Tenants want to bring released felon sons "home" to our units!

[Karen F.]

Grrrrr. We do Class C rentals in a mostly Hispanic slum town, that is moving more toward AA slum.  We make a living at it, but they require a lot of attention.  I'm about to lose two marginal tenants.  They happen to be in the same two family building.  Both have been with us for years.  They both pay their rent, although sometimes late, and both are late this month.  Each now has a son with multiple felony convictions (one TWICE convicted for drug dealing with gun in car, the other TWICE convicted of violent assault while committing a mugging) coming out of prison, and each just assumed that they could bring their little darling "home".  They each mentioned to us that the son was coming up for release, but neither got permission from us for them to move in.  One was released to mom's custody and moved in, without us knowing.  When I found out a few days later, I finally was able to get sonny boy's full name, looked up his crimes, and called his parole officer and said, "Get him out!  We never gave permission for him to move in, you never contacted us, and now get him out!"  Mom is of course furious, hasn't paid rent yet this month, and now we'll have to give her a notice to quit.  She's been with us for 5 years - always paid, although sometimes late.  The other one, with the propensity to beat his mugging victims to a pulp in (probably) a bipolar rage, since Mom has bipolar disorder, has not yet been released.  Mom wasn't sure they would release sonny boy to her, because of her own bipolar history, but when we told her, sorry, but he cannot move into our unit, she went nuts, hasn't paid us, and now we've got to give her a notice to quit too.  It's not anything we could have screened for, either, since neither son lived with them anytime since they've been with us.  It sucks.  I wish the parole office would call the LL, rather than just assume that the LL is fine with having violent criminals released to live in the LL's unit.  But the parole officer told me they just take the word of the relative that the LL has agreed to accept the released felon as a tenant.  These moms see it as their right to move their adult criminal sons in, who we are appropriately terrified of. 

I know, it's probably just best to be rid of them.   But these are both women whom we have helped along through the years, who we tried to view as good people, without stereotyping them, and now we have to evict them, because they're pissed off that we won't allow their little darling felons to come "home", since we're rightly scared to death of their little violent darlings.  At best, we will have turnover and lose about a month's rent on each unit, even with keeping their security deposit to cover the non-payment of rent for the minimum of two months, probably three that it's going to take to get them out.  At worst, we will lose about three months of rent on each unit, if they effectively fight the evictions.  The funny thing is that they each said, "Well, if I cannot bring my son 'home', then I'm moving!"  But of course they won't move, they'll just sit there not paying rent until they get evicted!  And there was no way for me to have known before they moved in, since they were "away on vacation" when their moms rented the units, years ago.