Difficult Neighbor

irish415

Hi! It started with my downstairs neighbor smoking on her deck which is about 6’ from my living room window. She was smoking all day every day. Then at night, someone (I assumed it was her but couldn’t see), was smoking out the back of the building and the smoke was coming in my bedroom window. I texted the landlord and told him ‘someone’ was smoking and asked if he could he maybe send an email to the Tennant’s, reminding them not to smoke. He told me he knew who it was and said he would deal with it.
The same neighbor also likes to have her tv or music really loud at 2am almost every night and I’ve actually seen her smoking again since. She also likes to vacuum after 10pm.
My two small children are with me 50% of the time and I do my best to keep them quiet - they are in bed by 8:30pm and we get up at 7:30am.
Yesterday, one of my kids was jumping around with her shoes on which, doesn’t normally happen. Our neighbor started pounding on her ceiling and did so several times.
I’ve never had any trouble with neighbors in the past so this is all new to me, and, I’m pretty upset over it. I keep my kids as quiet as possible, however, they are kids and we do live in an apartment building where people play loud instruments and music during the day. I don’t have a problem with that, because I feel like there’s going to be some noise when you live in an 8 unit building.

Powerpuppies

Are you asking for any particular help or advice?

zepherin

I mean between 8am and 8 pm I wouldn’t care if the kids ran about and jumped on the floor, especially if the neighbors have their TV blaring at 2 am.

Just keep on the landlord about the smoking, because it’s the claim that will likely get the most action because it is so annoying to clean a smokers apartment out. It costs a lot more money, takes more time and is harder to rent if they do it poorly.

Iruka

It sounds like the woman is smoking on her deck/outside, though. If she is not actually smoking inside, I don't think laws and rules about how far you need to be from the building are universal, it might be harder to enforce anything.

If you can afford a couple air purifiers you can at least be proactive about your air quality and shut the window when your neighbour is out there. I know how annoying that is, just like me having to buy progressively better noise canceling headphones to get work done in my own damn apartment was. It was also still just the easiest thing I could do to make my situation more immediately livable.

I've found that adjusting other renters behaviour is a real toss up, and it might be a long process to just see a bare minimum compromise. I had to file actual noise complaints against my neighboor who plays with car engines in the parking lot, and at first it just went down from every day all day, to a couple times a day. Now even a few years later, he still makes a fuck ton of noise a few times a month.

Edit: also, If your complex ever has turn over and you plan to stay for a while, you might want to ask to be moved to a bottom floor unit. It's generally much easier for young kids to not generate noise complaints that way.

Burtletoy

Air purifiers mostly won't do anything about the odor of the smoke, unless they have an active carbon filter, then it might.

Most air purifiers remove particulates of a certain size, but don't have any effect on organic compounds

Bedlam

Check your local laws, if someone has excessive noise past a certain time you can call the police to sort it out and give them a warning, this starts a paper trail for eviction if they refuse to comply. Look up your non emergency number and have it handy with the address of the person you intend to complain about.

Youre going to have let the ceiling pounding go. If youre kids are being excessive then your neighbors might get angry even if its in the middle of the day. Sometimes people can be reasoned with and sometimes people are just jerk.