One effective strategy for minimizing the number of complaints is to educate building occupants about the situation that is generating the complaints.
Consider this story from Joan Woodard, president and CEO of Simons & Woodard Inc. Canada geese can be pests, so you'd think a story involving them would be about complaints around the noise, their waste, or how aggressive they can be. But Woodard has the opposite problem. Her tenants love their geese and ducks, almost too much. A series of five man-made lakes at one of her properties in northern California has become a very popular stopover for migrating birds, with a pair of geese and some ducks routinely using it as a nesting ground. In their concern and exuberance for their wilderness mascots, Woodard's tenants have had rather unusual requests. The lakes have a bulkhead that's about six inches above the water, and the tenants get distressed that the babies will not be able to clear the barrier. One tenant even went as far as standing in one of the lakes with his pant legs rolled up, attempting to scoop the ducklings onto dry land, which of course would not do — for the ducklings, himself, or the property management firm.
One strategy Woodard uses to try to stem the seasonal requests is to issue a newsletter to the tenants educating them on the importance of leaving the wildlife undisturbed. Using the newsletter, they distributed information about little ramps and small stone steps that had been constructed for the ducks after the wading incident, so they might navigate the lakes with ease. Of course, the birds don't actually use the ramps or the steps. "The tenants were happy we took that extra step, but then they wanted management to instruct the ducks on how to use the ramp," she says.
Though they declined that request, Woodard says they were happy to try to accommodate the requests around the geese and ducks. "From the moment they become tenants, we're trying to make them feel this is their daytime home and that they're part of a community," she says.
