If the tenant violates the lease or fails to pay, there are no eviction protections built into Fair Housing Laws, per se. 

A smart clause in the Operating Agreement would be to have a Quit Claim Deed held in escrow by an attorney or title company, that would transfer the deed back to the partner if you failed to perform or you died.NOTE: transferring the deed to an LLC may be considered a violation of the due on sale clause of most residential mortgages.

Due to my high debt and currently low income I've continued to fail and fail.

This is one part of why long distance investing oftentimes fails.

NO.  90% of the fails I see in RE are from lack of control. 

Consult with an attorney but if they failed to do that you keep the deposit.

I don't know what the condition is of *everything* in this unit or how much life is left - we could go in there and have all these things fail on us 5 months in, and then what? 

If all else fails I could always just sell it! 

The reason a lot of new investors fail is because they only listen to the answers they want to hear and dismiss the ones that don't go with what gets them a door.

Of course not.Landlords and managers are responsible for acts of negligence, like failing to fix a broken step on the deck or cover electrical wiring.