Shutterstock

Living near people who are always causing problems is a hassle, but if you aren’t willing to report them, it will never change.

What would you do if neighbors moved in below you and they were constantly loud and fighting, as well as doing illegal drugs?

That is the situation that the couple in this story is in, but their neighbors are also immigrants, so if the police are contacted, they could lose their immigration Visas. They don’t want this to happen, so they aren’t sure how to handle the situation.

Personally, I think they should report them immediately. If they lose their Visa, that is on them, and at least they would be gone. Read through the full story below and see if you agree.

Neighours tried to report us to get back at us filing a complaint but we’ve got proof-should we report them to the city/police?

We live in a high rise in a way over priced building in the most expensive city in the country we live in.

It is good that they get along with some of their neighbors.

We didn’t know it when we moved, but lots of the newer people in the building are the rich spawn of foreign nationals who’s parents pay for them to come to this country for “school”(they don’t actually go to school but pay to get student visas) and basically pay for them to get citizenship or residency.

The rest of the tenants are older people who have lived there literally for decades and we like them. They are quiet, we help them when we see them with bags and generally are just pleasant with them.

Despite being younger than them, lesbians, biracial and newer immigrants ourselves, we haven’t had issues with any of the tenants who have been here for a long time.

You have to expect some noise when you live in an apartment.

But then the bad neighbour moved in downstairs. First, it was just one women in her early 20’s who clearly like the freedoms of this country compared to where she moved from, something I know for a fact because I’ve lived in her country and understand some of the language, a fact that has never occurred to her.

At first the issues were just loud noise which we have no problem with unless it’s past our building’s quiet hours especially on the weekdays when the rest of us have to have jobs.

Things just keep getting worse.

She spent most of the time in her apartment smoking weed and other things (weed is legal here, but smoking inside anything is illegal and enforced by city laws and the lease agreement), screaming loudly in her native language to her parents that they weren’t sending enough money and she needed them to send more (they were sending what is around 7,000 USD in our currency a month) and even with my window closed I could hear.

But it didn’t get really bad until she started dating a guy from the same country as her that she would get in very loud and into what sounded like violent fights with.

We banged on the floor a couple of times to get them to stop. She also started doing harder drugs, which I know because she talked about it on her balcony when I was on my own balcony.

You cannot put up with this type of thing.

Not sure if her boyfriend is a dealer or just seems like one, he is the one that buys and supplies the drugs. Now that he lives there, it’s pretty much always them using 24/7 and the smells get in our flat as well as their neighbours, who are older and do not want to report them out of fear/the culture here.

Our apartment smells like someone has been hotboxing 24/7 with a layer of meth smell until we got air purifier, got a handyman to fill in gaps and our building changed our fans. It still smells like that went they really party.

These people are unstable.

I (female) went down and knocked on the door and asked her to be quiet a couple of times and she seemed surprised and said well you bang on our floor all the time and I explained that’s a pretty universal sign to stop making noise.

But the arguing and noise kept going and my wife (also female) went down when it sounded really violent. She was met by the guy holding a knife who threatened to stab her for “trying to invade his house”.

You always need to document everything.

My wife freaked out rightly and called the cops. When they came he claimed he was just holding a knife sharpener cause he was cooking and he thought she was a criminal trying to break into his home and he has right to defend himself.

They also claimed we were anti-immigrant (we are both immigrants ourselves), it was cultural issue and we didn’t understand their culture (again I lived in their country and understand the language).

Since my wife didn’t record it and the girl said they were just “excited” by a TV show they were watching, the cops did nothing other than tell us to complain to the building and we could file a complaint about a noise issue if we record the noise.

Why wouldn’t they keep filing complaints to the management?

We complained to our building management who said they couldn’t do anything since he wasn’t arrested, and we should have never directly spoken to them but we should keep a log along with pictures/videos of anything and share it with them and call the police if we thought violence was happening.

After that, we were pretty done since our building management wouldn’t do anything and if we do get the city or police involved, these folks could loss their visas or residency and I don’t feel comfortable doing that.

Good, at least one of them is documenting this.

We use noise cancelling headphones, and got an aircon so we can keep our windows closed.

My wife is pretty mad though and she records, reports and documents them every time they smoke outside and do hard drugs (they leave their meth/crack pipes on the balcony), have loud noise past quiet hours, violate our lease with fires on the balcony and periodically reports it but the management just says they will “look into” and all they do is send an email reminding them it’s against the lease. I know they do this cause they cc us.

The neighbors are retaliating.

But the wildest part is they have tried to file reports against us, claiming we are having loud fights when my wife isn’t even in the country let alone our apartment, claiming my wife wouldn’t let them get on the elevator when they were the ones that refused to get on and the other people in the elevator literally said how weird it was.

The best and final thing they did was after we have a violent storm that lasted hours, they claimed we had thrown things on to their balcony, which is even more funny because before the storm started they heard us talking and taking everything down or off our balcony cause there was a storm coming.

I am sure just like our balcony it had debris from the storm (we live right next to the beach) but it sure wasn’t from us.

Her wife is 100% right for wanting to report them.

This was the final straw for my wife and she sent pictures of their balcony with all the fire hazards and drugs/paraphernalia.

She wants to report them to the city for code violations, which could lead to them investigated and getting in trouble for the harder drugs or put their visas at risk.

Contact the police about the drug use at a minimum.

The building is owned by a private equity firm not in this country and the management is revolving door. None of the people that were management when we moved in 4 years ago are still there, and ones that left told us that unless we get the city code enforcers or cops involved there is no way the management will do anything about them even knowing they are violating the lease.

Should my wife contact code enforcement or the cops? They are quieter when they fight and I wouldn’t know they were except I can understand what they are saying.

Why move when you can just get them deported?

As for why we haven’t moved, we were here first, I have a terminal medical condition that limits my mobility, and this apartment is really good for my mobility in a city that does not have things like ADA for residential buildings and access to weekly treatments blocks from my house and my wife has to travel often for her work.

We are looking for a place in the same area but it’s hard to find a place.

There is no reason not to report these people for what they are doing. If they aren’t willing to report them, then nothing will change.

Read on to see what the people in the comments have to say about it.

This commenter thinks they are handling the situation selfishly.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a woman who gets revenge on her neighbors after they keep using her trash bins.

Contacting their university is a good idea.

This person says not to worry about their Visa.

If you aren’t willing to file complaints, things will never change. It is understandable that they don’t want to impact their Visa status, but that is not their problem.

If the neighbors cared about their Visa, they wouldn’t act like this.