Question:
Our neighbors in a duplex apartment play bass boosted rap music anywhere between 8am and 9pm. They also refuse to control their child, letting him leap off of furniture and sprint through the house until 9-10pm. The building is sitting on cement blocks with a 4 foot open space underneath. Sounds echo and travel badly.
We’ve asked them stop 3 times with the music. They reacted with either ignoring our requests and going at it longer than usual, or rolling (her) eyes, and still denying our requests.
We’ve notified our landlord of the problem, that it’s disturbing our peace and we can’t even enjoy being at home anymore. Recently we’ve taken refuge at my grandmother’s home while she is on vacation, but can’t keep this up forever.
We are financially in no situation to move until early spring, and are wondering if there is anymore we can do, take legal action against neighbors for being a nuisance or landlord for allowing the annoyance. Both parties have been contacted three times. We called the police but the state officer pulled up, then pulled away without talking to anyone?
Answer:
Hopefully by now the situation has been resolved. If not, make sure you have a paper trail of everything; Phone logs showing calls to the landlord, emails, text etc. If not, start one. Also videos or sound recordings of the nuisance. Police logs of calls, and dates / results of the times you spoke to the neighbors and problem tenants. With that kind of proof, most any courts would side with you for breaking the lease early. If you have proof, I’d tell the landlord you are going to stop paying rent until the problem is resolved since your request are not being taken seriously. Most that can happen is he goes through eviction proceedings which would probably last till Spring when you were going to move anyway. If all else fails, blast some Frank Sinatra, Country or Opera music at the neighbors wall at 2 a.m. and give them a taste of what it sounds like….. but that can lead to an altercation that you do not want, so document it and see how it goes. Sadly some people are just not good society members.
