Mind Your Own Business: The Property Manager’s Guide to Tenant Disputes

Why Property Managers Should Manage Homes, Not Human Drama—And When to Step In

One of my favorite content creators on TikTok is a personal trainer who goes by the name Joey Swoll. Do I care about body building, fitness, or gym culture? If you’ve ever seen my physique, you know the answer to that is a clear and emphatic “no!” :) However, I follow this creator because I love his mission in life, which is to get people to leave other people alone in the gym and let them do their own thing without criticism, harassment, ridicule, or having their photos posted all over the internet without their permission. His trademark catchphrase is “you need to do better; mind your own business!”

Now, how on earth does this relate to property management? Great question, but I promise you, it actually does. I’m a member and officer of the Atlanta chapter of NARPM, and we have a chapter listserve (mailing list) where all members can ask questions, debate, spread industry news, etc. It’s a fantastic resource, and it makes NARPM dues worthwhile just by itself for our chapter. Recently, we had a debate take place on the listserve about what a property manager should do when there is a dispute between tenants at a multifamily property and one tenant accuses the other of harassing them. To me, this was a prime example of “you need to do better, mind your own business!”

We Manage Property, Not Personalities

Property managers instinctively want to get involved when a tenant files a complaint. You’re focused on providing a good living environment for your tenants so that they’ll stick around and keep renewing their leases, so it makes sense that you would want to help out a tenant who says they’re having a bad experience. But what you need to remember in these circumstances is that the tenant’s bad experience has nothing to do with the property they’re renting from you. Their bad experience is entirely related to an interpersonal problem with another person. And while your gut might tell you that you need to get involved because the other person is also a tenant renting from you, nothing could be further from the truth. You should treat this situation no differently than you would treat it if a tenant complained to you that they were having problems with a co-worker at their job. It simply has nothing to do with the property, and therefore nothing to do with you.

As always, I must point out that I’m not an attorney, and this is not legal advice, so always check with your favorite local landlord/tenant attorney if you have a case come up that you aren’t sure how to handle. That said, this is my (non-legal) advice on how you should think about these things. There are very rare and limited circumstances where you have an obligation to intervene in a dispute between tenants:

1. A tenant’s provable actions are violations of safety rules that are in the lease (examples would be storing dangerous chemicals, lighting fires outside of a fireplace, etc.);

2. A tenant’s provable actions are violations of the civil rights of another tenant (even this one is questionable, which we’ll discuss below);

3. If you have a state or local law in your jurisdiction that requires you to intervene; these are rare, but there are some locales where laws are in place requiring landlords to intervene between tenants in certain kinds of cases; this is why it’s important to consult with a local landlord/tenant attorney; and

4. If actual crimes are being committed that could endanger someone in the community.

Aside from these circumstances, you should mind your own business, because you are a property manager and not a people manager. But we should look at each of these cases individually, as most of them contain some nuance.

Violations of Lease Rules

This was the big disagreement on the listserve. Some PMs felt that there was an obligation of the PM to intervene because the harassing behavior could be considered a violation of lease rules. To which my response is pretty simple: “why on earth do you have rules in your lease that relate to how one tenant interacts with another tenant?” You’re just setting yourself up for conflicts of interest here. Why do you want to be put in the position of taking a side between two tenants? If your lease rules are dictating how tenants interact with each other, then you’ve now voluntarily enrolled yourself in the extra job of adult babysitter. Congrats (but really dumb move)! You have no obligation to have such rules in your lease.

Some people mistakenly believe that they do have to police these things because they are required to protect the tenant’s “quiet enjoyment” of the premises. For those who haven’t taken their real estate exam in many years, “quiet enjoyment” is a legal right that tenants have when leasing a property to be able to enjoy the home they’re renting without interference. However, in most jurisdictions, the only interference you’re required to prevent is interference from yourself as the PM or the landlord. You have no affirmative obligation to intervene when some third party is interfering. Now, again, this varies by jurisdiction. Some places will require you to do so if the third party is a tenant and certain circumstances exist in the interference, so know your state and local laws, but in general, this is not required, and it is definitely not required without clear and convincing evidence that the other tenant is actually doing something wrong.

Unless your state or locality requires you to have rules in your lease that police the behavior of tenants amongst themselves, then you shouldn’t have these rules in your lease, because they’re simply imposing responsibilities on you that you wouldn’t otherwise have. Does your state or city require you to have a noise provision in your lease? If not, get rid of it. You don’t want to be responsible for policing the noise level of your tenants. That’s why noise ordinances exist. Let the tenant call the police if there’s a disturbance, not you. This is why we have police. You aren’t law enforcement, and you shouldn’t want to make yourself their equivalent in your properties.

Keep your lease simple when it comes to rules. Disallow things that are safety hazards to the property or other tenants, and leave it at that. Everything else should be handled between tenants themselves, or with the involvement of law enforcement or civil procedure.

Civil Rights Violations

This is where it gets tricky, because the law is very unclear here, and it keeps bouncing back and forth between extremes. What is your obligation if one tenant alleges that another tenant is harassing them on the basis of a protected class, such as race or national origin?

The reason this one is murky is that different Administrations in DC have taken different policy positions on this question. Towards the end of the Obama Administration, in 2016, HUD issued new guidance stating that landlords had an affirmative obligation to intervene if a tenant’s civil rights under the Federal Fair Housing Act (FFHA) were being violated by another tenant. For example, if a white tenant was harassing a black tenant and screaming racial slurs at them in the apartment parking lot, the position of Obama’s HUD was that this was a problem that the landlord was obligated to address, up to the point of evicting the offender. This was a new standard that had never been recognized previously, and many PMs mistakenly believe that this is still the current interpretation of HUD.

However, Donald Trump took office shortly after this rule change was issued by Obama’s HUD, and by 2020, Trump’s HUD had made sweeping changes to the interpretation of many housing rules, this one included, as well as disparate impact and others. The Biden Administration talked about rolling back the Trump changes, but ultimately never did (except for disparate impact), leaving the Trump interpretations from his first term still the official interpretation of how the FFHA is to be applied. In short, there is currently no interpretation from HUD stating that you as a landlord or property manager have any obligation to intervene in disputes between tenants, even if they are related to civil rights issues.

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Now, many of you know my politics, and I tend to skew center-left, so you might expect me to side more with the Obama Administration on this question. However, I think this was an overreach on their part. Many legal scholars at the time found this to be pretty egregious stretch, and putting enforcement of civil rights laws in the hands of landlords was a rather extreme interpretation. Again, we aren’t law enforcement, and we aren’t HUD. This isn’t our game to play, no matter how we may feel about it. While I would find it reprehensible for a tenant to be screaming racial slurs at another tenant at an apartment we manage, and I might even have a gut instinct to intervene, the truth of the matter is that this isn’t my problem to solve, and law enforcement is who should be called. It is up to the police and the prosecutor’s office to determine whether the actions of a tenant violated the civil rights of another tenant, and if so, it’s their responsibility to press charges and pursue them. I simply manage houses and apartments.

If you want to review an actual legal case that took place on this question after the Trump Administration overturned the Obama interpretation on this question, reference Francis v. King’s Park Manor. This is a great write-up on the case by the Harvard Law Review that is not behind a paywall. The short version is that the appeals court overturned the lower court’s ruling and held in favor of the apartment complex saying that they had no obligation to get involved in a civil rights matter. But again, check with your local legal counsel, as your state or city may have different requirements than federal law. Generally, on a question like this, if the state or local law is more restrictive, then you’ll have to follow it.

Local & State Laws

There are very clear examples of states or cities having statutes or ordinances in place that require you to act, particularly if the harassing behavior is related to a protected class. Examples would be the cities of New York, San Francisco, and Seattle. Let’s look at one law in particular.

The city of New York ratified NYC Local Law 38 in 2018 which requires all landlords of buildings with more than three units to intervene in cases of harassment involving a protected class. This law even imposes finds of up to $250,000 for failing to intervene. The city expects you to take this very seriously, up to the point of evicting the offending tenant if other steps don’t work to alleviate the harassment.

Now, to be clear, these laws are pretty rare. I couldn’t find an example of a statewide law of this nature (although that doesn’t mean that one doesn’t exist), and only found a handful of large, fairly liberal cities with them. But this does emphasize the need for you to consult an attorney in your locality who specializes in landlord/tenant law to determine just what your lease should include and what your responsibilities truly are.

Criminal Activity

When behavior reaches the point of being criminal, the game changes somewhat. Of course, it does depend on what kind of criminal behavior we’re talking about. Is a tenant complaining that another tenant is growing a marijuana plant on their back porch? I’m not going to care about that. Maybe you will, but I’d encourage you to “mind your own business.” No one’s safety is in danger, and this sort of complaint is usually precipitated purely by the complaining tenant just not liking the other tenant and desperately trying to find anything to report about them. The situation is a bit different if there’s a police raid and they find an entire marijuana grow farm in the spare bedroom. At that point, you have to worry about the criminal activity that might occur in the complex related to the distribution of the marijuana, so safety does become a concern. This is where nuance is involved.

Of course, there are some cases that don’t really need any nuance in this category. Has a tenant been convicted of rape, assault, armed robbery, or similar? That is very clearly a danger to others in the community, and this is why we do criminal background checks before approving someone’s application in the first place. If someone is convicted (some would argue even if just arrested) for one of these crimes against people or property, then you need to take that seriously, and your lease should have a provision allowing you to terminate the lease and evict the tenant. We can debate whether a simple arrest or indictment is enough, or if a conviction should be required first, but hash that question out within your company with the assistance of your legal counsel and determine your policy, then make sure it’s in your lease. But you should never take action if there is not at the very least an arrest. Until that occurs, it’s simply one person’s word against another’s, and you don’t want to get involved in that. Again, manage property, not people.

Conclusion

We all want to provide safe and comfortable housing, or at least I hope all of you do. That desire can sometimes lead us astray and make us believe that we need to involve ourselves in every little thing that takes place within the communities that we manage, but the maxim to “mind your own business” still holds true in most cases. Adults should handle their own disputes without needing you to get involved, and if they can’t handle them themselves, then that’s what law enforcement and the courts are for. If law enforcement gets involved, then it might be time for you to get involved if someone gets arrested or convicted. But until that point, let the adults handle their own problems (unless your state or city says otherwise).

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