I am currently living with two other people, one of them a 19 year old female and the other a 32 year old male, in an apartment building in Arizona. The female and myself are on the lease currently, the older male was formerly on the lease and has lived in the building longer than myself or the female but decided against being on it again for the current lease term. Recently the older male has made physical threats (with no action) to the female and she has filed a police report to that effect and is now pursuing the possibility of evicting him. I have been reading up on the topic and it seems that this should not be a problem legally. Due to my personal take on the situation I am supporting whatever course of action my female roommate chooses to pursue.
The current plan is to discuss this privately with our landlord and determine how he thinks we should handle this situation with the goal of evicting the non-leased roommate while retaining our lease. In the mean time, we intend to keep the older male in the dark so the speak to hopefully avoid more conflict and reduce any time he may have to mount a defense.
However, the older male is knowledgeable of the possibility of eviction and has made threats of blackmail in order to dissuade us from following through with it. These threats center around the use of illegal drugs (marijuana) which though in direct violation of our lease agreement are knowingly tolerated by our landlord. In essence these threats amount to saying that if we move to evict the roommate will inform the police of illegal activity, presumably with the intention of prompting a warranted search. Obviously any traces of illegal activity will be removed prior to pursuing eviction, but I am curious about the weight these threats have.
With that said, is there anything that my female roommate and I should be doing differently in this scenario? Should the threats of blackmail be taken seriously?
The current plan is to discuss this privately with our landlord and determine how he thinks we should handle this situation with the goal of evicting the non-leased roommate while retaining our lease. In the mean time, we intend to keep the older male in the dark so the speak to hopefully avoid more conflict and reduce any time he may have to mount a defense.
However, the older male is knowledgeable of the possibility of eviction and has made threats of blackmail in order to dissuade us from following through with it. These threats center around the use of illegal drugs (marijuana) which though in direct violation of our lease agreement are knowingly tolerated by our landlord. In essence these threats amount to saying that if we move to evict the roommate will inform the police of illegal activity, presumably with the intention of prompting a warranted search. Obviously any traces of illegal activity will be removed prior to pursuing eviction, but I am curious about the weight these threats have.
With that said, is there anything that my female roommate and I should be doing differently in this scenario? Should the threats of blackmail be taken seriously?
