Tennant pulling the race card

[Scott Goulet]

Hi BP,

I want to preface this post by saying I believe in total equality and I treat everyone fairly in all of my rentals.

I have a situation in one of my rentals, where a sliding glass door was clearly broken by the tenant ( glass shattered from the outside in, police report specifically states it was not a wind driven event) and the tenant had taken a small branch from the yard and placed it perfectly on her bed and is claiming that a small branch shattered a double pane sliding glass door.

My property management company went out to inspect, they came to the same conclusion as the police officer. This was clearly the tenant fault and they would need to pay to fix the door.

My PM company called me today and said that the tenant cussed out the entire PM company calling everyone racist, even the police officer. My property managment company is recommending that to save face I offer to pay for half of the sliding glass door.. it's not a huge amount of money, but I feel that if I give in here, if the tenant breaks something else and we refuse to fix it, she will pull the race card again.

How would all of the other landlords here handle the situation? I want to tread lightly here, as to not aggravate the situation. Thank you all for your valuable input.

[Joe Funari]

@Scott Goulet is half the cost of repairs or attorney fees for a law suit going to cost you less? I would recommend working with PM to get the repairs done. Then give the tenant a notice to vacate at the end of their lease when the timing to give such notice to vacate are warranted per their lease agreement. You can always find other tenants with less issues than the current one.