Complaining Neighbor

By Jude

My Husband and I moved into a 2 bedroom townhome last year in August 2011. At the time my daughter was 2 years old, she is now 3. We introduced ourselves to the neihgbors as we were moving in and they seemed like a very nice couple. BOY WAS I WRONG! Our townhomes are not the newest buildings in existence, and our stairs creek when we walk up or down the steps. The husband had come over and complained saying our TV was up too loud and that we are pounding up and down the steps. First of all, we were moving things into the apartment, which we had apologized in advance for in regards to the accessive noise that would be going on for the first couple of days, and secondly, we did not have a TV hooked up at the time so there is no way our TV was too loud. We moved in on August 3 2011, and I keep a white board in my kitchen for to-do lists and what not, well, after the first week with a total of 8 complaints (during day time hours) we started to keep a tally, as of August 21, 2011, this neighbor had come over 27 times!! He was NEVER nice when he came over. When my husband would answer, he would smugly say "Hey man… keep your kid quiet, I’m trying to study over here." at which point my husband would apologize and our child would be scolded, punished, or sat on the couch and talked to about being quiet (she really isn’t loud to begin with but we understand that children are sometimes loud) it got to be a problem when my husband was at work and the car was not in the drive way, I was babysitting my friends daughter, and her dad (our close friend) had come to pick her up. We were having a quick chat before they left, and the neighbor came over and ran my doorbell, I knew it was him, so I ignored it and continued with the conversation, he rang the doorbell once more and added a loud pounding on my door, at which point I REALLY wasn’t going to answer the door, after that, he continually rang my door bell over and over and banged on my door consitently until I answered. When I finally opened the door he screamed at me "YOU NEED TO BE A BETTER MOTHER AND MAKE YOUR KID SHUT UP! DO YOU NOT HAVE A BRAIN! OF COURSE YOU DON’T! YOU’RE A GOD DAMN WOMAN!" at which point, my husband’s best friend came to the door and asked if there was a problem, his tone quickly changed "No.. I’m just asking her is she can keep the kids a little more quiet. I’m trying to study." I’m a stay at home mom and I am a very small woman so it scares me to have someone scream at me in my own home. I spoke to his wife one day, I was letting her know that my daughter would be having a birthday party and it might be a little more noisy between these hours on this date, she quickly cut me off and informed me that we are not loud by any means, she told me that her husband presses his ear against the wall and waits for us to make noise. She also informed me that he called to get a background check done on us when he saw us moving our stuff in because we have tattoos (my husband’s career is in the tattoo industry, apparently that automatically makes us hoodlums and drug dealers) his wife ended up leaving him because he would not leave us alone and he was verbally abusive with her. She and I became pretty good friends. We don’t hear a lot of noise from the other neighbors next to us, we can only really hear them walking up and down the stairs, but it’s very very light. We have spoken to the landlords about this and all they have to say is "Yeah… he does that to everyone." but what they do not understand is that our quality of life has gone from being a happy, well-balanced and healthly family, to a stressful, anxious, and accusatory homelife. I can’t even do dishes during the day because the clanging of pots will upset him. Even as I am writing this, my daughter is humming quietly on the floor, and I just instinctively "shooshed" her. We have gotten into two altercations with him when my husband has told him that he needs to call the cops the next time he has an issue. I really just don’t understand, this man does not have a car, and when we see him on the street, we stop and offer him a ride. I said hello to him when I saw him outside, and now, when I see him, my heart races and I am completely scared. The reason I decided to say something now is because about 20 minutes ago, I walked outside to make a phone call (we still have our old area code numbers so we have terrible service inside the house) I was calling to tell my husband to have his best friend call his wife because she couldn’t get their car to start, it was literally 1 minute long, and he SLAMMED his door so hard that it blew out the light bulb in my porch light. I don’t know what to do anymore. It’s gotten so bad that my anxiety levels have shot through the roof and I have now developed an anxiety disorder. My husband and I snap at our daughter whenever she jumps, or runs, or even sings. I feel like a terrible mother that I snap at my child whenever she shrieks with excitement. We can’t even take her outside on our back porch to relieve some energy because he comes outside and yells at me in front of her, and outside should be where she is allowed to be a little more noisy. We are all usually in bed by 9:00-10:00, my husband works late some nights and is home by 11:00 but goes straight to bed, so I know we are not in any violation of noise ordinance, but we just don’t know what to do. We have captions constantly on our television, we don’t have a radio since we use MP3 players, our TV volume is locked below 7, my daughter has developed a complex to the beeping noise of the public transit van when it backs up because that’s when we know he is home, and she hides in her room under her blanket until we coax her out. We have trained her to play away from the "mean wall" (the wall that connects our townhomes) and now she is mortally afraid to go near it. I understand if a neighbor is obsessively noisy, but we have never ever had complaints before about being too noisy. In our last apartment, we lived above the office and the laundromat (on purpose since my daughter was just starting to walk and I wanted to avoid this type of problem) and the apartment had told our current landlord that "they never heard anything from upstairs and that they wished we had never left because it was the quietest the office had been for two years." I don’t think that it’s fair that our quality of life has to suffer because someone can’t handle noises of everyday life. My daughter and I are only awake between 8:00am-9ish PM. He’s woken up my daughter from sleep at 11:00pm by continuously ringing our doorbell and telling us our TV is too loud when there is nothing on in our house because we are all asleep. I just don’t know what to do anymore. I’m not worried about our record since the landlord stated that he has done this to all the previous tenants so they don’t mark it on the records anymore, but our lives are being seriously altered because of this guy. He is a very scary man, he has a very bad temper and god forbid anything more serious happen. I have looked into harassment orders, but it seems like that would be something messy to get into, we have tried talking to him nicely, also telling him harshly to back off, went to the landlord, and also trying to be as quiet as a monk, and nothing will get this guy off our back. Any sort of advice would be appreciated. 

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Holy Cow, we couldn't find any other related post. Sorry. :(