To try to talk to mentally ill neighbour?

[Terfeywithallthetrimmings]

We have bought a modest house on a housing estate to let out as an investment as our private pensions are worth very little. It transpires that the elderly lady next door (aged 73) has mental health issues and is extremely paranoid. Her windows are covered in strange written rantings about the war and she has fallen out with all the other neighbours. Police have been involved. My conversations with the lady have been brief but strange as she soon descends into paranoia about neighbours, Italians, people at bus stop whatever. She is known for banging her front door hard multiple times in succession and screaming loudly. She has done it while we have been there doing up the house. We have a very nice young couple moving in next week who work from home. Is there any point trying to reason with the neighbour and asking her not to do the door banging screaming thing? We don't want our tenants upset but I don't want to provoke her either.

She's mentally ill and her weird behaviour is a symptom of that. Telling her to stop banging the door and screaming will be about as useful as telling someone with TB to stop coughing.

I appreciate that this sort of behaviour is worrying for her neighbours, but unless she is actively harassing people or doing anything illegal, I can't really see what she's doing that she's not entitled to do. Assuming the writing in her windows etc isn't hate speech or whatever, there's no law against that, and there's no law against making occasional noise from your property either. The door banging and shouting is probably really irritating for everyone else, but unless it happens in the middle of the night or goes on for hours at a time, I'm guessing it's the erratic behaviour itself that makes people uncomfortable, rather than anything that could be classified as a genuine noise nuisance.

If she appears to be a danger to herself or others, then I think a welfare check would be in order, but other than that I don't think there's much you can do. I would guess that, if she's in her 70s and has reached the point where she is behaving like this, social services might be involved pretty soon anyway. My MIL had a neighbour very like this - he had no family and he was taken into residential care fairly soon after it was deemed that he wasn't safe in his home.

Thanks everyone. I think you are right. Talking to her might just fuel her paranoia and so far I have had 3 conversations with her when we have got on OK I think, her delusions notwithstanding. She seems quite gentle and relatively harmless. I agree that people are scared by irrational behaviour, I had a paranoid grandmother so I am sort of OK with it. I am concerned about her mental health as well as about our tenants and I wouldn't wish mental illness on anyone. For the person who has enquired about which war, it seems to be the second world war but I can't the current situation in Ukraine will be helping.

I think it’s really unfair to let them move in and then expect them to stick to normal tenancy notice period etc. there could be daily noise issues for them and they may find it hard working and living next to her

Agree with this - we had a neighbour who did exactly this, compulsive banging and slamming of doors throughout her house, screaming, hitting objects for hours on end. It was hell. I felt sorry for her, but the fact she couldn't help it and deserved sympathy didn't make it any easier to live with. The slamming was almost constant. I was wfh and having to listen to rage-filled screaming a few feet away on the other side of the thin wall. My kids were getting woken up regularly by the screaming or banging on walls. My dd even went to stay at my mum's when it was particularly bad. It was a total nightmare.

Very few tenants will put up with this for long, you'll be getting calls and there's not really anything you can do