Evicted Tenant attempting to blackmail landlord.

[Barbara Cook]

I am helping out elderly relatives, whom I live with and take care of two apartment complexes they own in Oregon. We have been having trouble with a tenant for the past year and finally decided to just evict him and get rid of the problem. We gave him a 60 day no cause eviction July 22nd. He responded by writing what amounts to a blackmail letter, which did not bother me because his claims are false. Anyway, we have no fear of being arrested or losing anything based on his ridiculous blackmail claims, only of the inconvenience and hassle he could cause us. Luckily the police and DA agreed with us and arrested him yesterday and charged him with Extortion for his attempt to blackmail us into revoking the eviction notice and not raise his rent in exchange for him not filing his false reports against us.

MY QUESTION: Do we, the Landlords, now have reasonable cause to evict the tenant with a 24 hour notice for Outrageous conduct based on his arrest for attempt to blackmail us?

The DA says they may add the additional charges for Blackmail and think they can add a charge of trespassing against him because the police failed to previously charge him with trespassing on our other properties that he was repeatedly given written notice not to enter and he was caught on security cameras again walking right past several no trespassing signs to let his dog poop on the property and not clean it up. Instead of arresting him, which we had enough evidence to do, they chose to give him their written no trespassing notice instead and said if he did it again then they would consider arresting him. Our local police like to call everything a "Civil matter" even when its a crime. The DA has asked me to complete the Stalking Protection Order I picked up last week when I filed a report with the police department against this same tenant because I was tired of being stalked. At the time they told me it was not illegal to follow us or video tape us through windows and open doors in various units all the time because he had not threatened us. I'm sorry, I felt threatened. He had blocked my path several times trapping me and refusing to move or let me pass "unless I talked to him", he has yelled at me and was stalking me. I fear he is unstable and am afraid of what he will do, especially now that he has been arrested and knows we are not going to revoke out eviction.I imagine I can evict him with 24 hours notice if I obtain the Stalking Protection order but can we evict him for the Extortion? I just want him gone and I imagine he will fight the Stalking Order, which would mean I have to go to court and my PTSD is such I would have to get a lawyer to go with me and argue the case for me. I hate to go through more upset then necessary, I already have to go to the Grand Jury on the Extortion case next week, so if I can give him a 24 hour eviction for the Extortion I won't have to procrastinate over the Stalking Protection Order any more, which would be a relief.