She Filed a Police Report After Her Neighbor Harassed Her Over a Privacy Fence. With the Case on Hold, She’s Afraid to Report That His Downspouts Are Flooding Her Garage
Pexels/Reddit
It’s hard to deal with a problem next door when you’re worried that saying something will make it worse.
That’s where one homeowner found herself after taking out some overgrown hedges along her driveway.
Apparently, her neighbor wanted a privacy fence to go up right away, but when that didn’t happen, she started confronting the woman online and in person. Eventually, the homeowner filed a police report, but later found out that her detective was deployed and unavailable.
Meanwhile, water from the neighbor’s downspouts was running down the driveway and into the garage, where mold had already ruined some of the homeowner’s belongings.
Now, she wants to report the runoff, but she’s worried about how the neighbor will react and wonders if she should ask for a protection order first.
Read on to see what you think about this whole situation.
Police report, code enforcement, personal protection order – OH MY
I’m a single homeowner in my 30s dealing with a neighbor in her 70s. Our houses are super close together in an old historical neighborhood.
A while back, I removed 60+ feet of overgrown hedges on my driveway that were fully on my property.
I wasn’t able to put up a privacy fence as quickly as she wanted, and that’s when the harassment began, ranging from neighborhood slander to confrontations in person and online.
Unfortunately, things have gotten worse.
Recently, she caused such a severe health scare for me that I thought I was having a stroke.
This finally led to me taking everything I’d documented and filing a police report, but my assigned detective was just deployed, and my city’s department is too high-crime and short-staffed to reassign nonviolent cases.
On top of the harassment, my garage has been taking in water, and a lot of my belongings have been ruined by mold.
Turns out, she installed raised downspout extensions that dump all her roof runoff directly at the property line, which runs down my driveway and into my garage. It even mysteriously floods on completely rainless days. My city considers this illegal “water trespassing,” so I need to report this to Code Enforcement to get the water flow fixed.
Now, she’s not sure what to do first.
Here’s where I’m stuck: I’m also looking into filing for a Personal Protection Order (PPO), but since police, the courts, and city code enforcement operate separately, I don’t know the safest order of operations.
If I contact Code Enforcement about the water, I’m worried about triggering further retaliation, especially with no police backing right now.
Should I file for the PPO first, or reach out to Code Enforcement now? Does anyone see a clear order for how to handle these steps?
Eek! It sounds like the neighbor is making her life miserable.
Let’s see what advice the people over at Reddit had to offer her.
This person thinks she needs to just get it all going at once.
This could be a solid plan to follow.
Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.
According to this comment, she needs cameras.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a person who changed their minds about donated items, only to return to the shop to find them all sold.
Here’s how this person would handle the water damage.
It’s awful that she’s afraid to report water coming into her own garage because of what her neighbor might do next.
Given how things have gone so far, she needs to get some help rather than try to sort it out with the neighbor directly.
She’s already kept a record of the harassment, so she should do the same with the flooding and take pictures of where the water’s coming from and what it’s damaged.
Then she can show it all to a local attorney and ask what makes the most sense to do first.
Enjoyed this story?
Sign up to get our BEST stories of the week straight to your inbox.
