Sometimes a new neighbor brings a housewarming gift. This one brought a smell so overwhelming it triggered a police wellness check within days of moving in.

One family, settled comfortably in their apartment for three years, found their peace disrupted after a smelly new neighbor moved into a vacant unit.

Within 48 hours of his arrival, an unbearable odor began spreading through the building, prompting the family to call for a wellness check under the genuine belief that someone had passed away.

But the neighbor couldn’t have been more alive — and stubborn.

So after weekly cleanings and a desperate call to the landlord failed to bring about any real change, the renters started feeling hopeless.

Keep reading for the full story.

Stinky neighbor

We (31M, 26F, 4F, 2M) have been living in our apartment for 3 years now, and we never had a problem until last year.

Our favorite elderly neighbor passed away in July 2025, and because she had a smaller apartment, the landlord moved someone taking up a bigger apartment into her unit.

But the next occupant wasn’t near as pleasant.

As soon as they moved the new occupant in (male, unsure of age but definitely an older man), the maintenance man was telling me how they have to redo the apartment the man moved out of because he urinated all over the place, that it sunk into the wood floors, he never had water connected or electricity running, so immediately I’m like why would they move him into our building after having to do all these repairs.

Fast forward to maybe 2 days in, we notice the smell. Putrid, rancid, disgusting, and breathtaking in the worst way possible.

These renters first suspected something much worse.

We thought a body was in here, there were flies by the new occupant’s door, and we ended up calling a wellness check because the smell was convincing that there was a body in here. The police come, he’s alive and refuses any help from the police.

Reaching out to the landlord helped at first, but now they’re back to square one.

I mention something to the landlord, now he has people come “clean” every week for him. As soon as they clean, they smoke and drink and the smell comes back not even hours later.

We live on the third floor of our building and his smell COMES into OUR APARTMENT!

No one will step up and do anything, so now they’re forced to deal with the smell.

Apparently we can’t do anything because then “he is an elderly man left on the street,” but when does the line get crossed when I am smelling this man’s odor EVERY DAY in my apartment and the smell gets even worse when we leave!

We can’t even leave our front door without covering our nose and spraying air freshener, even though the smell is so strong that no amount of air freshener helps.

It’s hard to imagine a worse neighbor than this.

What did Reddit have to say?

Surely it can’t be healthy for someone to live this way.

Maybe it’s time to cut their losses and get the heck out of there.

This commenter thinks these renters’ rights are being violated.

No one should be forced to pay for an apartment that’s barely livable.

The wellness check alone should have been a wake-up call for the landlord.

A smell convincing enough to make neighbors suspect a body isn’t a minor inconvenience, it’s a legitimate health and habitability issue.

Weekly cleanings that get undone within hours aren’t addressing the root problem, they’re a surface-level fix for something that clearly needs more serious intervention.

Landlords have a duty to maintaining livable conditions for all tenants — and these renters should hold him to that.