Have you ever had new neighbors move into the neighborhood who made you want to move out?

Oh, you mean like how we moved into this apartment and found out there’s a couple upstairs who just love a nice round of child-abuse?

Yeah.

Count your blessings.

If you have a homeowner’s association, now’s the time to get them involved.

@asmonet I was in that situation once….twice actually, when we lived on the ground floor of this huge, three story house. Each story was an apartment. Two women moved in at different times with their kids…it was horrible, and I called them on it.

@the Compassionate Heretic No homeowners association here!

@Dutchess12: Yeah, I bang on their door every time I hear that kid hit the floor and hear crying, and I’ve called the cops once so far. So far, their behavior has improved. We’re on the ground floor too. :-/

I second getting your Homeowner’s Association involved.

Most of the people in my neighborhood are old, old, old. It’s a miracle whenever I see someone young. So they tend to be very, very quiet and keep to their own business.

One of my close neighbors, about 8 acres away, shines hugh spot lights at night, thereby ruining my stargazing. I hope his electric bill puts him into chapter 11.

@gailcalled Light pollution is such a drag. What are the spotlights for?

We have an excellent (and inexpensive) HOA which is pretty strict so there aren’t any of those kinds of problems. People don’t park vehicles on the street even or not pick up after their dogs’ poops. I’d never buy a house in a neighborhood without an HOA for the reason those types of neighbors avoid HOAs.

@gailcalled (makes you want to get a BB gun and do some target practice!)

@asmont We don’t have a homeowners association!

New family moved into the house behind us about six months ago.

You can often see this beer-bellied spectacle riding on his 4-wheeler bare chested with a brewski in one hand and his infant child under the other arm. Doing donuts in the dirt, hootin’ and hollerin’.

He saw me leaving for work one night.
“Where ya goin’?”, he said.

“Oh, I’m off to teach”, I said.

“What’re ya, like, smart or somethin’”, he replied.

oy vey

We used to live on the third floor of an apartment complex. The lady under us was a single mother who entertained…men…a lot. I swear she had new men constantly. We got to hear all of it. Gross, gross, gross.

Neighbors newer than we are moved in across the street and always park at least one of their vehicles directly opposite someone else’s driveway making it hard to get out. They have two cars, a two-car garage, and a driveway so why must they do that? The wife is known by yet another neighbor as “that b…. witch” because of the way in which she responds to requests.

The same neighbors will not allow my son to go into their house. They won’t say why but another neighbor suggested it had to do with skin color.

A new neighbor (since moved out) savagely hacked at any foliage crossing the fence line even though the week he moved in I went to welcome him and tell him that if my plantings bother him to please let me know and I will trim the problem ASAP.

We live in the country, and our newest neighbors did NOT move here for the peace and quiet. They brought the city with them. They’re not happy unless there is a constant stream of traffic coming and going from their house, construction noise, leaf blowers, lawn mowers (they have the only lawn w/in 10 miles that isn’t a golf course), shouting. Then their 13 yo kid decided it would be fun to hunt the birds in my front yard with a bb gun. I told Pugsley to go shoot the birds in his own yard. I just hope they’ll miss the city – a LOT.

There is a nice old lady who lives in the apartment upstairs from me who let a few of her younger relatives stay with her a couple of years ago. They were, by mode of dress and carriage in comparison to others in this neighborhood, out of place, so to speak.

They yelled in hallways to talk to each other. They’d smack their 4–5 year old kid to the ground openly and give people grief for calling them on it. They tried to bribe the doormen to let their druggy pals in without buzzing up. They played booty bass music seemingly all day long and had terrace parties that went on forever. We didn’t dare say anything. They would glare at us in the elevators like they’d cut a bitch if we breathed on them.

Only when one of them burnt their apartment out (crack party gone awry, per the AM doorman who likes to gossip) did someone say anything. We were outside waiting for the fire department to give us the all-clear when a woman from their floor stomped up to the man of the group and hissed, “This is not the projects! You should go back there, where you belong!” I thought that guy was going to bust her face in, he looked so angry. The manager came over to deal with it, and within a week, the entire clan, save the old lady, was gone.

We were lucky. Each apartment here is encased, so we didn’t burn. Plus, the water ran down and seeped into our floors and warped them, so we got new oak parquet flooring gratis. Thanks, crackies!

@asmonet…can’t you call child protective services on them? That’s horrible! That child needs to be taken out of their care.

The lady downstairs used to do a lot of random little things that annoyed me…
I know this doesn’t sound annoying, but she always brought our mail in. I don’t like anyone touching my mail, and I hated thinking we just didn’t get any or something. It’d be on the stairs, so I asked them to stop.
Oh, and she was obsessed with locking the main door (we have our own apartment doors as well) I once ran to my car to get something, and she locked me out. She’d do it if I even stepped outside! It was pretty frustrating.

I think in our first apartment, my husband and I were the couple people complained about :( We had a little yapper dog that we had to give to my parents, and we used to be very uhh loud, during relationships haha.

Oh, and lesson learned, always live on top. That’s always a key requirement, whenever we look at places to live.

@casheroo I can’t stress that enough either. Little is as annoying as listening to upstairs neighbors stumbling in all drunk at late hours.

For a very long time the ex and I were bad neighbor magnets. There were the people in the bedroom just above ours who had “relations” hourly, all night long, every night, for weeks on end. This was in a condo where the walls were so thin I could hear when the guy above us was taking a whiz.

There was the place where we had to put up sound board to dull the noise from our neighbor’s television which seemed to be on 24/7.

There was the family that was kicked out of their condo and moved all of their belongings into the parking lot where one of them stood guard all day and night with a beer in one hand and machete in the other. They finally tired of living in the parking lot so they broke the window of the vacant condo next to theirs and started moving there stuff in there.

We thought things would get better when we moved to our first single family home where we didn’t have any common walls. We we ever disappointed. The family across the street had three teens who were fond of throwing loud and unsupervised parties, plus the family owned at least 17 cars which were parked up and down the street,

@SuperMouse: win

I’m so sorry

We have a mix of live-in owners, and rentals, and you can sure tell the difference. Two relief agencies have bought two of the houses, one for recovering addicts (6 men at a time, lots of turnover)and one for kids who are one step from juvenile hall.

Several of the others have been purchased by Russian families who have at least three generations all living together, with grandmas, parents, adult children, their wives and all their children. They are all very well behaved, but it’s kind of unnerving to have up to 20 people living in the same house and half of them are under the age of 12. I’ve never seen so many pregnant women in one place as on our block, sometimes three in one house.

Funny you ask…I have lived in the same house for 15 years and we have only had five years of good neighbors. The first sprayed bleach on our dogs. The second threatened to kill our pet goat. The third was a pedophile. The most recent renter’s son is awaiting trial now b/c he broke into our house 12 times!!! And we’re pretty sure they’re drug dealers. Our other neighbors have offered to buy the house to burn it down but the old landlord refuses to sale!!! it sucks.

@lisaj89 Good God! That’s an awful way to have to live.

@lisaj89: That’s terrible. Do you have any chance of moving?

My guy with the flood lights doesn’t sound so bad by comparison, I must say.

@Darwin :( You can move in next door to me and we can let our foliage rampage all over each other’s fences, K?

Man. Those are some stories you guys!

@lisaj89 – Damn. No, really, damn!

@lisaj89 I have an idea, next time it is for rent, you rent it and install some friends or family there.

@lisaj89 Wait. Did you say pet goat?

Yes Nimis, I said pet goat. It’s Alabama, it’s just one of those things you must do. We bottle fed her and everything!
Yea, I guess you could say we don’t have the best track record with neighbors. However, since the son was caught in the house, we rarely have to call the police on them anymore for being too rowdy.
The story of the robber is pretty interesting. For nearly a year the cops kept saying there wasn’t anything else they could do, so we took matters into our own hands. We bought a video system which you can access from any computer (he stole the first system we bought). If it detects movement, it will send you an email. Well, we caught him in the act. I have provided the link for the video below if you’re interested. It’s pretty funny. If you watch the whole sequence, you actually see him walk up and look right into the camera. Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5SwmrNATAoI

@lisaj89 THAT WAS AWESOME!!!! LOL!! He looks right in the camera…and THEN covers up his face!....So…what’s the rest of the story? Did he get arrested and convicted, or what? What’s the scoop now?

So, after the cops caught him trying to hide in my closet and after they roughed him up a bit (they were very excited to get him, finally;), he was arrested. However, he got out on bail so now he’s just hanging out over there waiting for his court date. It has been four months now, the police told us they were going to let us know what was going on, but they haven’t.
Yea, I know, he’s an idiot. Where he’s bending over to the left is our stair case that has a gate to block the dogs from getting upstairs. Apparently, the dogs were going crazy and he was trying to get them to calm down.

@lisaj89 Ha! He looks so dumb-founded.