Removal of Mentally Ill Tenant. Has Month to Month lease.

[Shannon Young]

Hello All,

I have a 65 year old man that rents a room from me. He is a month to month rental. 2 weeks ago he decided to go on a drinking binge ( I did not know he was an alcoholic). He was laying in the floor screaming he didn't know where he was and was going to kill himself. I had to call the police and he told them he wanted to die and wanted to kill himself.  He was taken to the hospital and was there for a week then later was sent by the police to a psychiatric facility. My tenant calls me saying he didn't know how long he was going to be there it could be several weeks. I let him know that he needed to make arrangements as I was not renewing his lease for the month.  He tells me I am violating housing laws because he has nowhere to go. He has plenty of money in the bank and there is no shortage of room rentals. I live in the D.C. area and there are lots of people renting rooms.  I was unaware of any laws protecting mentally ill people; especially ones I feel unsafe around and are month to month renters. I have to worry about the well being of my other renter as well. The alcoholic renter has a cease and desist order against him for harassment where he tried to extort money from his old boss. They fired him for not letting them know he had several charges against him already.

I put people on a month to month to avoid this sort of thin. If I have a problem with someone I let them know I am not renewing the lease for the month. I then give them a 30 day notice. I issued the alcoholic a 30 day notice on the 10th of may.

Any insight would be useful.

thanks