rude, threatening, disruptive neighbors

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angelehua

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My fiance and I just moved into a 1st floor condominium. Our upstairs neighbors seemed very nice and polite, they are a couple in their late 20's with a 5 year old boy. From the very beginning there has been all sorts of disruptive noises from upstairs, like a herd of elephants stampeeding or like they were jumping off of the furniture. We let it go a while, our unit had been empty for quite some time before we moved in, and we thought we'd give them a bit of time to get used to have downstairs neighbors. When we did start to mention the noise, it got worse. One night, after having most of a three hour long movie interrupted from stomping and running upstairs, I got up to see what time it was. It was 10:48pm and I was pissed. I went upstairs to ask them to calm down. When I rang the bell, the woman's mother answered the door and I said to please be quieter. She replied "well maybe you should have never bought the place" and slammed the door in my face. Obviously I went from being pissed to being enraged. I replied with a few expletives and turned to leave. She opens the door, practically hits me with the screen door and then lunges towards me shouting "Don't mess with me, or I'll f*&# you up!" I was fortunately able to get away from her without her hurting me. I went downstairs and called the police. I was told that since she wasn't knocking my door down they didn't consider it an emergency and would send someone "eventually". My fiance went back upstairs to talk to the woman neighbor whom we felt we were on friendly terms with. The womans mother answered the door and when he asked for the woman slammed the door in his face. She then opened the door, and after seeing that I am standing down the stairs, tries to get at me. My fiance is a big guy and he won't let her by him(thank god). She then proceeds to try to claw her way past my fiance and scratches him pretty badly. We manage to get away and go back to our condo and call the police again. They finally send someone out. The officers that arrive listen to our story and convince us not to have this woman arrested as it could make things worse. They go upstairs and talk to our neighbors. When they come back down they say that the neighbors just want to be left alone and want to leave us alone. Okay, sounds good.

The next night we get home about midnight and I am walking past my kitchen window, under their kitchen window, and I hear the woman calling me vile names over and over again. Less than 24 hours after they "want to be left alone" and she's harrassing me. The stomping and running around has gotten much, much worse and we aren't getting much sleep due to stress and noise. I am so frustrated. Because it's a condo I'm not sure what to do, it's not like I can complain to the manager and have them thrown out. They own their unit. We just moved in and don't want to move again, but also don't want to continue to live here under these conditions. Besides I only see problems with trying to sell the place, these people would have no problem being extra noisy when people were looking at the place. I think I would feel deceptive to try to sell the place to someone and not tell them about the problem.

The police suggested mediation, but I don't get the impression that these are the type of people that you can talk things through. Anyone have any other suggestions or thoughts.

I'm afraid of being here alone, this woman is obviously crazy enought to try to get through my fiance to attack me, what's going to stop her when I'm in the parking lot alone?
 
This is not legal Advice!

This is a commen problem when you live in a condo/flat, It seems to be a teritory thing.
I use to live in a flat/condo in the UK, we were the people upstairs. The people downstairs use to say the same thing, that we were making lots of noise stamping around, loud tv, and banging doors. The thing was we could not realy hear anything from them?
We at the time could not see what the problem was because we were quiet.
Anyway, we had complaits from the people downstairs and tryed a bit harder, the problem did not seem to go away the more noise they herd, the more depressed they got until, they stoped talking to us and eventually moved. We got new people move in and before long it was all happening again. This time though the new residents were a bit more accomadating and invited us in to listern to our own noise (in a polite way) it was then we realized that they could here our tv better than there own! we apoligised and lived in near silence before we endend up moving ourselves. The problem was is that condos/flats are not built with noise in mind only "profits". and that all noises seem to be tavelling down.

It would be nice to have a truce with your nice people upstairs but maybe it would be safer to keep a distance for a bit. You could try and win there trust and eat humble pie and try to forgive (I know that will be tough). If only for the reason to sell your property.
I dont think your situation will get much better but it will get easyer if you try to avoid the conflict. Sometimes better to try and explain that you are sorry for intruding as you did, but were at wits end and did not see at the time any other option. In SOME cases people will listern to reason and will forgive and forget, we are all human at the end of the day.
If not at least you know you have tryed. From the people upstairs point of veiw you have encroached on there space and gone off on a tangent, All human beings have a point of where their defence's kick in before their mind, in your case i think this is what has happend.

The Police were right on this occasion not to make too much of a fuss and blow things right out of the water. They are right it truly could make things a lot worse than they are.
People can do the strangest of things if they feel they are being backed in a corner.
Think very carfully and try your hardest to call a truce and in a week or so you all could be smile's again.

I hope things work out for you all and try to keep you chin up.

good luck.
 
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