And I was Gen X (as you can tell by my dated references) and these were Baby Boomers, raised to be absolutely certain that they were the most important generation in the history of civilization, certain that we were nothing but human garbage.Since that time, I've put a few pushy boomers in their places when I felt they deserved it.

You can be firm while still being fair and humane.

This is still a human business and managing humans through relationships works.

Sometimes landlords forget that tenants are humans. 

Try it without lawyers first and treat each other as human beings.  

That would be the humane and decent thing to do if you really want to do right by him, if you chose to invest in this tenant.

An LLC alone offers SOME protection, but not as much as a business entity structure where none of the entities is owned by a human person.

I think that any inanimate object can be considered that way, but the Earth is a living amazing thing that we as humans are still learning much about.

Human nature is to try to control our environment and what happens to us.

And even if a landlord just doesn't know they should put something in a lease, whatever they put in it says a lot about them as a human being.