To Note: I looked up the alleged victim and it appears they have a history of aberrant behavior and domestic battery charges/arrests themselves (prior to their relationship with the applicant); I'm wondering if this applicant was in fact the victim and not the other way around. 

@Ben - I'm sorry to hear the mess they made; unfortunately is not unusual for tenants to act like this (sometimes out of pure negligence and some other's out of life's circumstances - please note I'm not condoning their behavior) Steve is right; here in Texas (I'm in Austin) the landlord/property management company has 30 days in which to account - in writing - expenses due a tenant after move out.

Late fees help, but you do want to determine why the sudden change in behavior and if this will impact the coming months in order to handle it the best way. 

They can file a Chapter 13 to keep their property, then later convert to a Chapter 7, if they can't make their payments or decide they no longer want to keep the property.Their behavior indicates to me, that this is what they plan to do. 

Any attempts will be seen as weakness and encourages more bad behavior.

What you call compassion, I call enabling bad behavior. 

My why is all about “cognitive consonance,” it’s defines as state of harmony and internal consistency arising from compatibility among a person's attitudes, behavior, beliefs, and/or knowledge.

I want to support local business; however, I do not want to reward unethical behavior at the same.If you've made it this far, thank you for your time and patience. 

This is a great site but let's top pretending we're encouraging rationale behavior.

For example, for every 1 month of being locked down are we going to see peoples behaviors change for 3 or 6 months or more after.