What are my rights against a hostile tenant?
About a year ago, a nice lady(or so we thought) moved into our building. We helped fix her fax machine, offered a cup of sugar when she needed it, carried her groceries upstairs for her, that sort of thing. We thought we had a good standing with her until one day, we answered the door for the manager(whom we have a good relationship with) and the lady just happened to be walking by and saw a cat poop on the floor. Our litter box is situated behind the front door because there is nowhere else to put it. Well, the kitty had just finished business and had scratched vigorously dug, and flipped one out of the box. She saw it and I had not cleaned it up just then. We had 4 kitties we claimed as ours. Two days later, we have animal control knocking on our door saying that they have had a report of flea-infested, sickly looking, living with 3 inches of filth(feces, I think the report said) on the floor, cats(7-8) roaming in out of our apartment. Well, every detail of the report she claimed was false and the officer agreed with us. He had inspected our place and the cats and found nothing to be out of order. All is good.
Later, we found out the the lady was very upset that our cats were not taken from us, my husband thrown in jail and all our possessions burned. She’s been spreading vile rumors about us around the neighborhood ever since.
She had caused nothing but trouble since she moved in. Lots of things have happened since then, including trying to sue the manager because her cats got fleas and worms(her certified letter even states that she ‘unwillingly’ brought fleas into her home), vandalizing our personnel property(we can’t “prove” it was her but “know” it was her), blaming us for the roach problem we had(we didn’t have them until she moved in), and hanging a defamatory sign on the breezeway door that said ” Cross this property at your own risk. This place is flea, rat and cockroach infested”.
We are fed up with her and her delusions, so is the manager and the owner of the building. The owner has a 3 day cease and desist order if she withholds anything from her rent because the manager refused to pay her demand. I know for a fact that the owner wants her out and wants to give her a 30 day no-cause eviction, but fears it will be seen as a retaliatory action.
What are my rights against her? Should I be filing police reports? Speaking to an attorney? She has vicious. She upsetting us , the manger, the owner and other tenants. What can we do to speed up the process of getting her the hell out of here?

May 9th, 2011 at 8:33 pm
You have a lot of cats. I’d hate to walk passed cat pooh in a shared hallway whether its in a tray or flipped over the side.
experience
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May 9th, 2011 at 9:34 pm
Since you have the manager on your side then your best bet is to just work through him. The tenant is obviously a nut and your manager sees that. Just keep reporting all of her activities to the manager and eventually they should take care of the problem. Make sure you report the sign she posted in the breezeway since posting signs outside of your apartment is usually a violation of the lease.
experience
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