Bad tenants face curses breaking lease (5-4)
I believe the answer is:
third-rate
'bad' is the definition.
(I've seen this before)
'tenants face curses breaking lease' is the wordplay.
'face' suggests taking the first letters.
'curses' becomes 'drat' (I am not sure about this - if you are sure you should believe this answer much more).
'breaking' indicates putting letters inside.
'lease' becomes 'hire' (synonyms).
The first letter of 'tenants' is 't'.
'drat' inserted within 'hire' is 'hirdrate'.
't'+'hirdrate'='THIRD-RATE'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for third-rate that I've seen before include "Very inderior in quality - do a count" , "Of very poor quality" , "Very inferior in quality, using ordinal number" , "Very inferior in quality in numeric description" , "Very inferior in quality - count down" .)