Harrassment by neighbors

[Peter_Larson]

This situation is specific to Sacramento, CA.

We have lived in the a duplex for approximately 1 1/2 years. Our direct neighbors (we are seperated by a common car port) moved in about 3 1/2 months after we did.

I initially attempted to at least become familiar with them. I introduced myself and made all the right noise about being good neighbors, etc.

Within the first week these people were here we started getting notes taped to our door concrning the amount of noise we produce, the hours we keep, and the fact that my wife and I smoke only outside our residence. Not smoking in our residence is a personal choice and not a condition of our rental agreement. The common car port is not enclosed.

The harrassment has become progressively worse including verbal and threatened phyiscal abuse and the county sherrif has been called on two occations by us and mutiple complaints have been made to the landlord. The landlord is of the opinion that we should all be able to get along. Of course they make all the right noises to the landlord and have made just enough reasonable sounding complaints to sound "normal".

The basic question I have is how can I get my landlord to take action against these people? As of the current date the neighbors have not done anything overtly illegle but I believe that the overall pattern of harrassment my be illegle.

Anyone have any direct information concerning this issue?

TIA

 

[Michael Wechsler]

Most important is your lease agreement with your landlord. If there is nothing stated regarding certain conduct then noise levels and other activities will probably be tolerated unless outside the realm of what is "reasonable" -- which is usually what is reasonably expected between neighbors. This is difficult to enforce. If there truly is a threat of abuse, you should send a letter to your landlord, certified return receipt, that the area of your residence is unsafe and that a police report has been filed.

Unless this gets somewhat worse, it seems that there is unfortunately little that can be done practically in this situation. It appears to be more like bickering between a group of people that just don't like each other and would probably be best served if they lived further apart. That's life and perhaps the above -- or perhaps not adding any fuel to this fire -- may work. You probably have an inkling which is more appropriate....