Bad Neighbors

[Ash]

I moved into my apartment at the beginning of November.
At first, everything was fine.  Then the neighbors began to get louder and louder.

The people who live in the neighboring apartment are an interracial couple.
He's an average size black guy in his 30's.  She's around 21-22, white and overweight.
I don't have anything against interracial couples.  Matter of fact, my buddy Jason, who is black, has been dating a white girl, Melissa, for a long time.   They're some of the nicest people you'd ever meet.

The people next door on the other hand, are something straight out of the Maury Povich show.
They constantly scream and yell at one another.  I've heard knock down drag out fights where one of them was slammed against the wall and it made a loud "BANG!" that literally made me jump right out of my seat.  (startled the heck out of me)
The cops have been there numerous times and he's gone to jail at least twice that I've seen.
Even when they're not fighting, they are unable to talk at a regular volume.  They feel the need to speak as loudly and in as much ghetto slang as possible, which I can hear clearly through the walls.
I did consider going over there many times and politely asking them to keep it down, but if you heard some of the stuff they say, you'd think twice about it like I have.
I have this fear that they'd attack me if I showed up at their door.

Even worse is the way the apartments in my building are laid out.
Their living room is directly opposite my bedroom on the other side of the wall.  So when they decide to have a conversation in their excessively loud voices, it prevents me from sleeping.
And these guys don't ever seem to sleep.  They stay up all night talking as loudly as possible.
It's come down to me having to take a sleeping pill to get a full night's rest.  And even then, they still wake me up!

Earlier this morning, I was awakened by excessive hammering.  They were hammering nails into the wall.  Now, normally when you hammer a nail or two into the wall, it usually only takes 3-5 hammer strikes per nail and then you're done.  Not with these guys.
The hammering went on for well over an hour and a half...at 5:30 in the friggin' morning!
They were either nailing about 500 pictures to the wall, or they were building something.
When I pounded on the wall still half asleep, the girl yelled, "F***k you motherf****r!" and pounded even harder on purpose.

Needless to say, I'm at my wits end with these guys.  I've started documenting every single incident.  There's a phone number I can call that will send a security person over to their place to ask them to keep it down but it doesn't do any good.
They'll be quiet for about 20 minutes and then, sure enough, they start right back up again.
The landlord's secretary told me that it's usually better to call the police because people tend to take them more seriously than the security guards.  The upside is that when you call security, they document it and submit it to the landlord.

I've made it my mission to get them out of here.
So far, I've called security 4 times.
There is a clause in the lease that states that if a person receives so many noise complaints, they're in violation of their lease and subject to eviction.  I'm going to see to it that that happens.

It's funny...  I've turned into "that guy".  You know the one.  Those people who call the cops on you for noise complaints.  I never thought I'd be that guy, but after countless sleepless nights, I don't care anymore.  I just want some peace and quiet.

How about you?
Ever had to deal with a bad neighbor?

[ER]

Good luck with your situation, Ash. Maybe someday you'll look back on it and laugh like I do about my bad neighbor.

Long story for the road.

I had a neighbor in college who sometimes used to try to "accidentally" grope us in the stairways. He was past forty living in a four-apartment house mostly leased by university students, and he was almost likable but a real lowlife in many ways. He claimed he’d been to law school years ago but when I lived by him he worked as a telemarketer setting appointments for a vinyl siding and window company. He smoked constantly, it came up through the vents real bad, sometimes we smelled like smokers ourselves, and he set his sheets on fire one night with a cigarette and made fire alarms go off at like 2 AM. We had to evacuate and stand freezing in our robes in a steely cold New England March night while fire fighters came.

He lived right under us and would stand on chairs to listen on our floor to what my roommate Jackie and I were saying and doing. Once in a while we’d deliberately say juicy things when we knew he was there or we’d jump on the floor where he was pressing his ear against it and he’d call up, “Ha-ha, that was real funny, girls.” He routinely out-drank TKE fratboys and we’d find him in a stupor by the front door and collectively we’d help him in before we went to class. He’d drape his arms around our shoulders while we hauled his drooling carcass up and somehow his hands would always go lower and lower in the front as we helped him along. Blah. He opened other people's mail down in the foyer, stole my Entertainment Weekly literally every issue for months then would put them back read and folded up, invited himself into every party we had, and at Halloween he'd stand smoking and talking to us while we gave out candy and he'd eat half the treats that were supposed to be for neighborhood kids---THEN he’d toss the wrappers down on the ground.

He drove a battered old Buick and yet was convinced every kid who so much as passed by on the sidewalk fifty feet away was out to vandalize it. He'd yell out his window that they better not touch his car or he'd come down there and kick their butts into last week: his signature line.

But the big thing was how he'd listen to hear any girl in the building leave (it was a thin-walled echoing old brick building) and he'd make any excuse to be in the hall or in the narrow stairway so he could bump into us or brush us or in his bolder moments even sort of reach out, like, chatting away at us the whole time. It was shocking and ridiculous and just plain nuts and we all turned it into a joke and came up with strategies to thwart him, including running by or standing still till he came over and then moving aside at the last second to see how far toward us he'd lean with his rotund body. It was crazy. This guy's name was Ray and my friend Lisa came up with this term to describe his antics and it stuck, so when he’d brush into one of us, we’d say we got “Raylested."

He was disgusting but also sort of pathetic and we all felt sorry for him and tried to be nice. We’d take him food and let him bum money off us even though we were all pretty much broke. Eventually he met a woman who was like his female opposite, a perfect chain smoking, cuss-like-a-sailor match, and they rode off into the sunset together. If things didn’t work out he’s probably somewhere right now smoking in bed, bumming beer off twenty-somethings and Raylesting college girls as he passes them going upstairs. I always halfway liked the man but to this day Jackie refers to him as our “neighbor from hell.”

[Javakoala]

Oy, Ash, you have my sympathies.

A word of warning:  Calling and complaining about your neighbors can backfire if they weasel their way into the landlord's good graces.  My ex and I had a run of neighbors like this.  We called the cops and the office when they were beating each other, blaring music, brandishing guns, breaking into other people's apartments, throwing broken glass into the pool, etc.  We were threatened with eviction because we complained.

And people like the ones you talk about are dumb as stumps, but they always seem to know how to worm their way around rules and laws so they are in the right and you are just a jerk.  And complaining to them will often get your car vandalized and you person safety threatened regularly.  If it weren't illegal, I'd hire myself out to put people like these to sleep forever.

Sadly, the world is full of jerks.  And some people seem to attract them.  Heaven help you if you are one of them.

[Mr. DS]

The people across the street from me are the kind of people you would see making a guest cameo on the show COPS.  They yell at each other constantly and f-bomb like theres no tomorrow.  Their yard (and luckily this has changed) used to be covered in several odds and ends.  Since the kids are a bit older now, they don't act up as much due to the fact the kids are never home. 

I used to have people behind me that threw parties until 3 am in the morning.  I had to complain several times about them seeing the houses are tight where I'm at.  Its the simple point that some people are too idiotic to guess that their neighbors may be asleep in the early morning hours.  Luckily they had their @ss kicked out. Now a few houses down from them someone has a dog they leave out until 11 PM.  The dog barks and yelps until they decide to let them in.  I'm not sure why certain dog owners simiply don't give a sh*t if their dog is barking.  To me its a downright ungodly sound that I could never block out in a million years.

As they said in Spaceballs, "I'm surrounded by @ssholes".  Then again, the people to the left and right of me are fine.  Luckily my neighbor on the right is an avenger like me and complains about the idiots.  All I can say is, I just want to live in peace.  Its a simple request and I don't ask much.

[Rev. Powell]

I had a neighbor in college who sometimes used to try to "accidentally" grope us in the stairways. He was past forty living in a four-apartment house mostly leased by university students, and he was almost likable but a real lowlife in many ways. He claimed he’d been to law school years ago but when I lived by him he worked as a telemarketer setting appointments for a vinyl siding and window company. He smoked constantly, it came up through the vents real bad, sometimes we smelled like smokers ourselves, and he set his sheets on fire one night with a cigarette and made fire alarms go off at like 2 AM. We had to evacuate and stand freezing in our robes in a steely cold New England March night while fire fighters came.

OMG!  That was you???

Well, this is kind of awkward...

 

[Rev. Powell]

On the subject of my own bad neighbors, I lived next to a guy in Vegas who worked third shift, as many do in Vegas.  He seemed not to realize that no one else in the neighborhood was up at 2 AM.  The Association rules stated no loud noise after 10 PM.  Anyway, it seemed like every night he came home at 2-3 AM he would crank up his tunes to 11 to wind down, and play it until 5 AM or so. 

Our bedrooms were adjacent and I could hear him have sex with his girlfriend (I guess he liked to turn the music off for sex).  She wailed like a pornstar, obviously fake and unconvincing.  I can understand him not caring about me hearing that, but after he broke up with her he would call her on the phone and beg her to come back... I could hear every word of his side of the conversation.  He sounded truly pathetic and wimpy, and I can't believe anyone would be so clueless as to NOT be embarrassed by that. 

Anyway, the first night he woke me up with music at 2 AM on a weeknight, I walked over and banged on his door until he opened.  I don't think I'm exactly an imposing physical presence, about the same height and weight as this guy, but there must have been a fire in my eye because I terrified him.  He basically cowered and promised to turn it off, and it caught me off guard because I was expecting a fight.  I basically just turned around and left.  He was good for a few weeks.

Then, he started up again.  I tried banging on his door, but he wouldn't open it.  So, I called the neighborhood association and they sent him a warning, then fined him.  He would always be quiet for a few weeks, then act up again.  I also called the police on him, and that shut him longer than most actions, but he still

Finally, I moved away before he did (though not because of him).

Now I live in an area where almost all my neighbors are retirees... it's sweet, silent heaven at night.

Just keep complaining and try to get the bad neighbors tossed out.  If you succeed, it will be a surrogate victory for a lot of the rest of us, and we'll appreciate it.     

[Trevor]

I had a neighbor in college who sometimes used to try to "accidentally" grope us in the stairways. He was past forty living in a four-apartment house mostly leased by university students, and he was almost likable but a real lowlife in many ways. He claimed he’d been to law school years ago but when I lived by him he worked as a telemarketer setting appointments for a vinyl siding and window company. He smoked constantly, it came up through the vents real bad, sometimes we smelled like smokers ourselves, and he set his sheets on fire one night with a cigarette and made fire alarms go off at like 2 AM. We had to evacuate and stand freezing in our robes in a steely cold New England March night while fire fighters came.

OMG!  That was you???

Well, this is kind of awkward...

 

  Karma, Rev! 

[Jack]

We used to have this couple living next door to us, straight out of the Jerry Springer show.  According to neighborhood gossip, the woman worked at a strip club.  She certainly had the body for it, until you got up to her permanently scowling face.  They'd drink most evenings, and by 11:00  or so they'd be having a good loud argument.  Usually outside.  My wife and I would sit by the window and listen to them, it was great entertainment.  Luckily our house is very soundproof, just close the window and they disappeared entirely.  They moved away to parts unknown.

The woman living on the other side of us annoys me.  She constantly parks out on the street, and when it snows the snow plow has to go around her car, and it doesn't work its way back to the curb until it's past our house.  So I not only have to shovel the driveway but 8 feet of the street as well.  She's not as bad as the people who lived there a few years ago.  The pigeon people - he owned homing pigeons and the back yard was full of his ramshackle homemade pigeon coops.  Anyhow, one morning they plowed the woman's car in, and once she got it out, she came home that night and parked even farther out in the street, next to the huge pile of snow where she was previously parked.  Then of course it snowed again.  I had to shovel two-thirds of the way out into the street just to get to the plowed part.  They also moved away to parts unknown. 

[asimpson2006]

I wouldn't say my neighbors are bad, but they do some things that bug me at times.  Behind us is an interracial couple that has a kids over ALL the time.  Well they play outside often and usually play quite early.  I think one time at 8:00 AM they were outside playing on a trampoline yelling and screaming fairly loud enough that I could hear it in the house.  I'm thinking to myself, that it's a little early to be screaming that loud outside at 8:00 AM.

They are nice people overall but that just bugs me a bit.

The neighbor to my left is not enjoyable either.  She really doesn't like people and has these two dogs who we call yip and yap, because all they do is bark in the house.  And it's not like it's a now and then thing.  They bark EVERY DAY when ever she is not in the house.  What makes it bad is that it's loud enough that I can hear it in just about every part of where I live except for the basement.  Nothing like hearing two dogs bark loudly and constantly at 6:00 AM to start your day. 

[Ash]

Well, I finally broke down and called the police yesterday.
It seemed to work, because they haven't made a peep in hours.
I'm sure it'll start right back up again soon.

In my first post, I wasn't clear enough as to how bad the noise is.
I can hear these people every single day, every minute of the day.  From the time they wake up to the time they either leave or go to bed, I can hear them.
There is no place in my apartment that I can go to shut out the noise.

It's almost like a schizophrenic.  You know how people with that disorder can't seem to mute the voices in their heads?  It's just like that at my apartment except I'm not a schizo.
No matter where I go in my place... No matter what I do, their voices are always there, stalking me.
And it's driving me insane.

This is no mild case of loud neighbors.  This is an extreme case. 

All I want is to live in my apartment and not hear the neighbor's voices 24/7.

What the building needs is soundproofing. 
There are relatively inexpensive ways to do it, but the landlord isn't likely to pony up the cash to make it happen.
I've asked the landlord if they would be willing to come over and hang out for just a half hour so they can actually hear what I hear every day.  So far, they've been too busy.
And it would be just my luck that the one time they did come over would happen to be when the neighbors decide to be quiet.

I'm losing my friggin' mind.

[Psycho Circus]

How did I miss this thread!? 

My neighbours are awful! All of them! I live in an upstairs flat with the thinnest walls and floors you can possibly imagine. No joke, if I punched my wall, my fist would go right through it and I'd probably hit some passing bird. Unfortunately I live above a 95 year old woman with Alzheimer's, who never seems to sleep. She's like a robot! She has her tv on at ludicrously high volumes and shouts and sings randomly all night, so I have had to sleep with earplugs in every night for the whole two years of living here. I've gotten used to her lately, but a few months back I was going insane and I wanted to go downstairs and butcher her with a rusty knife!

The two flats nextdoor are each occupied by a single guy. One plays that horrible techno dance music all day with the bass up really high, so all you can hear is the same buzzing thud over and over for hours on end. I've had pictures falling off the walls and at one point I went round at 3am and ended up punching him. The other guy is a security guard, so he gets in at all times and bangs around doing god knows what!

Across the road there are houses, containing drug dealers and 13 year old girls with about 16 kids all on benefits. Kids run around screaming in the street and trash furniture that's just been chucked onto the road. People snort coke in broad daylight and gangs are always hanging around outside the door. 

[odinn7]

Back in the 90's I lived in an apartment on the ground floor. Not a bad place until the owner sold it...the new owners were horrible. Anyway...There was this single guy that lived in the apartment over us. Nice enough guy but there were issues that I had to deal with. A few times a week, he would wake up with these hacking/coughing fits...they would last for what seemed like hours. You could picture him spitting chunks of lung as he was coughing.

He would also have his girlfriend over and you could hear them going at it...which, you know, I guess wasn't too bad considering he probably heard the same from us. BUT....I also noticed something else. One night I heard him going at it heavy...the next day, I saw A guy leaving his place. I thought nothing of it really because I assumed his girlfriend already left and this guy was just a friend. It happened more and more...The girl a few nights, the guy a few nights. Now...I have no problem with someone if they're gay...I really don't care...but I have to admit, it did make me somewhat queasy to hear him going at it and knowing it was a guy he was with. LOL...I just didn't have the stomach for it.

Now on the other hand....I was probably that neighbor that many didn't like. I used to drink heavy and have lots of parties...lmao...but in my defense, I will say that any time I was asked to turn it down, I would. "Asked" was the key word. If I was told to turn it down, forget it.

Ahhh....the good old days.

[ghouck]

When I was stationed in Texas I lived in some crappy apartment complex in Temple. I SWEAR we were the only people who bought their kids toys. We had kids come over when my son was staying with my parents and ask if they could play with his toys. There was some guy named Felix that was also stationed on Ft Hood. He said he and his wife lived in the APPT above us, although I had seen her a bit, but never him. I used to give him a ride home, and once I couldn't find him. Later that night I heard them going at it and figured he'd found a way home. Nope, she was with some other dude, and I never heard from Felix again. Not sure if he was lying about being married or what. Also had some welfare-jockey living next door, had about 6 kids, I remember he often calling one of the girls B!tch often, she was probably 6 or 7 years old. All kinds of losers and derelicts lived there, one guy kept asking me to teach him math so he could get his GED. He was probably close to 30 or so, it was weird. I was stuck there because when I got there, that was the CLOSEST open apartment to post, which was still 45 minutes away.

[Javakoala]

I've had various experiences with neighbors, like the manic-depressive upstairs lady with the hyperactive kid who flooded their apartment with fecal matter that dripped through our ceiling. And the jackass who tried to beat his girlfriend to death. And the chick who played "Jessie's Girl" at full volume for hours at a time (yes, the same song...over...and...over). Or the trailer park freaks who tried to steal our porch lights in the middle of the day with our front door open and my girlfriend sitting in plain view.

The worst, by far was a person I would gut shoot in a heartbeat if I knew I wouldn't get caught, and that is to this very day, 13 years later.  He started out stomping through his apartment.  Annoying, but what the hell.  Then he went to blaring music whenever he was home and there was nowhere in the apartment to escape it, so we only got sleep when we finally could not physically function and basically passed out.  We called the cops, and he would stop for ten minutes and start again.  We called the office, and they told us to tell him to stop.  He had people over, like 15 at a time, and they would scream and stomp and play the music even louder. We'd call the cops two and three times in a night.  They finally started telling us there were no cars in our area.  The office threatened to evict us if we didn't stop complaining.  We finally had the office manager come up to threaten us.  Fortunately, jerkwad showed up as she was telling us we just needed to realize apartment living isn't for everyone.  It sounded like he was jackhammering through the floor and then the music kicked in at full volume. This was in the afternoon.  We informed her this is what went on all night every night.  She went upstairs.  They had a screaming match. He called her everything.  She went back to the office.  Apparently she made it clear we had complained because he started jumping up and down through his apartment and turned the music  louder...somehow.  He tried to jack into our cable and we lost cable for a few hours.  Cable company fixed things but did nothing to him.  He was invincible.

Things hit a peak around Christmas time.  Aside from the music and the people, we couldn't sleep because it was horribly bright outside our apartment at night.  Why?  Because this jackass was stealing yard ornaments and storing them on his balcony and plugging them all in and leaving them on all night.  The management wouldn't do anything.  We were about to break our lease and dare the office to sue us when, one night, the jackass was gone and we were trying to get some sleep before he came home.  There was clattering on our balcony.  We looked out to see three guys climbing the balcony.  We called the cops, and told them we were being attacked.  Well, the guys passed us and climbed on up to jerkwad's apartment, which they broke into.  They were heading out the apartment door when the cops came into the hallway. The guys ran all different directions, with one of them going over the balcony, crashing into our balcony on the way down, and he hit the ground running.  And out on our snow-covered balcony was the pistol the guy had been packing.  My girlfriend started freaking out.  We called the cops in to get the gun.  Turned out to be an air pistol painted to look real.  And jerkwad shows up just as the cops are arresting the guys.  They were his buddies, trying to steal all the stuff he had stolen to begin with.  They were all arrested.  We figured we might get some sleep.  About the time we start to doze off, jackass's mom and dad show up in his apartment and they start stomping around and screaming at each other.  The mom wanted jackass bailed out.  Daddy didn't want to.  We finally passed out around around 3 in the morning. Two hours later, it sounds like a car crashed into the building. We are greeted to jerkwad slamming his apartment door time after time, and then the music started in again.

The trouble with the cops finally led the office to tell jackass that if he got in trouble one more time, he'd be kicked out. He disappeared for a few hours, came home and apparently had locked himself out or lost his keys.  He proceeded to kick his door off its hinges.  It took actually destroying property for them to have him escorted off the property.

Then two weeks later they rented his apartment to one of his friends and the party started all over again.

We moved.

I hate people.

[BeyondTheGrave]

I have been living in same Apt. all my life. Since I live in a corner Apt. on the top floor and the walls are very thick don't have the much stories to share about bad neighbors. Their always different people moving below me and once and awhile get some loud music(Once someone playing the same damn song over and over) but nothing crazy.

If anything I'm a bad neighbor as I play my music and movies very loud and have heavy bag in my living room that I use to work out. But no one has complained so guess its not that loud.