Bad prospect - Landlord Forum thread 352901

Bad prospect by Anonymous (NJ) on June 23, 2017 @13:40

We have 5 units in NJ. One of the tenant was in wheel chair signed lease with girl friend. Girl friend was removed 5 months ago after he got permanent restraining order. We have constantly witnessed unauthorized occupants and one of them is lady he calls his sister who is also in wheel chair. June rent was not received so we have court date on 7/14/17. Since June, he does not take his trash to curb, fills other ppl trash cans, does not separate recycles etc but as we have filed for non payment, we take care of trash.
His sister is after us since a year every time we have vacant unit. We have no smoking policy. Once she had fight with us when we saw her smoking inside while rent pick up and reminded our tenant about non smoking policy.
She has violated our parking policy by parking in the space of other tenants.
Now, our tenant called us and said his sister wants to rent after he is evicted. We do not want her as a tenant as she is also in wheel chair. We will again have issue with trash. For the smoking issue, we were talking to our tenant and she jumped up in conversation saying " I will sue for harassment for telling me xxxx and my brother (our tenant) will be witness. As far as I heard from our tenant's girl friend, she has military pension and enough income to qualify. We do not have ppl with good credit applying as all units have 1 bed room and so we have to choose ppl with bed credit all the times. In that case, we can not deny her due to credit as her bro also had bed credit. What do we do? Right now, we said that we need to re paint etc after it is emptied so look for the listing on Craiglist after posted and apply.

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Re: Bad prospect by Anonymous on June 23, 2017 @15:22	[ Reply ]

You gave the right answer. Don't let her bully you.

Re: Bad prospect by Grant on June 23, 2017 @21:23	[ Reply ]

When it time to rent take several applications for a couple days and then pick from the best one. State on your advertisement something to state Non smoking rental property. You are not require to rent to a smoker.

Re: Bad prospect by Stephen (WA) on June 24, 2017 @12:25	[ Reply ]

"We do not want her as a tenant as she is also in wheel chair." - Wrong answer! You may not discriminate against her on the basis that she is disabled. If she gets a copy of what you posted she will have evidence of this. I grasp that she has created some bad feelings and has demonstrated not following the rules (no smoking inside, using other's trash bins, not getting their own trash out to curb). Those may be sufficient to deny renting to them but if you mention their disability then you will be on the losing end. Side note: Getting trash to the curb - I doubt that you have a policy (or could enforce one) that required the tenant to personally transport his/her own trash to the curb. Your need is that the tenant GET the trash to the curb. So an 80 year old grandma whose grandson visits every week and transports the can for her to and from the curb would suffice. Your tenant needs to GET the trash to the curb and the empty container back. It doesn't matter how (s)he does it.