The vast majority of community association residents are normal folks who wouldn't dream of disrupting life in their building by being verbally abusive to neighbors, blowing up board members' phones and e-mail inboxes with endless complaints and threats, or filing lawsuits at the drop of a hat for every slight (real or perceived) they suffer.

Unfortunately, there are exceptions: people who seem to thrive on these very things—and can make life miserable for neighbors, board members, and managers alike. Dealing with them is both a challenge and an art form for boards, managers, and neighbors alike.

A Matter of Degree

As property managers know, in the context of a building community, “disruptive” is a broad term that can describe quite a range of hassle. So what constitutes “disruptive”?

In a nutshell, a disruptive resident is someone whose behavior causes a situation in which the quiet and peaceful enjoyment of other residents’ homes is disturbed on such a frequent or regular basis, or to such an extent, that quality of life in the community is negatively impacted.

Disruptive residents fall into four general categories. First are what might be called the “mundane,” the noisemakers and smelly-food-cookers, the constant gardener or the dog lover who owns 10 yapping terriers. They're the typical noisy neighbor who leaves the TV blaring at all hours, plays music you hate at high volume, or lets their kids run amuck throughout the premises.

Second are the mentally ill: the streakers, the hoarders, the paranoid. “There’s the people who are just noisy,” says Enid Hamelin of Lawrence Properties, a management company in New York City, “...and then there are the people who run naked in the halls.”

Third are those who, by no fault of their own, are either too old or too ill to take care of themselves and thus constitute a danger to themselves and their neighbors. And last is the criminal—everything from the spouse- or child-abuser to the drug dealer.

In other words, disruptive residents are those who, whether they are aware of it or not, behave in a way that demands intervention of one degree or another.

The Mundane

The lion’s share of disruptive residents fall into this category, with noise being by far the most common complaint in multifamily buildings and associations where people are literally on top of one another or living side-by-side, with cooking odors and pets coming in a close second.

On the management side, the headaches typically come from those individuals who bombard their manager's office with a steady stream of complaints and grievances, says Tony Nardone of Dovan Management Group in Bloomfield. “They e-mail every little thing,” he says. “They're very needy people. Any little thing that they can latch onto, they'll complain about time and time again.”

Dennis Estis is an attorney and partner with the Iselin-based law firm Greenbaum Rowe Smith & Davis LLP, and has witnessed his share of poor behavior at annual HOA meetings. “You have unit owners who not only will get up and complain, but will disrupt meetings,” he says. “They totally monopolize the meeting and ignore reasonable requests. I also know of several instances when disruptive unit owners have come into a manager's office to scream and yell, carry on, and make threats; they will do that literally every other day. Or there are people who are so disruptive in common areas that other unit owners just don't want to go to the club house to play cards or work out or go to the swimming pool because they know they are going to go there and be totally abused by this person.”

“I think the tipping point is when there is sufficient evidence that the person is becoming a real annoyance to his or her fellow unit owners,” Estis continues. “Now, sometimes the people who are complaining a lot have a good reason to complain. Sometimes there's a fine line between the difficult or disruptive unit owner and the unit owner who actually has some basis for their complaints, whose board doesn't want to hear from them.”

More often than not, in these less severe situations, a simple sit-down with the two parties resolves the problem. After all, residents have chosen to live in a condo or HOA, among neighbors; everyone wants to live happily ever after. “At its most benign,” says Hamelin, “you try to reason with the person.” The home theater enthusiast whose surround sound irritates the next door neighbor, will be more considerate during the next feature flick or the person whose cooking aromas pervade the area, will put a fan in the window.

Even in situations where the annoyance gets interesting—such as the time one property manager had to deal with a resident who smeared dog excrement on her neighbor’s door knob—most people will come to their senses if they’re in their right mind. If they’re not…

The Mentally Ill

Not everyone is mentally capable of recognizing a breach of civility. “We do have people who are mentally unstable,” says Elaine Warga-Murray of Regency Management Group LLC in Howell. “If you're managing a hundred communities and several thousand homes, that's inevitable. We have people who call us weekly—sometimes daily—saying that people are coming into their home, or looking in their windows. One person called up every day and said that the [local utility] was intentionally leaking gas into her house. That much more difficult. You call the police and the utilities, but after a while there's not a whole lot they can do. In those cases, we've been fortunate that we've been able to get social workers through the county to visit them, but it's still a very lengthy process.”

The red flags go up when “you find that one is not able to deal rationally with that person,” Hamelin says.

One example of this group are the compulsive hoarders—a group that popular cable TV shows such as Hoarders and Hoarders: Buried Alive have thrown a spotlight on in the last year or two. They accumulate shockingly large collections of stuff—or trash, or even animals—in their units, to the point that they can barely move around inside, and the unsanitary conditions give way to insect or mold infestation. Sometimes the clutter gets so bad that the door of the apartment cannot be opened, which of course could be cataclysmic in the event of a fire or other emergency situation. These folks need help, and need to be dealt with through legal channels, up to and including eviction if the behavior doesn’t stop.

“In general, good boards and managers first approach the offending resident to bring the subject behavior to his/her attention,” says one manager. “If that doesn’t change the situation, the board and management may then take legal action,” to get the person out. The board should remember to establish a paper trail by documenting all activities and correspondence that had taken place.

It is human nature to feel empathy for these people. “One must always strive to interact with others humanely,” the manager continues. “That said, it is the fiduciary obligation of the board and management to ensure quality of life and investment value for the majority of owners. A person of diminished mental capacity can pose a real danger to everyone in the building.”

The Infirm

In a condo this reporter once owned, my downstairs neighbor was an older gentleman—he really was a gentleman, with antique furniture and fine art on his walls—who became so infirm that if he fell over, he could not get up. This problem was exacerbated by the fact that he drank copious amounts of alcohol. A pattern emerged wherein he’d drink himself into a stupor, fall down, not be able to get up, and lie on the floor until a neighbor smelled something amiss in the hallway and went to check on him. On another occasion, he passed out while smoking his pipe and almost burned the building down.

This is an extreme case, but there are, sadly, many older residents whose inability to care for themselves threatens the safety of everyone in their building. When failing health and self-sufficiency are combined with stubbornness and refusal of help, an already-difficult situation gets harder still.

“We had a case like that in one of our communities recently,” says Nardone. We have an elderly couple with limited family, who are a little disabled and their house was falling apart. They had an animal, and it had just become a health issue. So we contacted Senior Services and gave them the whole story. They got the place cleaned up and the couple worked with them. It's at a very slow pace, but there was a goal there, and they're slowly achieving that goal. So by us saying, 'Listen, they're not problem tenants—they're elderly, and they just have some medical issues. We want them to be in good standing. How can we help them?' it's really been a win-win scenario. Everything has really worked out.”

Stubborn independence is one thing—but severely diminished capacity is another matter. In the case of someone with dementia or Alzheimers, declining cognitive function can present the risk of starting a flood, or worse, a fire, or of leaving their door open or unlocked and inviting harm upon themselves. Left to their own devices, such an individual is putting many other people in jeopardy, and HOA administrators aren't out of order in taking steps to get that person into the care of an entity that can attend to their best interests.

The Criminal

Naked, noisy neighbors and corrosive cooking odors are one thing—annoying as they can be, they're things you may ultimately be able to laugh about. A forgetful older neighbor may be challenging to deal with, but they're simply people in need of help. Criminal behavior is something else entirely. If someone is verbally or physically abusive; if you suspect they may be dealing drugs, running an escort service or engaging in some other illegal activity; what you need to do is call the police. Period. New Jerseyans are big fans of minding their own business, but activities such as the aforementioned pose a serious threat to the safety of everyone in the building and need to be dealt with quickly and decisively by the proper authorities.

“We've had residents actually threaten individual managers,” says Warga-Murray, “and that's a huge problem.”

Talk it Out

The thing to keep in mind in all of this, says Estis, is that even the difficult shareholder often has some valid claims that are getting lost because of their disruptive nature. As long as people are living in close proximity, there will be conflicts. The best way to handle anything is by communicating. Managers are there to field questions and shield board members from the worst residents’ concerns and complaints—and as always, communication is key.

And documenting that communication is also crucial, say the professionals. Administrators should take pains to document every single communication they have with disgruntled residents, says Warga-Murray. “We send those people postcards each time they call our office,” she says. “Then we can then establish a pattern that allows the board to adopt a resolution saying that if harassment of the board and management continues, then they will no longer be allowed to communicate with management via phone and they have to communicate in writing.”

In the end however, dealing with challenging people is just part of the HOA administrative job description, says Nardone, and it pays to develop a thick skin and some well-honed people skills. “I've been in the business a long time,” he says. “As you mature and gain experience, at some point you have an 'Ah ha!' moment where you get wise and realize that sometimes you get a lot farther with compromise. Sometimes as individuals, as boards and as people, we have to give back a little bit. But through compromise and life experiences, you learn how to deal with it. Unfortunately some people get it and some people don't—that's why we're all different.”

Greg Olear is a freelance writer, novelist and a frequent contributor to The New Jersey Cooperator. Additional reporting by David Chiu.