Not sure of the best place to post this. We have one neighbor who we always try to accommodate. We did a major trim on one tree a few months ago. We hire tree trimming companies to trim the larger trees every two years. This costs thousands of dollars. Now he tells us that his insurance will go up because of our trees and he would like them all cut down...'the tree could catch fire then the fence will catch fire'. what is the correct protocol in this case?

My neighbors have been a nightmare for the last 3 years.

I’ve been renting my house for the last three years, and ever since day one, our neighbors have been an issue.

I work a lot of hours to afford nice things, so when the movers were bringing in my 75-inch TV, the father of the neighboring household looked over, said pretty loudly, “Must be f****** nice,” slammed his car door, and went inside.

Okay, weird, but whatever.

A while later, we were playing fetch with our dog. My dad, who lives with us, threw the ball, and it bounced into their yard. He went over to ask for it back, and when the father opened the door, a cloud of weed smoke practically hit him in the face.

My dad asked for the ball, and this dude started ranting about how his wife had cheated on him and left him, along with a bunch of other personal drama.

We eventually got the ball back, but… what the actual fuck?

Fast-forward two weeks, and I guess the wife has returned because she starts pounding on our front door at 8 a.m. I answer, and she immediately goes off on me about wasps on the side of our house. Apparently, seven of them had stung her, and we needed to get rid of them or she was going to sue us.

I basically said, “Okay, crazy lady,” and closed the door.

To be fair, I did spray for the wasps and got rid of them. But the entire time I was doing it, their son was standing outside staring at me with the most intense Kubrick stare imaginable. Think Vincent D’Onofrio in Full Metal Jacket. Just standing there, silently watching me like he was about to snap.

Then, that same afternoon, the wife comes back and starts pounding on my door AGAIN.

I answer, and she launches into another tirade about how I needed to be careful because the wind could have blown the wasp poison onto her son.

I finally told her to get off my porch and go home.

Now, the last incident is probably my favorite.

I used to go all out with Halloween decorations in my front yard. Gravestones, an inflatable black cat, hanging ghouls—the whole thing.

One day, I found a note taped to my front door saying my decorations were tacky and that I had 24 hours to take them down or she was calling the cops.

Of course, I ignored it. I kept the note, though.

That night, my Ring camera sends me an alert that someone is at my front door. I open the app, and what do I see?

This woman is out there absolutely trashing my Halloween decorations.

I immediately call the cops and explain what’s happening. By the time they arrive, she’s already gone back inside her house.

Luckily, the officers could see the destroyed decorations, the holes she had stabbed into my inflatable black cat, and the footage from my Ring camera.

They went over to arrest her.

The entire time, she’s screaming at the cops and claiming I set her up. She even accused me of “trying to spray her son with poison.”

I’m just standing there thinking, Lady, you threatened to sue me over wasps, harassed me twice in one day, threatened to call the cops over Halloween decorations, and then destroyed my property on camera. How exactly did I set you up?

Thankfully, they eventually moved away.

Thank Christ.

Three years of dealing with these people, and I still have no idea what their problem was. I just wanted to live in peace, enjoy my house, and put up some damn Halloween decorations.

Anyway, I figured Reddit would appreciate the story because I genuinely couldn't make this shit up if I tried.

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?

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

TW: DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Hi I recently moved to Australia from another country and am kind of new to the culture here after 8 months ish. My apartment has been pretty quiet and peaceful until this Australian couple moved in (the real estate agents have filled me in on some details)

On the first week, the wife came out screaming that her husband was going to hurt her and kept screaming for help. Encountering this for the first time in my life, I was super scared and called the police to come over. I also live alone as a short female so hearing what happened outside my door, I was scared too. The police came to knock on their door and the wife suddenly came out saying that its not from them but its other neighbours fighting. Just like that, the police left

A few days ago, they suddenly started fighting again. she came out saying “You cannot say this sh\\\*t to a pregnant woman and I dont feel safe around you when I have a baby in me” then it escalated to her shouting at her husband to grab the baby as it was going to fall off the balcony. In a split second, the dad JUMPED DOWN instead. My other neighbours literally witnessed the fall and ran down to call the police (i think because they pulled up real quick). Afterwards, the wife locked herself and their baby in the apartment and the police tried to intervene again but the wife kept denying that anything happened. The husband came back home a day later and they just continued their day as usual from there💀

The police also found out that the wife had placed a restraining order on her husband a while back but now just got a new apartment with him and is about to give birth to their second baby. Every night, I’ve been hearing their baby screaming or sometimes the couple being aggressive to one another. I’m not sure if I should call Child Protective services or only call them when another big fight happens again. my fear is that when something happens again, it would be too late and someone would be seriously hurt.

all these happened in the span of 2 weeks 😭

I think I really need advice on what to do and how the law works here as this is the first domestic violence case i have seen in my life and in a new country 🙏🏻🙏🏻

I live in a unit block with 8 units. Our block is super simple, a driveway and down one side of the property and at the end is grass and some gardens. My unit is all the way at the back and on ground floor, which is near the grass area. I’m a 27year old female and bought it 3 years ago. When I first moved in there was no problems. One of the owners then let her son live in the unit which is right next to me and there has been problems ever since.

He’s jobless and apparently has mental health issues, he doesn’t work and he’s home all day. His friends are junkies and I’m not saying that to be rude, they are drunk, high on drugs and aggressive. The come over at all hours of the day and night. Slam his doors, walk around the block with a speaker blasting music, throw rubbish, smash wine bottles that they’ve just finished, they have thrown rocks at my windows just because I’m looking out and they happen to be standing right outside my bedroom window in the grass area, they have set up tents and camped right behind my bedroom window in that grass area, they walked around with huge fish gutting knives, steal everyone’s washing from the communal clothes line, just the other day one of them in the middle on the night was leaning up against my bedroom window and starting screaming, I woke up and yelled at him and he held a knife to my window and said he’s going to come inside and kill me. Called the police and told them and they could hear him screaming in the background. No police show up. In fact, I have called the police multiple times and they never show up. Huge fights happen in his unit, you can hear things being smashed and people screaming and I call the cops and they never show. His unit has been raided by cops for drugs a few times more than a year ago but nothing recently. Another time he lured a man from tinder to his house, pretending to be a girl, and had an ambush waiting inside and they stabbed a screwdriver through the man’s face, stole his car keys and his wallet. It’s never ending. The other people that live here are too scared to speak up as they have all been threatened before and are older, they keep to themselves because they are scared. We have been to body corp and had a meeting but his mum was there too. Body corp basically said get over it, they can’t do anything if we are annoyed with someone’s personality… We finally got cameras installed and I have saved lots of footage but it’s heaps of different people causing these problems and it’s his friends, not him. The son who lives there doesn’t leave his unit. What can I seriously do.

I live in Tweed Heads, Australia.

I live in a housing co-op in the province of Quebec, and there’s an older member who has a habit of interfering in what other people are doing, giving unsolicited instructions, and sometimes raising his voice when people don’t comply.

During a recent volunteer cleanup, another member and I were helping a neighbour move an old fridge when this man interrupted us several times to tell us to do things differently in a bossy way. We know him, he’s always testing people’s patience and some aren’t having it and try to avoid him because he is old so they try to avoid situations that escalate. When we didn’t follow his instructions, he shouted at us. We were handling a heavy appliance, so the timing was particularly inappropriate.

Other members have had issues with him too. Some eventually shout back, while he seems to adopt the victim role afterward. I prefer not to engage in that kind of behaviour, but I’m concerned that being respectful is interpreted as weakness.

I’m considering proposing a general code-of-conduct reminder through our co-op’s good-neighbour committee, including clear boundaries around giving orders outside one’s role, yelling at other members, and possible consequences for repeated abusive behaviour.

Our board is currently in a difficult situation, so I’m also wondering how best to approach this constructively.

I didn’t appreciate the interaction, I came to help that day and as a matter of fact, was helping another elderly person throw away an old fridge that wasn’t even part of the cleaning but wonder if from here on I should just stop participating in these gatherings because half of the co-op doesn’t show up and giving time and effort to deal with that kind of nonsense seems stupid. I tell myself I should’ve put him back in his place but also think it’s not very classy to yell back at an elder. When you look at resources for such situations, they seem to consider only elders are victims of abuse but they are sometimes perpetrators and while I feel there are underlying issues that could cause this, I also feel one doesn’t have to deal with this.

How would you handle this? Would you address the person directly, push for a formal code of conduct, or simply disengage?

My neighbor and I have been litigating a zoning dispute for 2 years now and I recently won at the appellate level. He has now started taking pictures of my 13 year old daughter and her friends in my backyard and posting them on social media. Several posts have been taken down when people have rightfully pointed out that it is inappropriate for an old man to be taking pictures of little girls and posting them on the internet, but I think I am now done taking the high road.

Town noise ordinance allows for 55 decibels during daytime. Would a Bluetooth speaker pointed directly at his backyard at 55 decibels be sufficiently annoying? The fence is far enough from my house that it wouldn’t bother me at all and we are on a dead end street so it wouldn’t bother the other neighbors either.

Also open to other suggestions of legal but annoying ways to combat this guy.

Edit: His defense is that he says he’s using the photos as evidence of the zoning violation he is complaining about. They nonetheless contain minors. It is 100% not “illegal“ to take pictures of what is in public view of the street.