Unstable neighbors are usually pretty easy to spot, but sometimes the crazy can sneak up on you.

So when one helpful homeowner welcomed his elderly next-door neighbors with open hands, they repaid him with HOA complaints and police calls instead of gratitude.

That’s when simple neighborly kindness spiraled into a full-blown suburban standoff.

Keep reading for the full story.

No good deed…

So this has been developing over the last six weeks or so, when an elderly woman, her “friend,” and her handicapped niece moved into the house beside us.

Things started off interesting, but the women all seemed nice enough.

One night, the neighbors gave these homeowners quite the scare.

The wife and I were finishing up a movie at around 11 p.m. when we heard something at the side of our house. It sounded like someone was trying to get through our side gate into the backyard.

Upon investigating, I saw that someone was trying to get in.

Our new neighbors had just driven into town and were confused about which side gate was theirs, and were attempting to open our locked gate.

He doesn’t peg this people as particularly capable of doing all this intensive labor.

I helped them get into their own yard (their real estate agent had left their key in the backyard), and helped them move their bags into their house.

I got to meet the three women who were moving in and realized that they were in no shape to be moving heavy things around the house.

The new owner, Candi, is in her 70s and gets around with a cane.

Her “friend” gets around with a walker.

The niece is in her 50s and is quite severely mentally handicapped.

The homeowner decided to take time out of his day to help these neighbors get acclimated.

Seeing this, I offered to help them move anything that the movers had misplaced (Candi was mentioning that some items were in the wrong rooms), but that I had to be getting home soon and would be back tomorrow to help.

I arrived at their place around 8 the next night, after getting our kids to bed, and just moved all their boxes from the garage into the correct rooms. Not a big deal.

The real issue was that they had some large pieces of furniture that were misplaced, and I did not have a dolly to move them around on my own.

So the homeowner generously offered to continue to help.

At this point, Candi and her friend were being extremely thankful and polite, so I told the women that I would be more than happy to snag one from a friend on the way home from work tomorrow and could help to move the rest of the stuff, and that I would be over at about the same time.

But then reality got in the way.

Well, work the next day turned into a complete dumpster fire.

I ended up having to stay at work until a bit after midnight to get everything done that needed to be done.

When I got home, I wrote a note explaining what had happened and that I would still be willing to help move things when I got off work tomorrow.

After this, I never had another good experience with them.

At this time, Candi’s demeanor had completely changed.

I went over the next day and asked if they had seen my note, and Candi said, “Because you flaked, I had to hire someone to do this for me.”

I was completely taken aback, as this was a complete reversal from her original demeanor.

Then came even more drama.

Two days later, Candi had someone setting up internet, and as these are all new constructions, a new line had to be buried.

The box which the line connected into for Candi’s house and our own was a couple of feet on our side of the property line.

As this was done on a Saturday, I was home while the line was being buried and asked the installer to run the line on the neighbor’s side of the property line until he could turn into the box.

But this soon impeded on the homeowner’s land.

Neighbors had told him to run it along our pavers leading to the backyard, about 2’ over our property line.

I am sure he did not realize that he was on our property, but Candi did.

Then the HOA got involved.

The next week, we got hit with a fine from our HOA for leaving dirt from work on our property in our neighbor’s lawn.

Going outside, I saw that there was a small amount of sand right around where the buried line came into the box on our property, and when I explained to the HOA that this was caused by the installation of the neighbor’s cable, the fine was dropped.

The homeowner could smell foul play.

Clearly, Candi had called this in, which really ticked me off, but she would not come to the door when I was knocking to talk to her about it.

Small things like this kept happening.

Candi appeared to stop at nothing just to annoy him.

I would go out and our recycling was full. As it takes a few weeks to get your bin delivered, Candi just threw her stuff in ours.

We had an HOA inspector come over to assess “unauthorized permanent structures” on our property.

These structures were a trampoline, which is not considered permanent by the HOA, and a small play structure which is.

However, we applied with the HOA to install that one.

Then Candi took matters even further.

Well, she has escalated things over the last couple of weeks.

The Monday before last, we had a crew coming in to install solar panels on our home.

The neighborhood soon saw some unexpected visitors.

While this was being done, the cops showed up, as someone had called in that people were breaking onto our property and trying to get through our back door.

Cops were cool and said that someone must have just been confused about what was going on, and I informed them of the issues that we were having with our neighbor.

The homeowner thought they had gotten through the worst of it when the cops showed up yet again.

They didn’t say much about it and didn’t do anything.

I was out with the installers working in the yard. There was no way that anyone could reasonably believe that people were breaking into our home.

Once again, we had an inspector called on us to check out an unapproved modification to our roof, the solar panels that we paid $400 to the HOA to install.

This time, the call was much more serious.

On Sunday, the cops showed up again, and this time, it was much more serious.

The call that they had gotten this time was that our children were locked in our backyard in the heat. Basically, we were being accused of mistreating our children.

Of course, this was completely false.

Thankfully, the “screaming” was still going on when the cops arrived, as my 2-year-old was squealing and laughing, running through the sprinklers.

It took a little longer to assuage the cops this time.

Due to the nature of this call, they did speak with the neighbor afterward.

Candi pretended she knew nothing, but the homeowner knew she was lying.

Candi feigned ignorance and said that her handicapped niece must have placed the call.

The niece is almost completely non-verbal, so this was clearly nonsense, but I do not think that the cops wanted to deal with this.

They talked with us one more time, explaining their conversation with Candi before heading out.

Now the homeowner finds himself at a complete standstill.

Not really sure what we can do at this point.

I submitted a complaint to the HOA, but I do not think that is going to do anything, and I am not sure if this has progressed to criminal harassment yet.

But I am sure this is far from over.

Candi sounds like a nightmare neighbor.

What did Reddit think of this?

This commenter wouldn’t want to be involved, but they sure do love to watch.

The time has come to cover all the bases.

This commenter shares an urgent warning with this homeowner.

Crazy people like Candi are people you really need to look out for.

This homeowner will definitely think twice about doing a kind deed for the next unfamiliar neighbor.

If you keep dialing drama, you can’t be surprised when it calls back.

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