This is a problem we are having with one of our tenants

If she is having a problem with theft, tell her to call the police, not you.

As to her blocking access to your gardeners, does your rental agreement specify that you will maintain the landscaping? If so then she doesn't really have anything to say about who you hire to do the work.

Actually, I believe that the tenant may not need our permission to grow the stuff. She just needs a license. Which she probably does have.

I do not care if she grows the stuff, I care about the fact that she is a racist liar. The crew that does her yard also does ours and they are nice hardworking men. The father of the owner of the business, who is Portuguese did her yard this week and that is when she told him she did not want Mexican's on her property.

I just need to make sure that she cannot legally do this and I will go with the gardeners next week to see what happens. If she does come right out and say she will not let Mexican's work on her property, I will then present her with a letter from my lawyer that explains anti discrimination laws and how much this little episode is going to cost her.

I hope that is how it will end. I cannot imagine it would be legal to allow such blatant discrimination.

I would simply tell her it's a police matter. Call the police, not me.

It is not the HOA's business whether or not she has a license. The HOA should have NO PART in enforcement or monitoring of pot.

Not sure I would go down the discrimination road. I would go down the road of I own this and it is in our agreement that I will maintain it. This is the company I choose to maintain it.

Care to toke up and discuss it?

I have not seen the license yet but they are very easy to get in California so I tend to think she has one. I will stop by next week after meeting with my attorney just to make sure she has one but for now, it looks like she has won round one.

I would look into this. Just because she says she has a license, doesn't mean she has one or that what she is doing is legal on both the state and federal levels. Further, don't most lease agreements require following the HOA CC&R? And don't most CC&R forbid business operations?

I would want clarification on whether this is a cash crop (my folks were real farmers) because that might lead to other legal issues. I would ask for a copy of the license before I met with my attorney.

If you hired the gardeners, then you could be accused of discrimination, but not your tenant I think.

The lease does contain a clause that the tenant is to obey all the HOA rules. She was also subject to a credit check and provided all necessary references. She has been a tenant for over a year, having signed a new lease recently. She has never been one day late on her rent and according to our VERY COMPETENT PROFOSSIONAL PROPERTY MANAGER, she keeps the house in an immaculate condition.

She will definitely not get a lease renewal next year but rather than spend time and money on getting her out sooner, we have decided to let this slide until then. However, maybe you could elaborate on how a tenant, in a state that has licensed her to grow enough pot for her own consumption can be evicted for breaking rules that that state has already exempted her from.

In that she is legally entitled to grow the stuff according to the State of California, I did not have a problem with that. However I was going to pay whatever it took to get her out because of her racist attitude. Unfortunately, a bigger personal problem popped up and I took the path of least resistance. The advice to practice due is good, and maybe you should also take it.

Thank you for your very helpful reply. I did state at the beginning that I did not see this as an HOA problem but I do read this site often and have several homes in a HOA community and I also live there myself and thought this would be a good place to get people's thoughts on how to deal with this unforeseen problem.

It is good to hear you say that the tenant does not have a say in who provides her landscape service in that we are paying for it. She, of course, does not agree with that and while she has been a good tenant in paying on time and keeping up the property, she is quite an eccentric character which was a little extra work for our great property manager.

We were certainly appreciative of our property manager's ability to work with this difficult tenant, and because the last few months of her first lease passed without incident and she paid on time and kept up the property we were quite confident that signing another year's lease would be beneficial for both us and the tenant. Unfortunately, just as the ink dried on the new lease, she informed us that our "Mexican" gardeners were stealing her pot.

Again, for those from Alabama that are not familiar with California laws, growing the stuff is legal with a permit. However, racial slurs and accusations are not acceptable to me. I was absolutely going to do everything legally possible to get her out. I have an very knowledgeable lawyer. Unfortunately a family crisis came up and I had other things to worry about. Our property manager has handled the situation very well and soon this tenants lease will be up and that will be one less thing to worry about.