Courts take a very, very dim view of any act that a landlord takes to harass a tenant, legal or not. Read http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~asucrla/Harassment%20by%20Your%... for example. A landlord who takes any adverse action against a tenant outside the legal eviction process is liable for damages.
Further, those other hundreds of tenants could have a legal claim against the landlord for fraud, since in a lease the landlord has to represent that he/she can deliver the property to the tenant, which is demonstrably not the case.
Courts take a very, very dim view of any act that a landlord takes to harass a tenant, legal or not. Read http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~asucrla/Harassment%20by%20Your%... for example. A landlord who takes any adverse action against a tenant outside the legal eviction process is liable for damages.
Further, those other hundreds of tenants could have a legal claim against the landlord for fraud, since in a lease the landlord has to represent that he/she can deliver the property to the tenant, which is demonstrably not the case.