Newbie needs advice on tenant harassment, please help!

[Pria H.]

Hi everyone,

We need help on a dicey situation that is only seeming to get worse. We have a duplex in Oakland, Ca. Bought it empty, carefully screened tenants, and they moved in. Upstairs is a woman who lives alone, and downstairs is a couple.

From the first morning that the upstairs tenant moved in (5 weeks ago), she started getting texts about noise from downstairs. Then emails, then stops to talk in the driveway.  This was almost daily. We got complaints about downstairs could hear everything and can't sleep. Every footstep, middle of the night trip to the bathroom, her alarm sounding in the morning, etc. were all becoming a problem. One of the downstairs tenants works from home and complains about footsteps that occur at noon (not just a middle of the night issue).  In an effort to mitigate the drama, we offered to put carpeting in the upstairs bedroom, but not the rest of the apartment.  

The morning that the carpeting was about to go in, we got emails from the downstairs tenant about 10 minutes of a repetitive squeaking noise the night before from the upstairs bedroom. They had texted her about it as it occurred, and when she didn't stop, they recorded and sent the recording to us in an email.  They also cc'ed the upstairs tenant on the initial email (not including the sound file). They made it clear that they knew what the sound was. The upstairs tenant was mortified and angry, hours later she was approached at her car by an angry downstairs tenant demanding that she not wear shoes in her apartment. The upstairs tenant refused to talk to her, and said to direct all complaints at us.  She is also convinced that their recording and sending of the files was illegal.  We've gotten mixed opinions. 

We conveyed the message to the downstairs tenants, and offered to let them out of their lease. It's clear to us that they are not suited for apartment living (though we didn't say that). We have gotten no response.  Today, about 10 days later, the upstairs tenant has informed us that they have been creating a hostile environment for her. Repetitively slamming doors when she comes home, banging the walls when she walks around, parking closer and closer to her car. She informed us that she will be filing a police report because while she was walking to her car this morning, the downstairs tenant lunged out of her window and screamed at her to "just take off your f*#$ing shoes!"  She is feeling unsafe.

We have an appt with a lawyer tomorrow morning - our first one as we are only 6 weeks into having this property rented! I would appreciate any and all advice and experience. I have no idea what to expect, other than I imagine it's extremely hard to get tenants out. It seems so obvious that any tenant who lives above them will be a problem for them, so they ought to go find a SFH to rent, but I think the "reasonable train" has left the station.

Thanks so much, and sorry for the long post!

Pria

[Bill S.]

I call this the "Happy Clause". Email them with a one time offer and give them 24hours to reply.

The offer is, "We can see you are not happy here. We will offer you a ONE TIME opportunity to leave by 5 pm Aug 30, 2014 with no penalty. This offer is good until 5 pm July 31st. Please confirm acceptance in writing. If you elect not to accept this offer then it's our understanding that the present living conditions are acceptable and the complaints about such will end immediately"

This is the perils of an up/down duplex. Airborne sound is likely conveyed via the heating duct system. Carpet will help with the footfall noise but it's a real challenge of these types of properties.