I own two mobile home parks. I pay others to manage my parks. One of my parks is 3.5 hrs away and I hired a couple to manage it who also own a park in that city. They are model managers and I never have to get involved in anything and they have been managing now for 5 years. In my nearly 30 years of being a park owner I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this. I evicted a bully tenant nearly 10 months ago. Our state has a 30 day notice to quit tenancy without reason. This is a retirement community and she had everyone in the park so scared that no one would step foot outside. The entire community wanted to sell and leave because of her. I wrote the eviction and my managers served her. She left but not without threats that she will get revenge. No big deal, they usually get over it. She started with a threatening text to me that she had my number and I needed to watch my back. When she got nowhere with that, she has now been blasting me and my managers and their own park on social media telling the community that we are bad people, sending them annoying messages, voicemails, and even attacking their family members online with harassing messages that are so absolutely insane. My managers had recent deaths in the family and she even went so far as to harass them making fun that they deserved for their parents to die. Not once has myself or my managers confronted her or her messages and everyone tries to block and ignore her. I spoke with her lawyer who she obtained when I evicted her and told her to inform her to cease and desist but the lawyer claimed she wasn’t representing her anymore. I spoke with the local sheriff who said we could file a report on her but if no one knows where she is (which we don’t) to serve her then it really wouldn’t go anywhere. Now 10 months later she consistently keeps on without any end in sight. My managers have had to put up cameras because of her. They fear physical retaliation since it’s obvious that she is not going to stop. I fear my managers are going to quit and I don’t want to lose them, they are very beneficial to me. Should I continue to ignore or seek legal counsel?
Wow.
Sounds like a horrible situation.
I’d hire an attorney and get a TRO. If you can’t serve her there should be some alternative means such as posting a notice in the local paper for 2 weeks etc.
I would definitely file a report with the local Police Department.
Agree here. The police are the ones that should handle this.
In my experience, problem people like this are seldom able to hide. With a police report you could probably get a warrant to trace the source of the harassing messages. But I bet the police can track her down pretty easily.
Get all your facts and proof lined up in chronological order and take it to the police and see what happens.
If local police admit this is above their head, then try to contact FBI Cyber Crime Unit (https://www.ic3.gov/) since those threats and harassments are taken place on-line. It is quite easy to identify her physical location as every time she gets online (cell phone or Internet) there are toms of activity logs trail left on service providers’ equipment. Talk to the agent and see how it goes.
I want to thank you guys for the great advice, I will proceed with some form of action. We are definitely in different times. On the plus side, the turnover has produced a happy park and my tenants have thanked me twofold. They have social gatherings now and enjoy being outside again.
We feel your pain. We acquired a community with legacy tenants and one that is just as you describe. We have pictures of her daughter standing outside our managers door with a knife in her hand threatening to kill our manager. The entire household harasses the surrounding residents and the police are onsite multiple times a week. The police have asked us why we do not evict her.
We have been trying to do that since October. We have been to court four times. The second time she obtained legal council from social services. Being we were in a new market, we called the court and asked which attorney in town handles the most evictions and hired him. Note to self…do not ask the court. After the last loss in court we have now hired a new attorney. We inquired about a restraining order, but it was rejected. What blows me away is we are trying to turn the community around and the county/city spends unknown amounts of money as a result of this tenants actions, but the courts in this same county don’t seem to care about their own back yards.
With regards to the bad reviews, we do respond to all reviews both good and bad in a professional manner just to show anyone reading the reviews that we do care.
If there’s death threats then it’s a criminal offense, otherwise the police will do absolutely nothing.
I had a similar situation; evicted a tenant who managed to skip trace my cell phone number; for nearly a year later, he would post my number on Craigslist as if I was selling cheap items (car, ps5, tools). I had proof he was the one posting it, the police and the local magistrate said they aren’t pressing charges nor do they care.
To stop it, first I tried directing the people to call the tenant directly (since he is the one who posted the ads for sale), didn’t stop him. What finally worked was I gave people who called about the items his girlfriend’s number; after a few days, she got him to stop posting the ads. Ha ha.
Wow didn’t think anyone had it worse than me. That’s really unbelievable. Every instance is definitely a learning experience. Thanks for sharing.
In my experience the disgruntled soon move on to other issues in their lives. Ride it out.
Jay-E has the absolutely best advice - deal with it and ride it out. We have had the same situation where a sociopath lives across from our park and harasses people. We have pursued do not trespass orders, called police for theft, considered filing lawsuit for tortious interference, but all actions have failed and only made him stronger since he realizes our actions always fail.
Now, we sent him Christmas cards, and consider his immature ways a cost of doing business. Over time, his threats have waned.
I am convinced thoroughly that you have no recourse until your perpetrator actually hurts somebody. Stop harboring over it and learn to live with it.