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Living in a building full of relatives is one thing when everyone follows the same rules. It’s a completely different situation when the rules only seem to apply to the people who aren’t related.

One tenant has watched her landlords hand out special privileges, extra access, storage space, paid favors, exclusively to units occupied by family members, while she and one other non-related tenant get left out entirely.

Despite paying rent on time and following the lease to the letter, reporting the imbalance didn’t lead to fairness. It led to blatant retaliation.

Now she’s dealing with harassment from multiple units at once, afraid to even take out her own trash without being watched and stared down.

You’ll want to keep reading for this one.

Uncomfortable living in our apartment

Most of my neighbors are relatives, and we’re all Mexican, of course, so this is in East LA. All units are relatives except 2 units, including mine.

But the renter describes an awkward reality they aren’t sure how to navigate.

Me and my neighbor have noticed the owners let them have key access to where the laundry unit used to be, and key access to the water hose, and paying one of the units to take out the trash.

It says on the lease we are not allowed to use the water hose for outside purposes. Yet the key holder and other units have access?

The renter expresses their disapproval with how the owner is handling things.

We all pay rent on time. It just feels like the owners let everyone get away with everything, including using our garage space as their own, until we came downstairs to use it now that we have extra stuff needed to be stored away.

But bringing up the issue only led to even more trouble.

When I told the owners this, they noticed them, and now we are dealing with the units harassing us now.

What can I do? I feel like they are all taking turns harassing my unit and another because we are speaking up about what they are all doing?

I feel like it is favoritism with the units and owners.

Now the renters feel stuck in a bad situation.

We can’t move due to income situation and rent being so high in Los Angeles.

It feels unsafe to take out the trash, because they would come out and stare.

Like I said, they are all related, and they all get away with everything.

This sounds just plain unfair.

What did Reddit have to say?

There’s a valuable lesson here in how to handle choosing another apartment.

This user suggests documenting as much as possible.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a couple who is sick and tired of their neighbor’s kids dumping trash on their patio.

Appearances matter, so it’s time to maintain a strong front.

Following a lease shouldn’t come with a downside, especially not one that involves harassment from an entire building.

Paying rent on time and staying within the rules? That’s the kind of behavior that deserves some protection in matters like these.

Stumbling into a living situation mired by favoritism is something this tenant could have never saw coming. That’s not the type of disclaimer that comes on a Zillow listing.

The best thing she can do now is move on and try to do better next time.