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Apartment living requires accepting a certain amount of noise from other human beings. People walk around. Chairs move. Someone inevitably drops an object that sounds approximately the size of a refrigerator at 11 p.m. That’s part of sharing a building.

But there’s a pretty significant difference between occasionally hearing your upstairs neighbor and listening to footsteps and furniture dragging for up to 17 hours a day.

One Los Angeles renter says that’s been her reality since July, with noise reportedly beginning around 10 a.m. and sometimes continuing until 3 in the morning. She hasn’t exactly suffered silently, either. She’s contacted building management repeatedly, submitted formal complaints, recorded videos and even tried politely speaking to the upstairs neighbors herself.

Their response? This is apartment living, so she needs to accept it.

Management hasn’t been much more helpful. The renter says she was denied a request to end her lease and offered another unit only if she pays considerably more.

Then her manager spoke to the upstairs neighbors, who simply said the noise wasn’t coming from them.

Apparently, that was convincing enough.

Upstairs neighbors

I moved from another country to Los Angeles and I’m living in a 6-story apartment and I’m on the 4thº floor.

Since July I have been facing extremely loud noises of strong footsteps and furniture dragging from 10am to 3am.

And since then I have been talking to the building manager and all she says is that she will talk to the upstairs neighbors, but she never changes anything.

How annoying.

I myself have already tried to talk to them politely and even showed videos that I recorded of the noises to prove how loud they are, but they just said that I need to accept because that’s how you live in an apartment and they closed the door in my face.

Since July 1st I make formal complaints and send videos to the manager, I asked to end my lease and they did not accept, and they told me that they can change my unit, but I would have to pay a new deposit and a rent 2x more expensive because it is on a higher floor.

She said she talked to the upstairs neighbors and they told her that it’s not them.

Oh, really?

She said she believes them because she knows them and that my videos and complaints are not enough evidence.

Is there any law here in Los Angeles that can help me with this?

AITA?

Commenters generally sympathized with the renter, although several pointed out an unfortunate reality: proving excessive apartment noise can be considerably harder than simply recording something that sounds loud on a phone.

Normal footsteps and ordinary household movement may be protected as reasonable residential noise, particularly during daytime hours. Furniture dragging and repeated disturbances until 3 a.m., however, could be a different matter. Rather than continuing the same back-and-forth with a manager who has already chosen a side, commenters suggested documenting the pattern carefully and looking into Los Angeles tenant protections and local noise rules.

That means keeping dates, times, written complaints and management’s responses instead of relying solely on videos. She may also want to contact a local tenant-rights organization for guidance before making decisions about withholding rent, breaking the lease or taking other legal action.

And while transferring units could solve the problem, asking her to pay dramatically higher rent and another deposit isn’t much of a solution.

Apartment living does require tolerance. But “you have neighbors” shouldn’t automatically translate to “you have to tolerate whatever happens above your ceiling until 3 a.m.”

This person has some advice.

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.

This person has questions.

And this person has…sympathy.

Apparently months of recordings aren’t proof, but “wasn’t us” was enough to close the case.