Locking a door is usually a good idea, especially if you live in a neighborhood that can be dangerous.

That’s the situation in today’s story, but the problem is that the door that’s being locked is to a hallway shared by multiple tenants in an apartment building.

Not everyone wants the door locked!

Let’s see how the story plays out…

AITA for no allowing my neighbors to make a copy of my apartment key?

So I recently just moved into my new apartment complex less than 60 days ago.

There are only 4 units in my complex, two downstairs and two upstairs.

I reside downstairs in the second apartment.

Everyone here has lived here for at least 5 years whilst the oldest resident has reside here for 8.

Everyone knows everyone and has been good friends with each other for as long as each one has been a resident.

Everyone in my building has children besides me majority are single mothers, I am the only man.

Everyone leaves the door to the hallway unlocked.

Apparently there is an unspoken agreement I at first had any knowledge of between the rest of the tenants that the hallway door is to never be locked.

No one ever locks the hallway door.

That is until I arrived.

From my knowledge no one in the building has a hallway key just the keys to their apartments.

The cost to replace a key is $70 for each quoted from my landlord.

He always locks doors behind him, including the hallway door.

I just finished up my place and have officially moved in for about 3 weeks now.

Each time I leave and come back from my complex I always lock the hallway door.

It’s always been a hit to lock all doors behind me.

My neighbor that works night shifts has arrived home for the past couple of weeks to a locked hallway door which is a surprise given that the door hasn’t been locked for years.

The neighbors are constantly getting locked out.

Apparently everyone lost their key their first year or so living in the complex.

I will hear continuously knocking and banging until someone comes to open the door.

The first few nights I was awaken and got up to unlock the door.

After the first week I’ve since stopped and my neighbor will be up to unlock it to let our neighbor in.

If my neighbor isn’t home or doesn’t wake up to come to the door she will knock and bang on every window and yell until someone comes open the door.

A neighbor asked him to stop locking the hallway door.

Yesterday my neighbor ask if I could please leave the door unlocked given it has always been that way and would like me to continue doing so.

I expressed that while we live in a dangerous neighborhood ( rated one of the top 5 most dangerous in our city) I feel more safe knowing strangers can’t enter the building.

Whilst she understood my concerns she assured me no one ever comes here but residents and invited visitors and my safety is not to worry.

I had to beg to differ.

Then she asked him to let her make a copy of his key.

She then asks would I mind lending her my hall key so she can make a copy and let other make their own copy from hers.

I politely declined because I wasn’t comfortable with that.

She offered to pay me to make a copy myself in which I also declined.

He thinks the tenants might be mad at him.

For the past week my neighbors has barely spoken to me.

We usually tell each other good morning and chat a little or just a hi and bye even but not even that nowadays.

My neighbor whom volunteers at the food bank in our community would come back with goodies and share with everyone in the complex.

She has since knocked on my door to deliver me a box as she usually would every Wednesday.

I don’t care for the food but for the change in this routine leads me to believe I may have upset the rest of the tenants and I honestly don’t want any bad blood.

That’s a tough situation.

I understand why he wants to lock the door, but since the door has always been unlocked and none of the other residents have a key, it doesn’t seem like a good idea to keep locking them out!

Let’s see how Reddit reacted…

It’s ridiculous not to let the neighbors copy the key.

It’d be the neighborly thing to do if he made copies of the key for everyone.

There are only so many solutions to this problem. He needs to be okay with one of them.

Why does he want them to each spend $70 for a new key?

This person would be mad too if they were this guy’s neighbor!

You can’t lock all the tenants out of the apartment building and expect them to be okay with it!

What was he thinking?

If you liked that post, check out this story about a guy who was forced to sleep on the couch at his wife’s family’s house, so he went to a hotel instead.