Landlord with a brain injury has become extremely abusive after I gave notice that I'm moving out
Apologies in advance for the long post.
I’ve been renting a small apartment (found on facebook marketplace, listed as month-to-month) from a couple in their 60s for the past year and a few months. It's a duplex with a shared entryway, the landlord lives downstairs with her husband. When I first spoke to my landlord (let's call her Barb) on the phone before moving in, I told her I might only stay around six months because I was planning to move in with my brother once he bought a house. She said that was totally fine and lowkey begged me to move in, even knocked $50 off the rent bc she knew I was a struggling student trying to make it to graduation. Her sister had been living there for the past 10 years and was moving into a nursing home, so Barb said she really wanted to find a nice person with no kids or pets to move in that they could trust, and I fit the bill. I was desperate for a cheap month-to-month deal at a decent place, so I moved in. The apartment is very small, in a shitty area, and reeks of cigarettes, but it was the best I could afford at the time, and it had a balcony and laundry machines in the basement, so whatever.
My brother didn’t end up buying a house, so I stayed. Barb was very friendly and excited about having me around. Unfortunately she has a brain injury from an accident at a casino a few years ago and is on a lot of painkillers and benzos, so she was always pretty out of it, like slurring her words and forgetting what she's saying mid-sentence. I’m a nurse, so I'm very used to this sort of behavior and didn’t mind too much initially.
Over the past year, though, it got to be a lot. They have security cams around the perimeter of the house and she would run to the door to talk to me every time she got a notification that I was entering or leaving, often making me late for work or catching me coming home from an exhausting 13 hour overnight shift. Most of the time she was only in her underwear and a bathrobe which would fall open. She also constantly vented to me about her husband (let's call him Bob), who is her caretaker and works full time to support her, as she's on disability. She started getting paranoid about him and claimed he was stealing my rent money from her, so she told me I needed to directly enter her unit while he's at work, wake her up in her bed (she sleeps almost all day), and put the rent checks in her hand. I did not do this (I don't have a key to her unit so idk what she wanted me to do) and just continued to leave the rent checks outside her door. She also raised the rent $100 as soon as I got a decent-paying job, which was whatever.
At one point she ended up hospitalized and called/texted me nonstop asking if I could come remove her urinary catheter because "the nurses there wouldn't do it." I declined and said I'm sorry she was uncomfortable, but I would lose my license if I did that. She then asked if my boyfriend would do it, as he's also a nurse. Lmao.
I started staying at my boyfriend's house for weeks at a time because her behavior was making me so uncomfortable. Then a couple weeks ago she sent me a cryptic text saying I needed to come talk to her in person right away, and refused to elaborate over text. I showed up, and she told me someone had been breaking into the house, that her jewelry had gone missing, and she heard someone creeping around upstairs in my unit. She said she’d left a piece of cake outside my door as a "test" to see if it was me coming home.
I obviously knew this was paranoia and these things weren't really happening, because the house has a robust security system with a bunch of cameras, deadbolts, and a keypad alarm system with a code that I set and no one else knows. So I asked if she had checked the cameras, and she said no. I asked her husband what he thought of all this, and he just seemed uncomfortable and said he wasn't really sure.
I sat there for two hours while she struggled to pull up the camera footage and comb through it, and of course there was nothing. She shrugged and said sorry for wasting my time, and her husband explained that she had been "hallucinating more lately."
That was my breaking point. The next day I sent a very friendly text giving them about 40 days notice that I would be moving out. I gave the excuse that I was going to adopt a dog and needed to find an apartment that allowed pets, which was true, there is a specific dog that I had been thinking about adopting. Bob immediately said they’d accept a dog if I wanted to stay, as they loved me as a tenant. Barb agreed and said they would accept a dog but would raise the rent to $1200. I thanked them but declined, explaining that I would need a larger space for the dog to run around in, and because my boyfriend would eventually be moving in with me. Bob said okay, no problem. Barb and I start negotiating the terms of my move-out, she tells me the apartment needs to be ready for walkthroughs immediately. I asked if she could give me 10 days to clean it up and prepare it for viewings (it's not dirty whatsoever, but it was a little cluttered at the time because I work long overnight shifts, had been picking up a lot of overtime, and I basically live at my boyfriend's house anyway). She said no, so I accepted her terms and spent the rest of my day tidying up the apartment and told her she could show it anytime now. She also suddenly claimed that I only gave her $500 for my security deposit when I moved in. I sent her a screenshot of my bank statement showing that I paid $1600, which was $800 for the security deposit and $800 for first month's rent.
She responded normally at first, but then a few hours later, I start getting these batshit crazy texts from her accusing me of things completely out of left field. She claims that I never told her I was initially only planning on staying six months (I did, on the first phone call I ever had with her, before I even agreed to move in), that I lied about my boyfriend moving in with me (he did live with me for the first few months of my lease and then moved into a bigger place with our friend who needed a roommate, which was communicated to Barb), that I threatened her with my "four brothers" (I have one brother and have never mentioned him in a threatening way), that I'm probably not a real nurse, and a bunch of other shit that doesn't make any sense and/or never happened.
I was initially shocked, because she had never spoken to me that way. I tried to reason with her and refute her claims with evidence, but nothing got through to her. She just kept escalating. I asked to speak to Bob on the phone, but she said he didn't want to speak to me. All of her unhinged texts to me were sent in a groupchat with both of them in it, so I know he's seeing the texts and choosing not to do anything about it.
That is the part I find most baffling. Yes, she owns the house and has acted as my primary landlord, but she is clearly unwell, and he handles all of the upkeep on the house and literally has to look after her 24/7. I am completely shocked that he is allowing her to go apeshit, insulting me, making claims that he knows aren't true, and not even privately apologizing to me or taking charge of the situation and handling the move-out process as she's clearly in distress and can't handle it.
Right now I'm just trying to grey rock, not give her any real reaction and just respond with the basic necessary info, but it's pretty fucking distressing to randomly receive barrages of harassment from her, sometimes very late at night.
Attached are some screenshots of our texts.
If you read this far, thanks. My family, boyfriend, and friends have been very supportive and helpful, but I'm still constantly anxious over this and trying not to burden all my loved ones by talking about it all the time. Just needed to vent to some people who understand.