I haven’t written about my awful renter neighbors for a while …
It doesn’t look like they’ll be leaving anytime soon, much to my dismay. Well .. unless they’re having trouble paying the rent again, that is. Hey, I can hope!
I am worried about them though! We’ve heard from friends of ours that used to live in the same apartment building as our renter neighbors (a few apartment buildings over the last several years) that they often don’t pay the rent or their bills and they have a history of drug abuse.
I’m pretty sure the stories about them using illegal drugs are true as they often look out of it when we see them on the street, especially lately! They also look older than the ages they told us they were when they moved in in September. They’d told us they were 31 or 32 but man, they look like they’re 10 or more years older, especially lately!
Every time we talk with the guy next door his eyes are slits and red rimmed and he seems confused or out of it. My husband and I don’t talk to the woman next door very often, but when we do she’s pretty much the same.
I feel bad for their kids. They have three of them – all girls and the youngest is about 2 years old. I’ve actually never even see the 2 year old, but my husband just saw her for the first time this week. It can’t be a good environment for them moving every few months because of unpaid bills and or rent and with parents that stay up all night possibly doing drugs. The best thing they can do for themselves and their kids is to perhaps check into a good drug rehab.
Anyway … if they manage to keep paying the rent they’ll be our neighbors until August, but I have a feeling that they’ll either get kicked out or move out before that. Remember how they were stealing my internet bandwidth in November because they must have had their cable canceled? Well, They are on a satellite TV and internet system now (Bell) and I’d bet $100 but that that will be cut off soon.
Do any of you have undesirable neighbors? Ones that concern you or ones that make you concerned for their kids?
I used to have some noisy neighbors, who were fighting a lot in the middle of the night, but I was the one to move. Now, I rarely know who my neighbors are, which is not such a good thing either.
hope everything works out ! great post
oh. I had a neighbour like that, they were just sick in the head.
This is exactly why i have not gotten into the apartment rental business. Too much trouble and grief.
OMG…I went through a situation like this for 3 years at a property I owned. In addition to using drugs, drinking heavily, and arguing loudly (with a few fistfights to boot) on a consistent basis, my neighbors let the lawn get two feet high and would leave food out all over the yard for stray cats..and raccoons, possum, etc. :). Alas they finally forclosed and my troubles went away. This too shall pass!
Makes me feel better about my last “awful” neighbor… they would just leave the windows open when the weather was nice and then proceed to have loud and lengthy love making. I remember one night walking past their home and there was a crowd of about seven neighbors standing under their second floor window gossiping about them (while they were in the act, of course). Finally someone got sick of it and yelled at them to “finish up, we’re getting bored out here.” Can you imagine?
My current neighborhood is pretty quiet.
Your story rings sadly true with me. For five years I owned half a duplex in a nice neighborhood yet unluckily found myself living next to neighbors like your renters! They were either drunk or high most evenings and constantly fought (male and female cohabitants). I was scared to challenge them because both were unstable and capable of causing me harm. Finally though, my bold realtor put heat on them when I chose to sell and they finally got the message after being belligerent to us repeatedly. The new owner of my place lives peacefully now because the dreadful neighbors were finally forced to forclose after not being able to pay their bills :).
In our neighborhood, we have beautiful homes up and down the street.
There are two very crappy, and I do mean crappy, homes that are a super blight.
One is a rental. The other is an owner-occupied.
The owner occupied has a theory that the more worn and tired (and rotting) doors, windows and roofs are, the more charming.
Evidently he read a Nathaniel Hawthorne novel, House of the Seven Gables, and fell in love with the idea of a yard and building falling down on itself.
The renter actually isn’t in charge of the upkeep of his place.
The lawn is just hardpan, and the backyard is used to bring cars in from the alley to work on and let rust. (the renter IS responsible for that.)
Occasionally the renter in the dead of night has his friends push a junker out of the back yard and onto the street, and parks the vehicle, sometimes in front of our home.
Eventually we have to call the city to come get it.
There is no evidence that the car was a piece of junk from our neighbor’s back yard, and we just keep calling the city. They keep removing the junks.
And, OF COURSE, guarding the junks in the renters back yard are dogs, loud dogs.
He says they are his children. But children are trained and aren’t left in the backyard alone all day to do what they want.
In other words, uncaring neighbors who are ignorant are not a phenomenon that is exclusive to any one place.
True, it is more common among the poor where they don’t have the money to live within their property lines. If you have six kids and a 1200 square foot home, your neighbors are going to be living with your kids as well.
And, if one complains that building access for the poor in a middle class neighborhood is going to cause blight, the politicians yell, “Where is your compassion.”
I ask, where is your common sense?
Beth