What can I do about noise?!? Please HELP!!

By Sleep Deprived

I understand entirely that living in an apartment means I’m going to have to endure a certain amount of noises that I would otherwise not have to endure if I were to live in a house or town-home. I like to think of myself as rather reasonable individual who tries their best to look at both sides of the story and pride myself in patients but I’ve reached my wits end with my upstairs neighbor. Living on the bottom floor means expecting a certain amount of noise, reason being most tenants prefer being upstairs so they are the ones making the noise rather dealing with it. Unfortunately I have to live on the bottom floor, I have no other choice because my Mom (who lives with me) is full disabled and cannot make it up the stairs even on her best days. We moved into our apartment back in Sept.  2011 and from day one I have yet to get a solid nights rest because of my incredibly rude upstairs neighbor. The first month, before I even tried talking to him, every night on the dot at 12:00am it sounded like he was playing basketball with his nearly 100lb 3.5yr old Boxer until 5:30-5:45am. Directly after it sounded like he was rearranging his furniture, hanging fixtures and then doing a full house cleaning; vacuuming (which he’s doing as we speak, it’s 9:22am – he started at 7am/vacuuming that is), doing laundry, dishes and what sounds like repeated slamming of dresser drawers; during all of this he’s blasting a variety of his native music or alternative music. I have never been one to sleep the day away, I’ve always had at least 2 jobs to afford the medical and living cost for my terminally ill Mother, little brother and myself but after a month of putting up with his lack of respect I ended up loosing my job because I fell asleep one too many times during break and slept through my alarm; which left me battling the economy looking for work and spending 2 solid months calling every form of government, housing & utility assistance so we didn’t get evicted. By the second month I ended up being 10 days late with over $180 in late fees, my power/gas/cable/TV/internet/storage unit all got shut off or I was locked out with the threat of my family belongings being sold because I couldn’t afford it. In the end I had to pay over $1,112.92 to keep the roof over our head and our belongings in storage, and to turn back on the utilities plus late fee’s; I now owe my Step-Grandmother (who I’m not on best terms w/ so the call was extremely uncomfortable to say the least) $700 and sold whatever was worth money to make up the rest (not to leave out baby sitting my neighbors mentally challenged 13yr old son for what I couldn’t make and for the remaining amount stood on a corner asking for money to pay for bills; my pride that day was entirely absent and to admit I did that makes me shutter). By the end of the 1st month I went knocking on his door 3 times trying to speak to him but he refused to answer the door, in fact when his dog came barking (I went up when he was in mid-noise making so I knew he was home) he called his dog back saying "They’ll go away eventually." After that failed for the 3rd time, I wrote him a very respectful letter explaining my position and asking him if he could please do his choirs during daylight hours after 10am for my Mom’s sake; the next day I received a phone call from the front office asking me to please come down ASAP. The nerve of this guy, he took my letter down to the front office and filed a complaint against me for insulting his character but lucky for me, my leasing manager had read my letter and found nothing insulting, rude or out of line about it and after she listened to my recording of the excessive noise making she called him down to have a meeting with me. What I couldn’t understand was the fact she claimed she had no right to ask him not to do his choirs at a more convenient time, that when he choose to do so was up to him and all she could do was maybe suggest he could do it during daylight hours but would not enforce it.  Can you believe that!? Since I have had to ask him over a dozen times to please keep the noise down and although I walk away calling him every name under the sun I maintain a civilized manner to my requests. The last time I asked him to turn his music down at 7am, he had the nerve to justify the music by saying the beat was "slow alternative" and directly after dismissed me with a backwards hand flick as if I was an annoying fly. To show his irritation he’s spent the last 5 days torturing my Mom and I, spending the entire evening hours making as much noise as he possibly could and in result my Mom’s immune system from the lack of sleep has made her sick on top of her illnesses; she’s so desperate for sleep her upbeat lighthearted personality has turned, for lack of better words, mean. She’s to the point she’s crying from frustration repeating "I just want to sleep, why wont he just let me sleep?" and I’ve spent the last 5 days so exhausted I’m the official investor of No-Doz so I don’t fall asleep at work again. I have come to the conclusion my apartment manager isn’t going to help, talking to him leads to the situation worsening and now I’m searching online for any actions I can take. What makes him more of a jerk, the 1st time he invited me in so we could discuss the situation HE pointed out to ME how his floor & walls were so thin that when he barely walked on the floor he could feel the thud vibrate throughout the apartment; he even stated apartment complex’s should be state required to have thicker more sound proof walls and floors. Please, anyone who has an answer to my problem I beg of you to help me battle this jerk… I’ll take it as far as I have to (legally). Thank You so much… the noise has finally stopped, it’s 9:51am and I’m getting the opportunity to sleep, too bad I have work in less than 3 hours.
Sincerely-
Desperate and Exhausted

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