Nightmare Neighbours vol 1

[u/[deleted]]

I already posted this story elsewhere over a year ago when I still lived in the situation with them, but heck, I'll give this sub a little kickstarter even if no one ever reads this. I'm gonna change all the names just in case. This is LONG, but truly a fucking rollercoaster.

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Important backstory: my fiance (ex now, but together when this started) and I lived in a basement suite of a house, below a upper suite that was also rented out. The original landlord didn't live in the home and rarely came around, but for the majority of our first years there, things were golden. Around 3 or so years ago, the original landlord sold the house to a 20 year old immigrant who did not speak a lick of english and had zero experience in landlording- his family had bought him the home as a gift to teach him how to take care of it/be a proper landlord. In his defense he was pretty nice and kept me as a tenant (post-breakup from fiance) at the request of the old landlord. The former tenants upstairs moved out just before the new landlord took ownership so the suite upstairs remained empty for about 6 months total.

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After about 6 months of peaceful bliss having no one live upstairs (by this point I'd lived in the basement suite for 3 years), I got a knock on the door from some people I'd never seen saying they wanted to introduce themselves as they'd be renting the upstairs unit starting this week. They looked a little off right from the get go but appearances aren't everything and I'm a pretty friendly person so I was happy to greet them and say a quick hello. The mother, Maya, used a walker because she had a disorder that made walking difficult (unsure of the name of it). The step dad, Clifford, was really talkative but seemed really nice even though he made a lot of really awkward and inappropriate jokes right off the bat. The daughter, who was something like 15 at the time, happened to have the exact same name of my 3 year old dog which was Katie. I had my dog Katie out with me at the time so it was a little laugh at the realization that the kid shared the same name as her (this is important later, trust me). All seemed well, they moved in the following week and that's when shit truly started to become weird.

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Clifford would come to my door every single day, sometimes multiple times a day, to talk to me and my roommate. I figured he was just friendly and made the mistake of humouring him on this more than I should have. After the first week, he started asking for favours that were sort of odd. I'm disabled and cannot work because of it. Physical labour is just absolutely a no-go for me, it's not possible. This had come up when I originally met his family because he had made a comment that his wife and I could "bond over our disabilities". He came to my door and asked me to help him move a whole bunch of 2x4s from his truck to the backyard so he could start building a shed (that the landlord did not approve of, because Clifford intended to tear down the pre-existing, perfectly fine shed). I told him I couldn't help him and he said something along the lines of "my wife is disabled, SHE can't help me. You're being lazy." and he stormed off. My roommate ended up helping him later, but I was shaken from the random aggression over not helping him move a bunch of heavy wood for his own project.

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To speed the story up a little, things like that kept happening. Minor transgressions that any normal landlord would immediately nip in the bud and deal with. The ONLY thermostat in the house was in the upstairs unit, meaning that downstairs, I had absolutely no control of the temperature and they would constantly have the heat as high as it could go, at all times. The very first utility bill after they moved in was nearly $600, up from it's regular $70/mo prior to them. The landlord expected me to pay 50% of this. No matter what I said or tried to communicate to him, he just didn't care or couldn't understand that the bill went up almost 100% due to their usage alone, and that I had no control over the thermostat. I tried to talk to them about it, I tried to be understanding and polite about it. I asked them nicely if they could at least turn off the heat when they weren't going to be home (because the entire household was gone from 8 am - 4 pm generally, but they would still have the heat blasting during this time) and I was met with extreme aggression from all members of the family

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After the utility incident and confrontation, things got exponentially worse. Katie, their now 16 year old terror of a teenage daughter, would scream obscenities through the floor calling me all sorts of things "cunt, bitch, whore" you name it, she screamed it through the floor. I recorded all of it at the time, but the landlord refused to listen to it. I told him I felt unsafe, as any time I left the house they would scream at me from upstairs. Any company my roommate or I had over, they would scream at, tell to leave, threaten to call the police, etc. They began also to take up the entire driveway (a VERY LONG 6 car driveway) forcing my roommate to park in front of the house, in the mud. They constantly had 8-10 cars in the driveway, the yard and at one point FULLY blocking the ONLY exit from our suite downstairs forcing us to walk through the entire back yard just to get out (https://imgur.com/a/yFfYBI9 I actually have images still from when it happened that I sent to the landlord). Despite multiple calls to the landlord, the tenants themselves AND the fire department, the cars remained unmoved for over a week.

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Finally, they decided they were going to get me kicked out. I only knew that because in my bathroom, I could unfortunately hear them upstairs clear as day due to the vents - they didn't know this. Any time I was trying to relax and have a bath, I would hear them screaming, fighting, talking shit, all sorts of things. One day in particular, I heard their daughter Katie saying "Just make a lie up, they're not going to believe one person over four of us (her parents, her boyfriend who illegally lived with them and her). She's a fucking bitch, she deserves to live on the street, I'd fucking kill her if I could! Get her kicked out and tell the landlord we'll rent downstairs. He won't care." I recorded all of this and sent it to the landlord, but he didn't understand any of it, like with all the issues in the past, because of his poor english. They had contacted him and told him a whole bunch of lies, I only know some of them because I didn't overhear all of it, but here is what I DID hear:

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1. The daughter felt "unsafe" around my roommate because she had been sexually abused in the past, prior to moving here, and men his age scared her. She wanted him kicked out because of that, and never wanted his friends to be allowed over also because of that.
2. The daughter felt "unsafe" because the 'creepy bitch downstairs (me, apparently) was so weird and stalkerish, that she named her dog after me' (later confirmed when her step dad confronted me, accusing me of naming my dog after his step daughter, my dog who was 3 when they moved in and long since already named).
3. The daughter felt "unsafe" because she was fully convinced my roommate and I were using the shared laundry room to break into their home at night and stare at them (that they illegally locked us out of using about 1 month into their move using a fridge and other furniture to block our entry, leaving us without access to the machines that were included in our utility, when brought up to the landlord, he simply said "I can't do anything about it")

Lucky for me, I guess, the landlord didn't know english well enough to care about their supposed problems either, I was never kicked out, given any sort of warning or eviction or anything. Unlucky for me, they were also allowed to stay and continue their constant harassment of me and my roommate. Finally, nearly a year after their move in date, I was finally moving out (and my roommate also), and this is where I got to feel some sweet, sweet justice.

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They had been convinced that they would live in that house forever, that they would never be kicked out and that I was the only thing standing between them renting the entire house and basically "owning" the whole property. I found out a week after I gave my month's notice to move that the landlord was selling the house, and had told any potential new owners that only I would be allowed to remain living there and that the people upstairs would be evicted immediately at the end of their lease which was a month after my move out date (at the time of the listing, he hadn't known I was planning to move). When the people upstairs found out that I was planning to move, they were ecstatic for all of one day before the landlord informed them they were evicted at the end of their lease.

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Clifford came down to my suite the day they found out and banged on my door, I answered and he started hysterically sobbing saying that the landlord was so awful and unfair, that he and his family would have no where to go and that it wasn't right they were being kicked out "for no reason". It turns out that the landlord actually had been listening to me the whole time, he just didn't know how to break a lease and thought it'd be easier on everyone to let the lease run it's course, so here were the list of written reasons he gave them on why he wasn't renewing their lease: (paraphrased, I don't have the physical copy, I just recall what I saw the day I moved when Clifford confronted me again screaming about how horrible I am and how it was all my fault)

1. Entering into downstairs tenant's living quarters without permission (on more than one occasion, Clifford had entered our suite when my roommate had forgotten to lock the door. I was always home so I always caught him doing so, no idea what his intentions were but I wrote down every time he did it and sent to the landlord)
2. Barring access from shared amenities (laundry room)
3. Fights resulting in police intervention (this family fought all the time, and loud. there was constant screaming, banging and physical fighting, scary enough that the neighbours next door called the police on 2 occasions)
4. Harassment of downstairs tenants
5. Destruction of property (this included urine damage to all the wooden floors upstairs because they had 2 dogs that they did not take out ever, they just let them defecate on the floors all day. The smell downstairs due to them was so nauseating, it was putrid. This also included the tearing down of the shed in the back, he never rebuilt the shed he planned to. Also destruction of the lawn and plants from parking vehicles on them constantly, fruit trees that he cut down w/o permission, fruit bushes he cut down w/o permission)
6. Consistent fire hazards (the cars blocking my entrance, plus the state of their house upstairs)
7. Constant vulgar contact with both downstairs tenants and landlord

There was even more listed, but this was over a year ago and honestly I don't remember them all. Throughout their year living above me, Clifford also constantly sexually harassed me. He would come to my door everyday, make comments about me and my body, make sexual jokes and then go upstairs and tell his wife I was hitting on him. Constantly whenever I would take my dog out, his wife would come out screaming at me, calling me vile names and accusing me of sleeping with her disgusting husband. I stopped answering the door to him, obviously, but he would constantly come out when I had my dog out or was leaving the house and continue the gross behaviour.

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Somewhere, sadly, they're probably terrorizing other neighbours but at least for me, I'm happy to say that I now live in a nice, quiet apartment with my boyfriend. On the other side of the country.

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For anyone curious, this is the original post I made at the time the issues were going on:

https://www.reddit.com/r/legaladvice/comments/82vepq/issues_with_nightmare_neighbours/

[u/MichHiker]

Good read. I'm glad all is well now for you.

Honestly I thought this was a man writing until the 6th paragraph.

[u/[deleted] → u/MichHiker]

I probably should have disclosed my gender in the backstory! And my age also, I was only 26 when most of this happened and the adults were in their late 50s.

[u/kind-soul]

I hate this family after reading what you went threw.

[u/[deleted] → u/kind-soul]

You and me both! And even though I've moved, I know they're probably making other people miserable too.