Corollary: If you've never had a neighbor from hell... look in the mirror

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Remember - It's important to be comfortable in your own skin... because it turns out society frowns on wearing other people's

Some people think HOAs are the Antichrist but there’s a good reason they exist.

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Favorite Gear: Dimond | Cadex | Desoto Sport | Hoka One One

At my old house my first back door neighbor would cut the grass once a year in the fall with a sickle bar mower. He moved and I hoped the new guy would be better. Nope. This guy burned all his garbage in the backyard. This included plastic, dirty diapers and the old wood paneling from the basement. He also had an outside dog that did nothing but bark at anything that moved including the wind blown leaves. So F'ing glad we moved.

haha ok

when I moved to Manhattan after graduation from college in the way-back-when I didn't have an apartment, or a roommate, or any connections. So I stayed for a couple weeks in a 'women's hotel', no men allowed above lobby level. A real holdover from a different time, but cheap.

So I was there for a week, and noticed every evening the woman next door had evangelical radio BLARING. No biggie. Then I started hearing all this scrabbling around my door. Not knocking, scrabbling.

I pulled the door open to discover she had scotch-taped all around the transom, the whole thing, she must have used a couple rolls. I don't know whether it was to keep me in or keep my wicked spirit from escaping. She was there in a crouch in this ancient nightdress, hair all askew. She looked at me like I was the devil and bolted back into her room.

I moved out a couple days later.

You spelled "minutes" wrong.

We had a nice enough yard/house/grass we almost won the little "of month" competition a few times........we left the HOA neighborhood because they were a bunch of Nazi douches. Basically bored retirees with nothing better to do than belittle folks. They started trying to institute rules about not being able to have guests street park on a public street in front of your own house for more than 24 hours.

We paid to have a lawyer send them a "STFU" letter after they approved a fence stain we did, then complained about it and wanted it replaced. This after them awarding the house, with new stain, in the top yards competition.

Now we live in a no-HOA area and are much happier. Your purchasing power can help determine your chances living somewhere without HOA's. And we don't have to submit 10 different forms to get a new mailbox or apply stain to something.

HOA's are a nice concept, but quite a few go way way way too far.

The home value thing is a lie too. Our current neighborhood, without HOA, sells at much higher price/sqft and price/acre than the old neighborhood did. Location and nearby perks matter more than how uniform you can make a neighborhood look.

Oh......and I researched it......HOA's in modern form were so corporate builders could maintain appearances during the build/sell phase of a community. Which makes perfect sense to protect their investment. Once a community is sold, often, the original super strict rules from the build/sell phases never get voted out and nobody changes the management company contracts.

I bothered to ask a builder once that was a friend in another area what was up with all the Nazism, and so he told me.

The only really bad neighbor didn't live right next door to me, but in the same circle of townhouse apartments. And I found some key info to get them evicted to prove that revenge is a dish best served piping hot.

I have had a couple PITA neighbors though.

Rented in a condo complex. The old couple next door must have sat there and waited for my dogs to go out to call the management company about dog poop. I got a letter from them saying that they had received numerous complaints about excess animal waste and even though every time they checked there was nothing there they were warning me. I was more mad at the management for not recognizing that nothing being there when they checked was actually a sign that my neighbors were batty rather than a sign that I wasn't cleaning up after my dogs.

The guy that just moved was a nice guy. But he had a couple very agile and aggressive dogs. They wouldn't even pause as they jumped the fence coming and going. Then they would come into our yard acting aggressive. He ended up putting in a fence that can be re-purposed when the dead rise again. They just dug under it.

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I'm beginning to think that we are much more fucked than I thought.

I'm lucky to never have had really horrible neighbors.

Not a neighbor, but my randomly assigned college roommate freshman year was suboptimal. Smoker, so his clothing always stank. He also got fellated while drunk a couple times while I was in the room, he thought I was asleep. First time I just put on headphones, second time i "woke up" and bitched at him, which startled him out of his drunken horny state, freaked out the girl, etc.

Current 'neighbor' actually lives 2 blocks away but I have to drive down that street regularly, and used to like to walk my dog down that block too. Dude threatened to pull me out of my car and beat me up once when he thought I was driving up the block too fast, another time threatened to beat me and kill my dog when my dog (on the sidewalk) was sniffing his lawn and he thought she might go to the bathroom on the grass. Only time I've ever reported someone to the cops. From the look of his skin/hands and general demeanor, my guess is that he's got alcoholic rage issues.

We live on a small cul-de-sac and had a new family move last June or so.

I drove down the street one afternoon with my son to see the new mother and daughter in the street. The daughter was laying in the street screaming and banging her head on the ground.

This is just the beginning of what is a long string of disruption and a sad story. In just the last year the cops have been called 32 times. When they show up it's 5 cars with lights blazing and an ambulance. She has been taken away in an ambulance once after swallowing a bottle of pills. I'm told they have no glass in the house and every wall is full of holes. Their cars are parked down the street because she has destroyed the paint in the past and they needed to be repainted.

She needs help. In the mean time, this stuff goes on at all hours of the night.

I've got rentals to the left and right of me...

One rents to her nearly 40yr old granddaughter..who is married and had twins a couple years ago. Overall they are ok, but dont have inside voices ever.

The other side high rotation rate... getting new one's very soon. Last 3-4 tenants have been good. Despite one being teenage boys in a band. Last was trendy Indian (India) guy who smoked weed and like to ride his Harley. (but he was a friendly guy)

Worst was maybe 6-7 years ago.. creepy Korean guy who did something / worked out of his garage. So he was always chain smoking on the side of the house. Stealing water from my outside tap. Had a chester molester panel van that he was also sit in parked outside. The front lawn has shared area which is about 2feet on their property line ( watered by my sprinklers) He would constantly mow too short and more then he needed too. I told the owners to tell him not too, because to this day I still mow, fertilize, airate and even edge their driveway.

Used to live in a cul-de-sac. Neighbors across the circle had two boys about 10-12 years old going down the wrong path. My wife called them out for crossing through our yard to go smoke in the woods behind our house. We didn't care if they went back there to play games and stuff but it was obvious smoking. We noticed a few bb gun holes in our siding, called the police to report the damage, no proof but mentioned the kids. Officer talked to the mom and she confirmed it probably was her kids and afterward came to talk to us. Felt bad for her, she was a nice very religious woman who just didn't get much parenting help from the husband. He was on his way of moving out and kids were one step away from juvenile detention.

Current neighbor crosses our backyard to walk his dog, we don't care about that but he doesn't bring a bag with him to pickup the crap. I just toss it back to his yard if I see it. I mentioned the crap to him last week and he said he hires a company to pickup the crap in his yard, he will tell the company to check our yard too. I guess I didn't know that was a business.

I didn't know that was a business either.

As a dog owner, I get annoyed by other dog owners that don't pick up after their pets. Gives the rest of us a bad name. There's a public park near our house and all sorts of people let their dogs shit there and don't pick up after them, it's very frustrating. And the worst offender that I know of there is a cop, he lets his off-leash Rottie out to shit there several times a day and does nothing about it. I overheard someone call him on it one day and he just smirked and said 'call the cops if you want', knowing that it would be his buddies who would field the report.

-Deadbeats who didn’t pay the rent then left 90% of their stuff behind when they moved. Had money for cigarettes and Red Bull, but not clothes or food for their kids. We literally dumped everything in a dumpster after waiting a month for them to return calls or come get it. They finally said to dump it, they couldn’t afford to come get any of it. Lots of personal stuff and lots of crap. Unit was owned by my In-laws so we had to take care of dumping everything.
-Drug dealers.
-Kid who was killed in a horrible drug/drunk driving incident where the “friends” who were passengers in the car left him to die while they went back to his condo and fell asleep without alerting authorities.
-Aggressive dogs.
-Couple who fought and had to have police help her move out. We thought he’d been raided for drugs. This is the same guy who was roommates with the kid who died. He owns the condo and rents the spare room.
-Guy with an “I own and you’re just a lowly renter” attitude trying to break into my condo when he was looking for another renter who’d asked him to turn his music down one night.
-And on the positive side, lots and lots of very nice people and very sweet dogs.

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Harry: "I expected the Rocky Mountains to be a little rockier than this."
Loyd: "I was thinking the same thing. That John Denver's full of shit, man."

In university I was placed in "Quiet Block" where they put people who wanted to be in a place where the usual insanity of dorm life was not going on. Three floors eight rooms to a floor. For some insane reason they put eight first years who didn't request quiet block on first floor. They called themselves "The sick crew"

Partying every night weeknights weekends whatever to all hours. They had a kiddie pool in the hallway used to relax in it and drink martinis etc. We complained to residence supervisor who did nothing. I happened to go to chapel on campus with the university principal. My neighbor had some personal relationship with him too. We got a meeting and had them all moved out. One guy was kicked out because he put a refrigerator on the train tracks behind our residence and watched a train hit it. The folks from CN Rail were not too impressed with that.

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot

We’ve had a few problematic neighbors over the years.

They’re always dealt with swiftly and severely.

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Civilize the mind, but make savage the body.

- Chinese proverb

The last place I live in California:
Neighbor on one side - nice guy, had his teenage daughter weeknights. One day the FBI come looking for him. Then again. And again. But it was fine, he was a witness to something.
Neighbors on the other side. Lesbian couple, both on disability. One had a autistic son who I helped with math homework. Great people.
Neighbor across the parking lot: we were woken up one day at 4 am when the police showed up... A drug deal in the apartment went bad. Someone got shot. Went to the hospital. PD found out where, raided the apartment. Fun stuff.

There has been the odd rental party house on our block, but, most of our neighbors are amazing and those party houses get shut down in a hurry. By-law enforcement doesn't mess around here and hits hard to the pocket book.

We do have one neighbor with an adult son who has some issues like uncontrollable screaming. I'm not sure if it's tourettes or something similar. He's not violent, but sure has heck sounds like it. The whole neighborhood is understanding. Sometimes it'll be a peaceful day, someone will be out front washing the car, kids playing in the road etc... Then from the one house it sounds like there's a full blown exorcism happening. My personal favourite was one time I heard him screaming "I WANT SOME MOTHER F&$@#ING LITTLE CEASERS PIZZA FOR DINNER! FUUU CCCCKKK!!!"

In all honesty I feel awful for that mother. It must be incredibly difficult and heartbreaking living like that.

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Long Chile was a silly place.

 
Shared house with two others while in college, one roomie was decent, other was a slob. The decent one and I spent all day cleaning one day, slob came back and destroyed the living room in 30 minutes. He got threatened and shaped up a bit.

Solo apartment after college, girl next door left her alarm on for 5:30am every morning then went on vacation for 3 weeks. Went over there to bitch and her poor roommate was just as mad as I was, she had locked her door when she left.

Duplex when we first got married, the other side sat empty for first 3 months. People moved in and immediately hooked up their 15" subwoofer and began trying to tear our shared wall down with it. Asked them to cut it out, got better for a bit then right back to it. Finally queued up some "bass test" music of my own and just about broke the windows out at 12:30am. That seemed to do the trick, no further issue.

Current home: when we moved in all our neighbors were awesome, unfortunately one has been replaced by not so awesome. Day after they moved in, I arrived home and parked in my garage to be followed in by their weird ass kid on his big wheel riding circles around my car just staring at me. Little fucker has no boundaries, examples including using my garage door as a backstop to kick his soccer ball at, weaving his bike in and out of the cars in my driveway, knocking the snow I shovel out of my driveway back into my driveway to make his sledding ramp, etc. His parent's response is "we can't be expected to know what he is doing all the time". His pinnacle so far was to go to our other neighbors house and piss all over their front door.

My neighbors are complete idiots. Some years ago the father must have lost his job so they converted their house into a tri-plex. There was one young guy living in the garage and a family of four in the enclosed patio area that had been illegally covered. Guy in the back was quite like a mouse and not a problem. His daughter was quiet too whenever she visited. The family of four, oh shit, were flipping noisy. The two kids had colic it some shit that caused them to cry all day long. The mother had one of those noisy T-Mobile chirping phones that she always had on speaker mode. For about 1.5 years my father and I kept telling them and the owners to do something about the kids. They did nothing by yell back at us.
I reached my boiling point and told the owners that if they did not get rid of the family within a month that I will call the city on them. Month came and a day later I called child protection services and got nowhere. I called neighborhood mediation and someone from that office called the city to report the neighbors. One day I arrived home and saw the family of four moving a mattress thinking they just decided to move. I never saw the guy leave. Months later I spoke to the other ass on the other side of me only to learn the city came by to assess my complaint, caught the illegal dwelling and tenants in action and cited them. Everyone had to leave, the owners were fined and had to get rid off any illegal conversions (they bought as is) and now have a lein of $12k. All they had to do was get rid of the family because I am sure they got tired of hearing the kids too.

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DISH is how we do it.

We lived in an apartment early in our marriage. Wife called one day to relate how she had to stay in the bedroom all day. Neighbor threatened to kill himself and had a gun with him, sitting outside by his front door, so just inches from our door. Local police had guns and rifles at the ready pointed at the front doors.

Reasonable HOA's are great. Go park your crappy, never used, motor home somewhere else!

We had an interesting neighbor at our first house... a few stories off the top of my head:

He bought two miniature horses to pull him in a cart to the liquor store after he lost his license, then decided it was just easier to drive.

He was trying to move a couch out from his basement but it got stuck halfway through, so logically he decided to burn it, as it was stuck half in and half out of his house.

He once called to ask if I cared if he went goose hunting. A little confused I told him that it was fine with me. I looked into the back yard a few minutes later and saw him sitting in his lawn chair, in his garage, with a gun and a case of beer. I found my wife and mentioned we might want to keep our toddler indoors for the rest of the day.

Agreed. My BIL lives in a nice, large house. Someone bought the lot directly across from him and it now has 6 very old mobile homes and lots of dogs.

We had neighbours in appt below us who were like that. So we took to bouncing a gold ball on the floor at 600 am in retaliation to their load music at 11 pm. Seemed to do the trick,

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They constantly try to escape from the darkness outside and within
Dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good T.S. Eliot