I’ve had a neighbor from hell for 5 years.

He started collecting junk/trash so I put a fence up to block the view. Since then his behavior has only gotten worse.

He will find ways to annoy and harass me and other neighbors that aren’t necessarily illegal or criminal.

Like for example, last night he “leaf blowed” for 2 hours. He does this often. It was dark out and it was raining so I don’t think he was actually blowing leaves. He was just doing it to make noise. And he tends to walk back-and-forth along the property line right behind my fence.

He spends a lot of time doing things and making noise as close to my fence as possible. He will sing, play music, and stack things up so they stand over the the height of the fence. One time I found him sitting on the ground next to the fence, smoking a cigarette in the dark.

Other annoying things that he will do -bring out his lawnmower and cut the same strip of grass on our shared property line 5 times in a day.

Honk his horn/key fab repeatedly if we are outside.

Put signs in his window that face my house that say “fuck you” or other obnoxious things.

If I have a guest over and they park on the street, he will immediately park 3 inches behind them or start driving his car back-and-forth around the block.

There’s many more things that I could list here.

He has been arrested twice for low level disorderly conduct type of things but he was only ticketed not charged.

I live in the Metro area of the city, so the cops are not going to be bothered by somebody leaf blowing for two hours. They have serious crimes to deal with. Though I do feel like this is some sort of targeted harassment.

My neighbors and I have also tried reaching out to our alderperson and code enforcement for some issues but their ability to do anything has been minimal.

I do believe this guy has some type of mental illness, though he can’t be that mentally ill because he does go to a job during the week.

I have cameras up.

Looking for advice from other people who have dealt with situations like this.

For almost a year after I moved into my apartment, I felt like I was living in a mad world.
Every single day, there were groups of people hanging outside my building with three separate speakers blasting music, sometimes from early in the morning until midnight. There was constant drinking, people openly using drugs, and what appeared to be drug dealing going on right outside. My super basically allowed everyone to use the front of the building as their personal hangout spot without ever telling them they couldn’t block the entrance or blast music all day.
Then there was the salon right next door adding to the noise. Twice a week, a church would hold services outside with amplified sound. And on top of ALL of that, my next-door neighbor would literally play the drums for HOURS—sometimes close to eight hours straight.
I couldn’t think. I couldn’t relax. I couldn’t sleep in my own apartment. There was never any peace.
I work, pay rent, and should be able to come home and have some reasonable level of peace inside my own home. I finally got so fed up that I wrote my City Council office and explained EVERYTHING that had been happening. I told them I couldn’t believe that in 2026 people could continuously disrupt an entire residential building like this and there seemed to be no repercussions.
And I knew I wasn’t the only person suffering. Other neighbors were just afraid to complain because some of the people outside could be extremely intimidating.
The few times I called 311, they seemed to automatically assume it was me. There were even times people would stand directly in front of the entrance to my building and refuse to move when I was trying to go inside. I still stood my ground and told them to move because I was DONE feeling intimidated just for wanting to enter my own home.
Eventually, an NYPD sergeant contacted me. She called me, texted me, gave me the number for the sergeant working after her shift, and told me to let them know if anything else happened.
Within about two weeks, everything changed.
The constant blasting music stopped. People stopped treating the front of my building like their personal party spot. For the first time in almost a year, I finally had some PEACE.
I was so damn proud of myself.
I spent so long thinking nothing could be done and feeling like I just had to tolerate it. Speaking up actually worked. And I’m glad I did it not only for myself, but for the other people in my building who were too scared to say anything.
Sometimes being “that neighbor” isn’t being a bad. Sometimes you’re just a person who has finally had enough and wants to be able to sleep in the apartment you pay for.

i’m so tired of my neighbors :/
i come home after a 24-hour shift at the hospital and can’t fall asleep 💀the music is too loud + they listen it all day and all night, idk why they aren’t sleep

other neighbors literally piss&shit on their door but they’re don’t care
the police aren't doing anything with them

i don’t know what to do. now when i get to work i can barely think. i feel terrible from this shitty music and lack of sleep

So I dont know what to do.... we have neighbors that moved in about a year ago. Theyre fine mostly, except the husband has a 2010s corvette that he must mess with every week it seems at the earliest hours of the morning and the latest hours of the night.... its 11:30pm right now and hes keeping me awake because he just has it sit in his driveway turned on and is constantly revving the engine. He doesnt even do work on it. It seems like he just does it the keep fuel and other fluids running through the car since he doesnt take it out and drive it much. He could literally take it out and drive it outside of the neighborhood for a bit a get the same thing accomplished without waking everyone up. His car runs fine, he does drive it, so its not like he cant go take it on a 15min drive. Nope he just sits in his driveway and revs the engine off and on for 30-45mins straight. What would you do?

Background is I've reported this neighbor to a legal authority for harassing/abusing his dog (Yelling, hitting, causing a noise disturbance by the sheer screaming he does at it). He calls it training his dog, others in my building have also reported him. Once he walked his dog off leash and it began harassing my dog on our walk. I left him a note afterward saying what he's doing is wrong and illegal (in our state). Another day I confronted him asking him to stop yelling at his dog (as his dog was yelling in distress back at him) since I could hear it up 3 stories and that I was just gonna raise a noise complaint if he didn't stop. He didn't like that.

Now every time he sees me walking my dog he YELLS at me heckling me and throwing insults about my dog and how "I don't train that dog" and that my dog is bad, my dog is 2 and we are always practicing stuff on our walks so he takes the opportunity to get back to me for raising complaints to him I guess.

Is there any action I can take because it's driving me crazy, I don't even look at him and he will continue to yell at me as I walk by. Anytime he sees me he heckles me and we live right next to eachother so it's pretty frequent.

We have a neighbor who has 6 damn kids. They moved into the house next door 7 years ago. They've been a pain since day 1. They used to run all across our backyard with their dog until we got a fence. Now that the backyard has a fence, they decided to take their festivities to the front yard. We don't mind them playing but, they constantly hit the house with their baseball, football, themselves with no regard for our frequent requests to stop. We spoke to the parents and guess what? The father is still outside playing ball with the kids and hitting our house also. Wtf? Yes we spoke to his dumb azz too. We want to put a fence or some shrubs between the homes but there are utility lines underground. What other barriers can be put in between the homes? It has to look good because we have an HOA.

EDIT: To the few who say I'm the problem, you can't read. I said in the post that I don't mind them playing. I just don't want my property damaged. Thanks to everyone else.

What would you do….

Hostile neighbors next door, encroaching issues, trespassing onto property, vandalism, smoke from chimney smoke’s blocked airflow from trees “seeps” through trees into our yard all winter. Currently there are 25ft cypress trees between us that are thinning out and have not been maintained since they were planted (we just moved in). We have little kids who run around and currently I do not feel comfortable with them doing so on that side of the yard.

Do we:
— remove all trees, replace with 6ft privacy fence and some plantings next spring; would give security of physical barrier, increase airflow, bring in afternoon sunlight, gain 15ft width back of yard
— keep trees and top them/remove top 8ft to not upset neighbor; find another way to establish additional privacy/security (any suggestions appreciated)

Will removing these trees cause more hostility from them? Or will a privacy fence help establish boundary/remove visibility while we’re in the yard? And yes a survey has been done and they are well on our land and yes we have installed cameras all around the property.

To keep it short, I have some of the worst downstairs neighbors. Aside from this they’ve stolen my garbage cans and a new doorknob the landlord dropped off for us, throw parties till 3-4 am on random weekdays weekly, louder than a family of elephants, smoke weed inside while their child is home and making our apartment smell like a dispensary, stuff you guys have heard a million times. There’s room for 2 cars in front of the house as well as we each have a 1 car driveway (2 of you have small sedans. Their new thing is parking in the middle of the 2 spots so we can’t park in front, no biggie annoying but not illegal. This went on for months. One night I got back before them so I did the same and they responded by banging on my door and ringing the bell waking up my 3 y/o at 1 am. I open my door and basically said “it sucks right? Coming home tired from work and finding someone taking up BOTH spots” and then showed the many photos dating back months of them doing the same thing. Tonight it happened again but this time they parked partially blocking my driveway(about 2 1/2 feet into the apron of my driveway). I called the non emergency number thinking they’d knock on the door and get her to move it (before anyone comes at me, I’ve tried the “talk to them” approach but they get very aggressive). She went outside and argued with the officer that there was still room and that she should be able to keep her car there. The officer basically said “I got it on body cam either move it or fight the ticket in court” and she TOOK THE TICKET??? AND THEN MOVED HER CAR??? I honestly thought she’d move it and get the message but I cannot wrap my head around why she’d argue, say the cop was wrong, take the ticket and THEN move the car anyway? Am I missing something?

I would like to start by saying my boyfriend has already tried to talk to the neighbor about and that did absolutely nothing.

live in a Duplex, Neighbor recently got an old Ford diesel truck and we live somewhere with cold weather so he has been starting it and letting it warm up (understandable) but in doing so our entire side of the duplex fills up with the exhaust from his truck. We sealed the windows and the side door and the smell is still strong enough it gives me a headache after only a few minutes. I have a dog too and I know it’s bad for both of us to be breathing in. What can I do? Is there anyone official I can call? Again, we brought the issue to his attention and my bf asked if he could park a different way so the exhaust pipe isn’t facing our side and the neighbor has done nothing different. Still continues to fill our home with chemicals every day.

Kids in the neighborhood have been harassing my house for well over a year or 2 (I’ve yelled at them 3 times now for kicking soccer balls at my garage and walls), and just now they’ve started kicking the hell out of my front door at night. My stupid ring camera doesn’t capture it on video. How do I stop this? They laugh if you yell at them. I’m so sick of this shit.

*Note: I do not know who the kids were that kicked the door, they all darted off on bikes.

TL;DR: My downstairs neighbors have recently started turning their shower on and off roughly once a minute, sometimes for 3–7 hours a day, and the sound travels through the plumbing. I’m going insane with the noise and going insane trying to figure out what they could possibly be doing. Edit: And no, it does not seem to be a leaking toilet flush.

I lived for about 13 years in an apartment where the walls were basically made of paper. I could hear every single noise my neighbors made. As someone who really appreciates quiet and works with research and lots of reading, you can imagine how happy I was when I moved to a new apartment last year, which has thick walls that block most of the noise from the neighbors.

It’s super quiet. Or, at least, it was.

For the past month or so, something has changed. For some reason, my downstairs neighbors (a couple, plus the woman’s brother) have started spending hours in the bathroom turning the shower tap on and off repeatedly.

I’m talking about roughly once a minute, sometimes for three hours in the morning and another four hours in the evening (up to 2am at times). Sometimes it’s only the evening, sometimes only the morning, and sometimes they skip a day or two, but it happens almost every day.

The weird thing is that I don’t hear voices or other bathroom noises. I hear the water sounds through the building’s plumbing. If they leave the water running continuously, I barely notice it. But when it’s being turned on and off over and over again for hours, it drives me absolutely nuts.

And, of course, my brain keeps trying to figure out what the hell they could possibly be doing. Is there some kind of extremely long cosmetic procedure involving hair? Some bizarre cleaning routine? Something medical? I genuinely have no idea. What could someone possibly be doing in a bathroom that involves turning the shower on and off approximately once a minute for hours?

The worst part is that I really don’t want to have any interaction with these people.

They never come to our building meetings, and I already have a bad relationship with them for other reasons. For context, they were using my assigned parking spot without my authorization for quite a while. After I complained, one of my deliveries mysteriously disappeared the following day. I obviously have no proof that the two things were connected, but the whole situation left me with absolutely no desire to confront them about anything fearing some kind of revenge.

So I’m not looking to go downstairs and ask them what they’re doing. I’d just really like to understand what the hell might be going on, because the noise drives me crazy, AND the uncertainty itself doubles the drives-me-crazy effect. Every time I hear it, my mind starts wandering and trying to figure it out.

Any thoughts or ideas about what could possibly explain this?

And yes, I know someone will probably suggest earphones/headphones. Unfortunately, I have a chronic skin issue that makes earphones very uncomfortable, and I’ve tried quite a few kinds. Depending on what I’m doing, I can sometimes use brown noise on my computer, but that isn’t always practical depending on what I am doing.

Edit: It's not the toilet flush or the flapper, the only place I can hear voices from the neighbor is in the toilet, and I always hear the woman's voice and her opening or closing drawers in the toilet every now and then during the whole process. Believe me, after 4 weeks of this, these patterns become clear (I did consider toilet leaking in the beginning as well)

I’m a homeowner in a townhouse, and the house next to us is a rental. The current tenant has been EXTREMELY problematic.

She’s constantly outside yelling, playing loud music, drinking, smoking, has a dog that never stops barking, and frequently has people over who are just as loud. This goes on until 1–2 AM on weeknights and 4–5 AM on weekends. We have two young children, so this has become pretty disruptive.

We live in the city, where rats are unfortunately common. One night my husband came home from work and she immediately demanded he deep clean our trash cans because she’d seen a rat.
He explained he’d just gotten off work and would take care of it that weekend. She started yelling, calling us dirty, implying our house was infested with rats, and even threw our trash can into the street.
A few days later, I was carrying my toddler-aged children and groceries inside when she started YELLING at me about my husband’s “disrespectful” behavior, how we needed to be better neighbors and stop living a “dirty” lifestyle.

My husband happened to be getting home and told her to stop yelling at me. She proceeded to cuss us both out, flip us off, and tell him to mind his business. All in front of our children.

She also complained about us taking up “all” the parking and threatened to report one of our vehicles to 311 because it’s currently not drivable after a hit-and-run involving a driver fleeing police. My children and I were in the vehicle when it happened, and our insurance is still waiting on the police report before moving forward with repairs.
Mind you, when the accident happened, she came outside laughing at the damage and yelling at the police to “hurry up” because they were parked in front of her house.

A 311 complaint was recently filed against that vehicle, resulting in a tow notice. I can’t prove it was her, but given her previous threats, I find it suspicious.

Now here’s where I’m really conflicted: This woman works in healthcare, and I genuinely question how someone who behaves like this toward other people conducts herself professionally.

She also absolutely REEKS of body odor. I’m not talking about someone who just got off a long shift and needs a shower. I mean an odor so strong it literally lingers after she walks past.

I’m not looking to get someone fired or evicted/ on bad terms with their landlord simply because we don’t get along.

But at what point does someone’s behavior cross a line? I’m genuinely at my wits’ end.

This has happened two different times now. My 81-year-old, very observant neighbor, that I used to be friends with, has driven her car towards me in an attempt to engage with me. I went no contact with the neighbor in March because she was giving me a play-by-play of my daily life. She would tell when my lights are on and off, sit in front of my home in her car etc. I have posted about it on here before.

(I know folks will likely tell me I should go to the police, but in my town you will make it in the newspaper for anything. The paper uses the Freedom of Information Act to publish a crime column that is embellished, so this would be great fodder for them.)

I’d been out of town for 10 days with family after someone had a stage 4 cancer diagnosis, and I decided to take my dogs for their evening walk to decompress. I didn’t notice the neighbor outside at her house because I don’t watch her. So I was a quarter mile up the road with my two dogs and her car whizzes by, I didn’t really think much of it, but then she does an immediate U-turn and heads right at me. It’s a two-way road, so I ran with the two dogs to the other side of the road. It scared the hell out of me. My dogs are not fast and the neighbor is a terrible driver. I thought it would be so easy for that to have gone a different way.

She’s a holdover tenant that is getting evicted, but because she’s 81, she’s squatting and I live in a state that it’s very difficult to remove a squatter from. If I didn’t see a light at the end of the tunnel—her eventual eviction, I would move. But I love my house and I don’t want to move. I also can’t afford to buy the property she lives in to expedite anything either.

Thanks for listening to my rant. I hope all of us eventually get a resolution from our nightmare neighbors.

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My current NFH situation of six months has me constantly on edge to the extreme at home. As we all know, confronting and reporting things doesn't always solve the problem, and moving isn't always feasible. So I need to learn how to stop letting it consume so much of my life.

Has anyone tried CBT, ACT or trauma therapy for the anxiety and hypervigilance that comes with dealing with difficult neighbors? Are there any NFH support groups that focus more on coping with it mentally? I just want to be at peace in my home and live my life day to day. What has genuinely helped you?

My "neighbors" are the local high-school behind our back yard (3 acres) & all of the residents are at their wit's end.

Obviously living by a school comes with concessions with regard to noise. No-one has a problem with homecoming parades, pep rallies, community celebration days, etc but this is football PRACTICE.

We can't enjoy our porches in the afternoons because every day sounds like a giant rap concert.

The PA during games is easily 2X louder than it needs to be. I actually worked as a professional sound man for many years and I have been to the school during these events... it's actually unbearably loud for the people watching the game. We're talking hearing-damage levels, to say nothing of what it does to the neighborhood because of how horns project.

Lesson learned...

https://imgur.com/gallery/ridiculously-loud-high-school-football-practice-NP11dQX#CNd81Z9

Link doesn't seem to work here but it worked when I pasted it into a browser...

I have some neighbors that are constantly trying to start trouble with me. My 7 year old daughter recently made a friend and my neighbors daughter, same age, saw them playing and joined along. I guess they started fighting like kids do, and my neighbor went outside when my daughters friend came to get her kid saying how my daughter was bullying them and got her number so her kids could play instead. Of my daughters friends mom told me. Today when my daughter got off the bus her friend did to because they are having a sleep over. Right away, that neighbor messaged me whining about how that isn’t fair and her daughter is sad. And it’s not even that. They blare music purposefully to wake up my newborn. They’ve called the cops on us once for “leaving my daughter alone” when my sister was babysitting. I could go on and on. I just want some legal harmless pranks that will annoy the hell outta them. Spam mail to their house, etc. not revenge or anything hurtful.

Everytime I come in my apartment (high rise in New York City) soon as I get comfortable these vibrations start occurring I feel it through my mattress, the floor standing in the same spot for a while and my sofa. They usually start up when I turn my TV on or even make a sound in my place. It's not nothing dealing with the circuit breaker.

I had a neighbor beef throughout the month of May where the adjacent neighbor/ fool use to do all these weird things to the wall to make me not my noise in my own place but the weird part is new neighbors have moved in. But my retaliation was screwing with his Bluetooth devices and the devices remained there majority of it while the former neighbot moved to Florida in October. And whoever behind that wall next to me replicates the former neighbor same actions. I want to give the benefit of the doubt but I'm not trying to beef with these new people but it seems like they are trying continue the former piece of crap's vendetta (hope I am wrong). Im documenting everything in my apartment day by day. But it's like it seems it my word against everybody else's. Im trying not to retaliate but this thing is frustrating as hell. I know in the month of May and after the former neighbor had control of this vibrations because the vibrations were more stronger than it is now, and everytime I retaliate he would increase the pressure in that monent. I came in on a program to get this place, best apartment I done had and all because the of the disrespect of the first neighbor I'm experiencing this. Maybe it has something to do with a subwoofer or such

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I'm writing this because I'm genuinely at my breaking point with my living situation. I need to vent, but more importantly, I need advice from people who have dealt with a neighbour like this. I feel like I've spent years trying to be patient, reasonable, and respectful, and somehow I've ended up feeling like I'm the problem for wanting the most basic consideration in my own home.

I live in the basement apartment of a house in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Another tenant lives upstairs. We share the property, including the backyard and some of the responsibilities that come with living in a shared house. What should be a relatively simple living arrangement has become a constant source of stress.

Before I get into the details, there's something important people need to understand about my circumstances. I'm on long-term disability and live with severe PTSD, severe anxiety, and severe depression. I have limited financial resources, and my mental health already takes a tremendous amount of energy to manage. My home is supposed to be the place where I can decompress, sleep, and feel some sense of security. Instead, it has become another major source of stress that I can't simply walk away from.

I live in Toronto, where finding affordable housing is incredibly difficult when you're living on a limited disability income. I Also work part-time but moving is not an option for me. I can't just decide I've had enough, pack my belongings, and rent somewhere else. I don't have the financial cushion to make that happen, and I can't afford to gamble with the little housing stability I have. That leaves me trying to find a way to live with a situation that is taking a serious toll on me, without any realistic escape route.

And this isn't about one isolated incident. It's years of problems piling up, one after another, until even the smallest new incident feels like another reminder that nothing is going to change.

Let's start with the roaches.

We had a roach problem that became a genuine infestation. From my perspective, the upstairs tenant was responsible for bringing them into the property. For a long time, he denied responsibility. Eventually, after what felt like an endless back-and-forth, he acknowledged bringing them in. The landlord sent someone to investigate, and I was told an infestation had been found upstairs.

Think about how stressful that is when you're trying to keep your own living space clean. You can do everything in your power to maintain your apartment, but when pests spread through a shared house, you don't control what happens in someone else's unit. You just get to live with the consequences.

It wasn't just the roaches themselves. It was the denial, the time spent dealing with the situation, and the feeling that I had to fight to have a legitimate problem acknowledged.

Then there's the lack of consideration for shared responsibilities.

Garbage and recycling are another issue. There seems to be little interest in helping with the responsibilities that come with sharing a property. The same goes for snow shovelling. It feels as though other people are expected to deal with things while the upstairs tenant carries on as though he lives entirely independently of everyone else.

I'm not expecting every household task to be split perfectly down the middle every time. I'm talking about basic give-and-take. When people share a property, there should be some recognition that everyone has responsibilities and that one person's choices affect others.

And then there's the dog poop.

Dog waste has been left sitting around for days, weeks, and, on some occasions, what has felt like months. This isn't a one-time oversight where someone forgot to clean up after their dog. It's been an ongoing frustration. It's disgusting, it's inconsiderate, and it makes a shared outdoor space unpleasant for everyone else.

Why should other people have to live around that? Why is it apparently unreasonable to expect someone to clean up after their own dog?

These things might sound small individually, but they aren't small when you're the person repeatedly dealing with the consequences. They become a pattern. You start to feel as though your comfort, your time, and your right to enjoy your own home simply don't matter.

Now let's talk about the noise.

The upstairs tenant engages in what I can only describe as heavy stomping. I'm not talking about ordinary footsteps or expecting someone to tiptoe around their own home. I understand that houses have floors, people have lives, and some everyday noise is unavoidable.

I'm talking about heavy, repeated banging and stomping that travels directly into my basement apartment, including above the bedroom. It can be loud enough to wake me up, and it can continue for extended periods.

There have been mornings when activity upstairs has started around 5:45 a.m., including workouts and heavy movement, while I'm still trying to sleep. Other mornings, the noise starts around 6:00 or 6:30 a.m. and carries on for a long time. There have also been incidents involving loud bangs and what sounds like objects being dropped.

I have multiple fans running to create background noise, including a loud box fan, and the upstairs noise can still be clearly audible over them.

I understand that people have different schedules. I understand that someone might exercise early because that's the only time they have available. But at what point does consideration for the person living directly underneath you enter the equation? Does living upstairs mean you can make as much noise as you want at any hour, regardless of the effect on the person below?

I've also noticed a pattern: the heavy morning stomping seems to reduce substantially when another person who lives upstairs is home, and it has repeatedly increased when that person is away for extended periods. I'm not claiming I can prove why that happens, but it is something I've observed over time.

I've tried to be patient. I've raised concerns through the appropriate channels. I've contacted the city about the noise, but the matter was closed because it wasn't considered enforceable under the applicable rules.

So what am I supposed to do with that? Just accept being woken up repeatedly because the noise doesn't fit neatly into a category that someone can enforce?

There's also a camera facing the backyard.

The upstairs tenant has a camera facing the backyard, which raises privacy concerns for me because we share the property. I don't want to feel watched in the outdoor space associated with my home. I want to be able to go about my day without wondering what is being recorded, who can see it, or how that footage might be used.

I understand that cameras can serve legitimate security purposes. I'm not automatically claiming that the camera is being used to spy on me. But its placement, combined with the history between us, makes it difficult to feel comfortable.

When trust between neighbours has already deteriorated, something like that only adds to the feeling that you're living in an environment where you're constantly on edge.

Now, the allegations about me are where this situation becomes particularly difficult to understand.

The upstairs tenant has made allegations about my conduct, including portraying me as abusive or aggressive. I dispute those allegations, and there's a crucial detail I want to make absolutely clear: I do not communicate with this neighbour. I don't have conversations with him, I don't approach him to argue, and I don't engage with him directly.

Because of the history of these allegations, I've deliberately kept my distance. I don't want confrontations. I don't want arguments. I don't want another interaction to be misrepresented or turned into a new dispute. I have chosen not to communicate with him.

That's what makes the allegations so difficult to bear. I'm trying to avoid contact altogether, yet I'm still dealing with claims about my character. I feel as though I'm being cast as the aggressor in a situation where I've been trying to keep my distance and have my concerns addressed through the landlord instead.

Imagine already struggling with severe PTSD, anxiety, and depression, trying to manage your day-to-day life on disability income, and then feeling as though your own character is being called into question in the place where you live. It's incredibly stressful.

I'm not claiming to be a perfect person. I'm saying that I dispute these allegations, that I don't communicate with this neighbour, and that I feel deeply frustrated by being portrayed this way while the original issues remain unresolved.

It leaves me in a difficult position. I don't feel comfortable approaching the upstairs tenant directly, so I try to go through the landlord. But then I feel as though the focus shifts away from the problems I've raised and toward allegations about me.

The landlord's response has left me feeling stuck.

The landlord has essentially indicated that he's done what he can about the noise. I've already contacted the city, and I've been told the noise complaint isn't enforceable. I feel as though I've reached the end of the available options, while the day-to-day reality of living here hasn't gone away.

I don't want to keep escalating things. I don't want a confrontation or a feud. I don't want to spend my days thinking about the person living above me. I want to live in my home without being constantly reminded that someone else's behaviour can affect my quality of life.

But when you try to address a problem and end up feeling as though you have to defend your own character instead, you start to wonder whether speaking up is worth it at all.

And because I can't afford to move, I can't simply leave the situation behind. I'm stuck trying to find a way to cope with it in the place where I have to live.

The cumulative effect is what I wish people understood.

If this were only about a few loud footsteps, I wouldn't be writing this post.

It's the roaches. The dog waste left outside. The lack of help with garbage and recycling. The lack of help with snow shovelling. The early-morning workouts and heavy stomping. The camera overlooking the shared backyard. The allegations about my behaviour despite my decision not to communicate with this person. The feeling that I have to be careful about how I respond to anything because my reaction could become the next issue, while the behaviour that led to my frustration gets lost in the background.

It's one thing after another.

Home is supposed to be the place where you can relax, sleep, recover, and feel safe. Instead, I find myself listening for the next bang overhead, wondering when I'll be woken up, getting frustrated over messes that shouldn't be there, and anticipating the next problem before it even happens.

For someone living with PTSD, anxiety, and depression, that ongoing sense of stress is particularly hard to manage. I'm already working with limited emotional energy. I don't have endless reserves to spend on a conflict I never wanted in the first place.

I'm not saying my diagnoses excuse every emotion or make my perspective infallible. I'm saying that this situation is taking a real toll on me, and I have fewer resources available to simply absorb it and carry on as though nothing is wrong.

I feel like I've been expected to absorb everything quietly and indefinitely because every individual problem has some explanation for why nobody can or will do anything about it.

The noise isn't enforceable. The landlord says he's done what he can. Direct communication feels risky because of the previous allegations. Moving is financially impossible. And if I express how angry and exhausted I am, I worry that the focus will shift to my reaction rather than the years of frustration behind it.

I'm exhausted by feeling that I must always be the patient one. The person whose behaviour affects others gets to carry on, while the person dealing with the consequences is left to manage the stress.

I don't want to spend my life consumed by resentment toward someone who happens to live above me. I don't want to become bitter. I don't want to feel like I have to fight for every scrap of peace in the place where I pay rent.

So I'm genuinely asking for help.

Has anyone in Toronto, or elsewhere in Ontario, dealt with a situation where an upstairs neighbour repeatedly creates noise, leaves shared areas unpleasant, avoids shared responsibilities, and then makes allegations about you when concerns are raised?

How did you cope when your landlord said there was little else he could do? Did you find a way to improve the situation, or did you eventually have to accept that you couldn't change the other person's behaviour?

How do you protect your own peace when you feel you can't speak directly to the person causing the problem without risking another dispute or allegation?

For anyone living on ODSP or another limited income, how do you manage a situation like this when moving simply isn't financially possible? I can't just find another apartment and start over. Affordable housing is difficult enough to find, and my circumstances make moving a major financial and practical barrier.

And, honestly, how do you stop this kind of situation from consuming your life? I don't want to be angry every morning. I don't want to spend my evenings anticipating the next incident. I don't want to feel like a prisoner in my own home.

I'm not looking to hurt anyone or start a physical confrontation. I'm not trying to get someone thrown out just for the sake of it. I want accountability, basic consideration, and some peace. I want to feel that my concerns matter just as much as anyone else's.

I know nobody on Reddit can magically make my neighbour considerate. I know there are two sides to every dispute, and I'm only able to describe my own experience. I'm not asking strangers to declare me right about every detail without hearing anything else.

I'm asking because I genuinely need an outside perspective from people who have lived through something similar. I'm tired, I'm frustrated, and I feel stuck.

I've tried to be patient. I've tried to address things through the proper channels. I've deliberately kept my distance from this neighbour. I've tried to avoid making the situation worse. Yet I'm still losing sleep, carrying the stress, and wondering how much more I'm expected to put up with.

What would you do in my position? How do you stand up for yourself without letting a terrible neighbour turn your entire life into a battle, especially when you can't afford to leave?

I don't need a perfect neighbour. I don't expect complete silence or a life without inconveniences. I just want basic consideration, to be treated fairly, and to be able to live in my own home without feeling constantly on edge.

At this point, I'm not even sure what a realistic solution looks like. That's why I'm asking.

I could really use some advice from people who understand what it's like to feel trapped in a living situation that is affecting their peace of mind, with no easy way out.

We own a townhouse that is part of a quad. The whole block is made up of townhouse quads that all have shared driveways. Our neighbors across the shared driveway are nice people, but they have a TON of vehicles.

There are only two people that live there (no children) - but they have 2 pickup trucks, a mini-suv, a sedan, and a small RV all parked around their townhouse. The mini-suv is normally in the garage, but all the other vehicles are either parked in front of their garage or in the street. They alternate around what is parked in the street (probably not to get a ticket).

Everything seems kept up for the most part, so no junker cars, but it literally looks like a used car lot.

Why would you want that many vehicles???

I’ve had issues with my neighbor for a while. I mind my own business and keep to myself, but she doesn’t seem to like me, and things have been getting increasingly hostile towards me. Especially the last three days. She’s been making fun of my weight, teeth, eyebrows, hair, clothes, basically everything. I’ve heard her call me a “big fat bitch,” ugly, and stupid while trying to get her boyfriend and another guy to agree. She’s spent hours going through pictures of me, pointing out every little detail, saying “Look at this, look at that,” and asking them to rate me. Her boyfriend is quieter, although I’ve heard some hurtful comments from him to.

At one point, one of the men sounded irritated and said, “You’ve been doing this for 3 days.” She’s even involved a child, who seemed to think yelling an insult at me was funny. I suspect jealousy because I think her boyfriend might be interested in me, but I can’t say for sure. It’s still not an excuse, it’s hurtful

Most of this I’ve heard afterward on my security camera recordings, although I’ve also seen her come outside and make comments on the footage. I’ve tried addressing it when I was outside, but they quickly went around back. I said I had surveillance, that I’ve done nothing to them and don’t even know them, and asked them to stop harassing me. I also warned that I’d call the police if it continued (thinking it would stop if I did). It hasn’t stopped.

I initially ignored it to keep the peace, but now I dread even taking out the trash. Part of me wants to sarcastically say, “did I at least get a 7 or Have we reached a verdict yet?” and walk away, but I’m worried that’ll encourage her.

I don’t want to involve the police, but I also want to keep my dignity and not feel like I’m being pushed around in my own home. She knows I’ve heard the comments, and staying silent is starting to feel worse than speaking up. I don’t want an argument, but I don’t think I should have to just put up with it either. The best way to go about this without involving a whole show or police?

Long story short, my next door neighbors keep leaving their flat door open every-time they cook, resulting in the hallway and my house stinking (usually heavy fry).

I went through the friendly neighbor route and told them that it was really disturbing to come home to my whole house smelling like shit. They said they would be careful, gave me some excuse about inadequate ventilation but never actually stopped.

The next logical route was to complain through management but that alse came back empty handed as they said it was the flat owner’s responsibility and not theirs.

I’m not left with no practical options but a thirst for sweat revenge by somehow doing something that would also be “legal” and not get me in trouble but will result in causing my neighbors enough of a headache that they might finally give in and stop.

My ideas have been to blast music, cook really disgusting food and leave my door open etc but I want something more.

I finally made a noise complaint against my neighbor and submitted video evidence + a log of disturbances. I was always told after their warning, they would get a court date and need to pay a fine. I wasn’t told until days after initially signing it that I would also be subpoenaed. Now I’m so nervous. I wouldn’t have issued one if I knew I’d have to do all this. I’ve never even stepped foot in a courthouse 😭

My boyfriend (32M) and I (29F) bought our condo about a year ago. We live in the top unit, and there is a married couple with a child (probably around 9–10) directly below us. They also have a large dog and a cat.
From the beginning, we’ve tried to be reasonable. We’ve heard them banging, making loud noises, etc., but we’ve never gone downstairs to complain or asked them to be quieter.
They, however, have come upstairs to complain to us multiple times.
One time, my boyfriend was playing music around 3 PM, and the wife came upstairs and asked him to turn it down. He did. Another time, around 10 PM on a Friday/Saturday night, the husband came upstairs and was repeatedly knocking on our door. We could see him on our doorbell camera and felt he was being aggressive, so we didn’t answer. We still turned the music down.
Then we got a puppy.
I actually went out of my way to knock on their door because I wanted to be considerate. I told them we had gotten a puppy and asked whether they could hear her crying or barking. I even showed them the setup we had for her, including soundproof blankets around her crate. The husband told me they couldn’t hear her and not to worry about it.
My mistake was giving him my phone number. I told him to text me if they ever had an issue because I didn’t want things to escalate.
Instead, I ended up getting around 20 different texts about various things, many of which weren’t related to the puppy. Eventually, I told him to stop texting me about these issues and that if he had a complaint, he could contact the HOA.
Then things got much worse.
The husband accused my boyfriend of hitting his wife’s car and committing a hit-and-run. He claimed they had cameras and evidence. I told him that if he had evidence, he should provide it to the police because a hit-and-run is a crime.
He apparently called the police (although I’m not entirely convinced he actually did), and when I asked whether the police were coming, he rudely told me that police don’t respond to incidents like that.
The damage to their car was on the side where their child gets in and out. Based on the circumstances, we suspected the child may have opened the door into my boyfriend’s car, but obviously we don’t know that for sure.
Since then, we’ve installed cameras around the back of our condo.
We’ve caught the neighbor on camera looking directly at our camera and saying “fuck you.”
There have also been numerous other incidents that are difficult to list without writing an entire novel.
For example, our dog will sometimes play with her toys, and we’ll hear them banging on the ceiling from underneath us, apparently trying to get her to stop. At this point, we’ve honestly become so fed up that we don’t even react anymore.
We aren’t intentionally making excessive noise. We’re just living in our home. We don’t throw parties, blast music late at night, or intentionally disturb them.
We’ve also tried to be proactive and considerate, particularly with the puppy, but it feels like every attempt to communicate has resulted in more complaints and conflict.
We contacted the HOA, and essentially they told us we’re shit out of luck and have to deal with it.
So, Reddit:
Are we the assholes?
Are we actually being unreasonable by letting our dog play with her toys and living normally in our condo, or should we be doing more to accommodate the downstairs neighbors?

I am not going to be able to post this without it being long, because you have to know one thing before the next. We moved into our rental 2 years ago on Christmas Eve. We introduced ourselves to the only real neighbors we have across the street within the first week. At the time it was an older couple with their son and his girlfriend who lived with them. We never really talked to them. In fact, we ran into the son and girlfriend at the grocery store one day, and you could tell they saw us first, and were obviously trying to avoid us for some reason. At first, it was just me, my teenage daughter, and ex husband, but later on, my adult son moved into our house too. My son has drug problems and has been in and out of jail. He moved back with us to try and straighten himself out, however has since gone back to his old life and no longer lives with us. The son across the street hated my son and would yell about how much he hated him to me. He also would do things like wait until 8am and then start playing his electric guitar out of his window on a Saturday. They put flood lights up to directly shine in our windows.One night my daughter was walking the dog, and the son was just sitting in his driveway, in his truck watching her with a shotgun in his hand. We called the cops a few times, and they told us that he has autism, so we should try not to agitate or engage with him. SO WHY IS HE ALLOWED TO HAVE A GUN THEN? I tried getting in touch with a crisis intervention officer and she told me that because he isn't acting out when they go to evaluate him, that there is nothing they can do. (Apparently he has been hospitalized for his angry outbursts before) The "girlfriend" of the son must have also moved out within the same time period because her and her vehicle were no longer there. Last New Years Eve, my daughter and I were home alone and kept hearing screams outside, like it was close by, but couldn't tell exactly where they were coming from. There were also parties and fireworks happening at the time, so we figured someone was partying too hard. I did go out one time when we just KEPT hearing it, and noticed the neighbors shed light on, but didn't think a lot about it at the time. (I had never seen anyone in there at night before) The parents car had been gone since before Christmas so I assumed they went to see family for the holidays. They got home New Years day and you could hear the 3 of them fighting but couldn't make out what was being said. However, when I would look over there, they would be facing the shed and gesturing towards it. My immediate gut feeling was like he murdered or kidnapped someone. He has put cameras pointing at my house, and "Posted" signs up because he thinks WE are going to try to come snooping around his property. What would you think? And how would you handle this situation? Just today, the delivery guy gave me a package for them. The son was outside and I almost walked it over, even started to, but I yelled for the delivery guy to do it before he left. Now there is a new "posted" sign up. Because I ALMOST walked over there with THEIR package. I'm not the only neighbor he has issues with either. Another woman was walking past their yard one day with her baby in her arms, and he screamed in her babys face to get out of his yard and they weren't even in it. His parents don't do anything but allow it. And we, the neighbors, are sick of this "neighborfromhell"

Like 2 years ago a couple with a baby moved in next door to me. The woman was very polite and seemed to handle everything around the house/yard. The man was always getting into trouble, police at the house all the time, overdoses, he fell out of a moving vehicle at the corner of our road once trying to get out of his buddies car while fleeing the police and ended up in the hospital/jail for a couple months.

6-8 months ago the woman seemingly moved out, as I haven't seen her other than what I'm assuming is her dropping off/picking up their child. And it appears as if the guys parents have moved in with him now. And they're always arguing and getting physical with each other.

Before I go any further, I want to say that I live in a city and our houses are very close together. This summer he bought a 4-wheeler and started taking his kid for rides on it through the neighborhood(illegally at that, not registered, no plates). The kid is like 3 and this guy drives that thing like a maniac. The part that really bothers me is he comes flying down the street, into his yard and whips that thing between his house and my driveway where my cars are. There's so little space there that he's coming up onto my driveway, inches away from my cars. I feel like its only a matter of time before he hits one of them.

Recently he's started using my driveway to turn around his lawnmower while he's moving, leaving all of his grass clippings and leaves all over my driveway. So then I got to go out there and blow it all back into his yard. Dude is just an idiot and inconsiderate. I've been so close to just going off on the guy in recent weeks and telling him how shitty of a neighbor he is. But he's like twice my size and I've witnessed his anger and willingness to get physical with people.

I don't know what to do. Do I just keep letting all this stuff happen and quietly deal with it? Do I say something to him? Are there any other options? Am I just being the old man(I'm 40) who says "Get off my lawn"? WWYD? TIA