Tenant abusing residents over noise

Strata Ken wrote:

How does using a law firm, compare to doing it yourself.

How long is a piece of string? There are different kinds of lawyers offering different services and with different approaches.  Our sponsors  Sachs Gerache and Bannermans are among the most effective and experienced strata lawyers you are ever likely to encounter, but they have different approaches to issues.  Our good friend Amanda Farmer, who has her own podcasts, only represents individual owners, rather than owners corproations, these days.

Another good pal, Franceso Andreones – former top notch strata lawyer, now a consultant –   has a website you might want to visit. Or you could just Google “strata consultant” but be warned, some of the pages that pop up are thinly disguised portals for strata managers and lawyers.

As for doing it yourself, the Tribunal was supposed to be a lawyer-free zone and that lasted just as long as it took for the Members to realise they were spending more time explaining the law to the applicants and defendants than they were listening to the details of the cases. You can still do it yourself but be prepared for a situation where the other side has a lawyer who will run rings around you and the Tribunal member.

• This reply was modified 8 months, 3 weeks ago by .

You may find that the tenant has a mental illness of some kind and it can be difficult for him/her to control the behaviour.  If that’s the case, I would almost bet that the Tribunal would give him/her a “second chance” and you’ll be waiting forever for this to finally be resolved in a way you can live with.

Have you spoken directly to the landlord?  Getting the landlord involved may be the cheapest way out of this (via eviction at the appropriate time and for an appropriate reason that can’t be challenged – could the unit possibly need renovating?  Or does the Landlord have a family member who’d like to move in for a period?)

I also suggest maintaining a detailed log of incidents – time, date, nature of verbal abuse, background to incident, Police involvement.

Just on issuing a by-law breach notice… you have two options on this (in most states): formally ask the committee to investigate the possible breach, as is their duty to, and if convinced of such have them issue the notice to the resident. This is ideal as it removes it from your hands, involves others, and will likely be sent in the name of the committee and not in your name. It becomes an on-going committee issue to seek resolution of. But sometimes they don’t see it as an issue and you still do, so in that case you can issue a breach notice directly from you to them. Some folk aren’t comfortable to do such if they feel the resident is a bit of a vexatious nut job or you don’t want to feel singled out. In either case a notice needs be sent detailing what the issue is, when it’s occurred, and what by-law you feel is being breached. It’s a required thing as if it continues on and goes further down the line you need show you have issued such as part of you trying to remedy the situation.

Hi,

We had a tenant not so long ago. Mid 50’s, single female. I wouldn’t say she had a mental health issue (She was a working GP) Once I got to know her, she was a drinker, had had a rough time with men especially and developed a persecution complex. She started with having loud arguments over the balcony with me about the inanest of things. First, we had part of the path pressure cleaned and with one end roped off for a morning. She made a big deal out of not being able to use the path and why wasn’t she wasn’t consulted and now she wouldn’t go to the gym. Ignoring the simple fact, she could exit via the other street entrance and walk to the front in 60 seconds. Then she claimed drug deals were going on because strange men were coming and going late at night. Two young lads had just moved into the penthouse unit. As often the case they would come home pissed at 1:00am, which is not uncommon for young single guys (I remember those days). They would often lock themselves out as well and would have to hang around the entrance until the other came home. Then she claimed people were harassing her on her intercom. This did happen, but as we quickly determined water had got onto the intercom and was cross calling random units (not just hers). When she would start to kickoff, I started telling her “Jill (not her real name) I’m not prepared to talk to you when you’re behaving like this. Talk to me when you’ve calmed down”. She started to after that. I could explain what the situation was, rather than what she had cooked up in her mind. We lived in peace from then onwards. Some people don’t take to strata living very well if they’ve lived their whole life in a house. Some people just want to feel heard. Your “minor” noise complaints may be perfectly valid in her mind.  See if you can hear her out (but make clear boundaries that yelling/abuse won’t be tolerated). That may be all she needs. Try to explain to her that when you’re living on top of each other there will be the occasional TV noise, slamming doors, kids screaming, trades coming to do maintenance etc. Good luck.