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dtxgal

Dealing with a crazy neighbor

dtxgal
9 years ago

Condensed version: My neighbor aggressively
pounds on my wall when I’m doing normal things in my apartment. She has left a
passive aggressive note and refuses to read any reply I make. The Management
has told her they will evict if she doesn’t stop harassing me, and things are
still progressing, but no eviction has occurred. I am beyond frustrated and don’t
know what to do

Story: The neighbor has banged on my wall
consistently starting about a month after I moved in and it’s gotten to the
point that I can’t even tell what they’re banging about. At first it was things
like when I was on the phone in the bedroom, talking at a normal volume. They banged
when I was talking to my boyfriend in the bedroom about our plan for the next
day (again at normal conversational volume). They banged when I was unloading
my dishwasher. They banged when I was watching TV in my living room. And
finally, they even banged when I had paused the TV and was texting a friend,
making no noise whatsoever! All of the banging occurs on my bedroom wall, which
is in the back of my apartment, and separated by more walls from my kitchen and
living room. So they are banging on our one shared wall about things I’m doing
in completely different parts of the apartment.

It scares me because it’s so unexpected and the
pounding is so aggressive. It’s very loud and hard enough that I can hear the
wall shaking. It’s also a complete surprise because the amount of noise I’m
making when they do it is so negligible (or even non-existent). The TV was
never over 30 on the volume dial and was soft enough that I had to rewind what
I was watching to hear it. It’s never just a “knock knock” type of thing. It’s
always 5-15 loud bangs. Normally it happens when my boyfriend has been staying
with me, but when it happens when I’m there alone, I get nervous that they’re
going to come knock on my door or something and then I feel ridiculous because
I’m afraid of making ANY noise whatsoever.

I have called the management company many times.
They’re condos and the HOA has hired this company to manage the property. The
neighbor is this old woman who I was warned by the maintenance people when I
moved in. They called her the “crazy lady who used to live here” and that she
would probably try to contact me because she likes knowing what’s going on
everywhere in the complex). She has indeed approached me three times about
random things about my unit and once to let me know if she was ever being too
loud. I didn’t know what unit she was in at the time, but I’ve had no complaints
about the noise from other apartments. Now that I know it’s her, it’s super
ironic that she asked me to come talk to her if she’s too loud but she bangs on
my wall instead of following her own advice. The management encouraged me to
call the cops next time she does it and “do NOT confront her directly. She’s
off her rocker.”

I
sort of waited to see how it would play out and she left me this passive
aggressive note about how obviously I’m destroying her quiet enjoyment of her
home and instructed me to use headphones and only ever watch TV in the living room.
There was also some choice language about how I’m disturbing her sleep and
severely affecting her health.

I have only one Tv, and it’s in the living room
as far away from the bedroom wall as humanly possible and is only watched at
volumes under 30.

I rarely if ever do anything in my bedroom but
sleep and talk and if I do watch something on my laptop, I use headphones

Essentially, I’m already doing (and have been
doing since I moved in) everything she asked and it’s still not good enough.

I wrote her a note in return telling her this and that her
loud pounding on the wall is disturbing me and not a normal kind of noise
pollution from living in shared spaces. I asked her to stop. She returned my
note, unopened and unread *still in it’s sealed envelope, and wrote “Classy. Appreciate
your help” on it with the words underlined heavily and some crossed out
attempts at other illegible words.

Clearly she has ZERO interest in actually resolving anything
or even LISTENING to what I have to say, and this leaves me with no more
options on how to fix this myself. She seems to just want to harass me. Any
ideas?

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