How do you deal with a mentally ill, problematic Tenant?

[Nathan Gesner]

This is a long story, but I'll spare you the details. A tenant has been with us for four months and problematic since day one. She's from a particular state where people are known to be entitled and demanding and think highly of themselves, so we just thought she was "one of those people" and tried our best to handle her professionally while keeping our distance. Her parents live in the same apartment building and are extremely nice and helpful. When their daughter makes crazy accusations, they'll roll their eyes or ask her to go inside her apartment. Yesterday her mom actually locked their apartment door and refused to speak with their daughter. We received dozens of phone calls, long, rambling voicemails, and lots of text messages. Even when I set an appointment to meet her in 30 minutes, she still called and left a two-minute voicemail just repeating her complaint. After I addressed her concern, she called the owner for 30 minutes to complain about the problem and how I refuse to fix it. Then she sent another dozen texts to me at work, followed by several crazy reviews on Yelp and facebook groups.

I've had two mentally ill tenants that behaved the same way. One was evicted in 2014 (my last court eviction!). The other one (brain injury from car accident) was from a very wealthy family in Texas. Her family attorney was in contact with me for bill payment and a few other matters, so I was able to explain the situation and the family agreed to have her moved back to Texas.

I can't afford for my staff to spend this much time on one person or the stress that comes with it. I want to evict the tenant, but she's so irrational that I suspect it would take a court order. I plan to speak with the parents and see if they'll either get her under control or they can all move out without penalty.

How would you handle it?