Resident Mental Illness

Our community has a woman, age 60, who is mentally ill and lives alone. In the last 6 months, she has: gone to our tree trimming firm and verbally abused them; has verbally abused board members; visited our management company and verbally abused them; and verbally abused our snow removal contract workers. Her brother, who is in charge of her, doesn't get along with her and is reluctant to help us with her. Any suggestions?

Sue, regardless of the severity of this woman's illness, I would recommend that the Board of Directors send a letter to her and explain the rules of your association. In our association, if a homeowner has a concern, they need to address it to the Board in writing. We have provided the homeowners with a form to use for all communications (e.g., to request information, report association violations, request maintenance and repairs, report problems, etc.). She needs to be told that the contractors work for the "entire association", and they have been hired by the Board of Directors. Therefore, the Board needs to be involved in "all" communications between homeowners and contractors. Without this control the Board is not capable of doing their job. Tell all your homeowners that the Board has to be kept in the loop so you can handle their concerns and be able to make sound decisions when there are contractor problems. Good luck!!

Linda,

Your suggestions are very helpful. We are in the process of composing a letter to her and these items will be included.

The bottom line is that we are all hoping that she gets the help that she is needing.

I appreciate your input.

Sue

This is a most unfortunate situation and one that I have dealt with several times as Board president. The worst case was an elderly resident with severe dementia who lived alone and posed a threat to her own safety and well-being as well as to her neighbors in our high-rise co-op building.

We were very concerned not only about this woman, but also about liability and a threat to our association, in case of harm or injury resulting from this woman's condition.

Our legal counsel advised us (Board and management company) to make serious attempts to contact family members, alert them of the situation and persuade them to get involved.

This was not an easy situation and took numerous attempts, phone calls, letters and the like.

Matters were complicated because she was a nationally prominent person whose family lived hundreds of miles away. As someone who was always fiercely independent and who never married or had children, she was basically alone. As her mental state deteriorated, it was clear she could no longer care for herself. Eventually, a judge had to intervene and assign a guardian for the woman to place her in a suitable facility for her care. It made national headlines. This process took almost a year, but we managed to avoid any calamities.

Bottom line: The Board, together with the Manager or Management Company, must take a pro-active approach, document every step taken and involve legal counsel, if necessary, to protect all residents and the association.

Best of luck.

The police can remove her to the hospital if she becomes agitated or is not deemed in a coherent state ("impaired capacity") . The HOSPITAL can then evaluate her, contact her family, doctor, etc. in order to decide what to do. The HOA cannot contact her doctor (and how would they know who he was anyway?). Also, ADA is not applicable.