I am very lucky to have had good neighbors or real issue in all my time as a renter.
So I'll mention a friend of mine who spent a year living in a building with a neighbor who stomped around like an elephant, blasted crazy loud music at all hours of the night, and her shiftless landlord who stood by and did nothing. My poor friend's mental health suffered a not insignificant toll because of this episode and she moved out after six months. At that point, she didn't even care about breaking her lease!
But some neighbors are worse. Much worse, in fact, as we learned after Redditor FloydTheB1rd asked the online community, "What are your 'neighbours from hell' stories?"
"She started texting me constantly..."
New neighbor moved into the building aside from mine (we had the same landlord, our buildings shared a yard/were on the same plot of land). Ran into her outside when I was coming home one night, and we chatted for a while. She seemed super chill and someone I could potentially become friends with, so we exchanged numbers so we could make future plans for me, her, and her partner that also lived with her. Biiiig mistake.
She started texting me constantly (and I mean constantly "where are you, love?"), waiting out on her stoop for me, standing in her window and looking into mine every time I looked outside. Texted and called me whenever I wasn't home, just to mention that my cat was in the window, or just to tell me I left a light on but she "knew I wasn't home". My downstairs neighbors contacted my landlord and asked him to ask THEM to put curtains up because they were always nude and staring out the window, but they refused.
She started leaving me voicemails begging me to Venmo her "just $20" or just "$50 until next week". Her reasons were "I need new speakers for my car", "I have to buy a gift for my friend", "I wanted to go out tonight, but now I'll have to be alone like usual".
Everyone on the lot has access to the main entrance of either building (for washers & dryers) and that concerned me, because I live alone. She knew when I was home, when I wasn't, and what exact apartment was mine. If she could come in and knock at any given time, what would stop her from breaking in?
I found myself not only dodging her messages, but SNEAKING in/out/around my own home with the lights off, or trying to find some place to stay every night so that I wouldn't have to come home. My home that I once felt 100000% safe being alone in did not feel safe anymore.
Some events suddenly went down that did NOT involve me that eventually got her evicted, and I haven't heard from her since. But holy hell.
Lived in an apartment with a long narrow driveway. There was two parking spots for every apartment in the house (three apartments, six spots), so all the tenants had parking, but there wasn't extra for guests. My spot was all the way in the back of the driveway. Normally that was fine, but the neighbors had a habit of constantly parking friends in the middle of the driveway overnight, blocking my car from pulling out with no way to get around. I also would regularly leave very early in the morning for work or to go to drill weekends in the National Guard. Time and time again, the neighbors would block me in and I told them politely several times that they needed to stop because at some point it would happen on a night when I was leaving before 5am.
I got ignored. Finally one night I was coming back around midnight from a party and was planning on getting up and leaving at 8am. Low and behold, theres somebody parking me in. Now, being a little drunk, I was less than polite. I banged on the door and told them to move the car. I was told to eff off. I told him he was a piece of sh!t and he needed to move the car right now because I knew he wouldn't do it later on. He sucker punched me in the face. It ended up in a short brawl with him in a headlock, but I ended up with a black eye from the sucker punch and bruised ribs because one of his friends kicked me while I grappled him. Cops ended up driving by and we both got charged, since there was no proof on who started it. Charges were later dropped, but I learned my lesson not to confront him.
He on the other hand, did not learn his lesson not to park me in. So fast forward a month to my next drill date and I wake up at 4am to see I'm parked in again by this POS lowrider. I wasn't about to get jumped again, so I called the cops and called my landlord. Cops knocked on the door, nobody answered. Landlord agreed to have the car towed and I got to be an hour late for drill while waiting for the tow truck to move the thing. I found out later than the car had cost the neighbors $150 to get out of the impound and another $1000 to fix the front end because it had gotten horribly messed up when the tow truck drug it out of the driveway. I never got parked in again.
"I had this downstairs neighbor..."
Giphy
I had this downstairs neighbor who kept calling the cops on my Roomba and my cat while I was at work. I had the Roomba set to run a few days a week around 3pm so that the place was clean when I got home. My cat is big (15 lb tomcat), but not the "stomping elephant" she reported to the police. She'd call in a noise complaint while I was at work. I would get a call from management about the noise and inform them I was not home. This went on for about a year.
Then the Sunday noise started. Homegirl downstairs likes to have her Sunday morning "me time" with some K-Ci and JoJo blasting full volume. I got fed up one day and went downstairs and asked her to turn it down. She answered the door in a purple silk robe and chewed me out about the noise from my apartment during the week.
I walked away, went upstairs, and decided it was a good time to listen to Master of Puppets because I cannot stand K-Ci and JoJo.
Fast forward another 2 months. It is now winter. It's a Tuesday around 7 pm. I get home with some groceries and am putting things away in the kitchen. I get a knock at the door. It's an off-duty cop, but still in uniform. He says my neighbor says I'm stomping and have been for hours. I'm wearing winter boots in my kitchen and the bags of groceries are on the counter. I tell him I just got home and yeah I know she calls sh!t in but as you can see, I just walked in the door. He looks at the log and sees the number of times she's reported things, informs me that he lives on the next floor up and will stop responding to these calls.
"Random people would walk up to the building..."
My upstairs neighbor was a drug dealer. Random people would walk up to the building and whistle at him through the window and then he would throw a bag down. Super brazen to pull that out in the open like that. Then one night two guys somehow entered the building and knocked on a different neighbors door. He opened it and these dudes had a gun pulled out on him. After they realized they had the wrong apartment they ran off and the neighbor called the police. The drug dealing neighbor moved out soon after.
"This family..."
This family had this kid run around, constantly causing trouble, stealing stuff, and just being a little sh!t in general. My family would not not put up with him. Especially when he flies his drone to dive bomb me and peek into girls' windows. He constantly brags about how rich he is, and how much of a loser I was. After a bit of this, I smacked his drone out of the air, took the memory card, checked to see if it had the stuff he saw, and took it to the police. Kid got exposed in front of the entire school. And he knew it was me. He doesn't have the balls to do anything to me, so I regret nothing.
"They had 17 dogs."
They had 17 dogs. Not all at once, two or three at a time over the course of ten years. They barked, they shat, they barked some more.
Animal Control would issue citations and order them to appear in court for neglect or forfeit the animals.
They would simply let animal control take their dogs and then get new ones.
Other times the UPS truck or some other driver would hit/kill their dog, so again, they would get new ones.
At one point the neighbor was keeping a female pit bull for a friend who was in prison. He let the dog roam free or kept it tied up on a clothesline. Wonderful folks, these neighbors.
"I kid you not."
My neighbors from hell were so loud and fought so much that I ended up on Oprah to discuss it. I kid you not. I became a community mediator to learn the skills to deal with my neighbor. Oprah flew me all the way to Chicago to talk about mediating disputes with neighbors on her show. Worth it. The episode aired in 1999 and it was entitled "Difficult Conversations". I am the woman who dealt with the drummer next-door.
"So I own my house..."
So I own my house and my neighbors rent their house (their landlord is a slumlord but that's another story). So there are two people who actually rent the house and they are great people, quiet and respectful. However, they are low income and rely on sub-tenants to make ends meet. The main renter guy works with people who have drug related issues and trouble with the law, I gotta give it to him, good on him for finding the good in people. But that being said in the last 2 years they have had 8 different sub-tenants!
The first two that moved in were bike thieves, they would go out, steal bikes and then chop them up in the backyard. Not only that they would put the chopped up garbage in my garbage bin so the day after garbage day I couldn't put any of my trash away. I ended up moving my bin into my locked backyard.
Eventually the cops kept showing up and they got evicted.
The second set of sub-tenants were also addicted to meth. They would honestly bring stolen sh!t back and stack it in the backyard. At one point there was so much crap in the backyard you couldnt walk. This included more stolen bikes and old washing machines etc. It looked like a trailer park. One of the subs set up a tent in the backyard and slept outside all summer long. They would lean over the fence and ask for cigarettes or beer and throw trash into our yard for no reason.
But I saved the best for last. The current sub-tenants are just horrible people. We have caught them stealing mail from other people and throwing the empty boxes in the alley or on the street. Clearly selling drugs out of the house as people come and go all day and only stay for a few minutes. I've found needles on my property and they're extremely rude. I have two young kids and don't want them playing outside because of this. As well, they cut across our lawn when leaving, absolutely zero respect for other peoples property. Worst part is I've brought this up with the main renter and shown him videos and he says there is nothing he can do as he relies on the money to pay rent...
I feel for the guy honestly, but this house single handedly makes our street worse and brings all the hood rats around causing even more crime. Our police force is useless as they have said on multiple occasions unless they catch them in the act there is nothing they can do. Such a shame as it used to be such a great neighborhood.