seen your DoorDash history. You spend $60 a week on avocado toast alone. That’s $240 a month. I’m just asking for $400 more. You do the math.”
The math, as Reddit was quick to point out, is absolute dogshit.
Let’s break this down, because I know you’re already typing in the comments. The average rent for a one-bedroom in Dallas has gone up 18% since 2020, while wages have gone up roughly 6%. That means Marcus—and millions of other millennials and Gen Z-ers—are getting absolutely shafted by a housing market that treats “affordable shelter” like it’s a limited edition Funko Pop. But no, the problem is clearly the smashed avocados on sourdough.
“I literally couldn’t afford avocado toast if I wanted to,” Marcus told local news, clutching a receipt from a grocery store that still has “Aldi” written on it. “I ate a peanut butter sandwich for dinner last night. I’m not out here living my best life. I’m just trying to not get evicted.”
The landlord, who has since been identified as 54-year-old Barry K. (last name withheld because doxxing is bad, kids), doubled down in a statement to the local Fox affiliate, claiming that “young people need to learn fiscal discipline” and that “if they stopped spending money on lattes and brunch, they could easily afford my premium units.”
Premium units. Let’s talk about those. The apartment in question has a dishwasher from 1987, carpet that smells like a wet dog even when it’s dry, and a “garden tub” that is literally just a bathtub with a single dead plant next to it. The rent? $1,800 a month. For that, you get the privilege of hearing your upstairs neighbor practice the drums at 2 AM and a parking spot that requires you to parallel park between a Prius and a guy named Doug’s lifted truck.
But sure, Barry. It’s the toast.
The internet, predictably, lost its collective mind. Reddit user u/SaltySquid_69 posted the video with the caption “AITA for telling my landlord his rent increase is because he spends too much on hair plugs?” The thread currently has 14,000 upvotes and a comment section that reads like a support group for people who have been gaslit by property owners. “My landlord once told me my rent was going up because I ‘run the AC too much,’” one user wrote. “I live in Phoenix. It was July.”
Another commenter pointed out the real kicker: “If avocado toast is $15 a pop, and you eat it twice a week, that’s $120 a month. That’s not $240, Barry. You can’t even math right while being a dick.”
The video also sparked a broader conversation about the “avocado toast” myth—a phrase that has haunted millennials since 2017, when a billionaire real estate mogul first suggested that skipping brunch would somehow unlock homeownership. Spoiler alert: it didn’t. A 2023 study from the Federal Reserve found that the average down payment for a first-time home buyer is now over $40,000. That’s roughly 2,666 avocado toasts. Or, you know, six months of rent in Dallas.
But Barry isn’t the first landlord to blame tenants for their own exploitation, and he won’t be the last. In fact, a quick scroll through r/LandlordHate reveals a treasure trove of similar gems: a landlord in Chicago who charged a “pet fee” for a cat that didn’t exist, a property manager in LA who raised rent because the tenant “had too many house plants,” and a guy in Seattle who literally sent a passive-aggressive email about recycling that ended with “P.S. Your rent is going up $200.”
The real tragedy here isn’t just the rent hike. It’s that Barry genuinely believes he’s the protagonist of this story. He’s not a villain in his own mind. He’s a wise sage, dispensing financial advice from the porch of a building he bought in 1998 for $80,000 and now rents out for $1,800 a month. That’s a 2,150% return on investment, by the way. But sure, Marcus, it’s the toast.
As of press time, Marcus has started a GoFundMe to cover the rent increase, but he’s also considering just moving into his car. “It’s a 2012 Honda Civic,” he said. “No avocado toast smell, guaranteed.”
Final Thoughts
Having watched the rise and fall of countless boom-bust cycles in the oil patch, I can say *Landman* captures the raw, unforgiving calculus of the industry with unsettling accuracy. It’s not a romanticized tale of roughnecks striking it rich, but a gritty procedural about the men who navigate the legal and physical minefields between mineral rights and a paycheck. Ultimately, the show’s real power lies in its quiet, brutal conclusion: that in this world of immense wealth and immense risk, the land—and the people caught in its grip—always extract a price far greater than any barrel of oil.