My partner, 3-year-old daughter, and I live in a very family-oriented apartment complex (within a mile of 3 schools and a daycare, a pool, basketball court, and a playground are right next to our building in the complex).
When we first moved in 6 months ago, we weren't sure how sound traveled in the building and received a letter under our door from someone at management complaining about noise. My partner called the number trying to get details about the incident the letter referenced, because we don't listen to music/watch tv loud, have parties, have pets, yell, and our daughter is not a 'wild child' by any means. She is asleep in bed by 8:30 every night, and all 3 of us are out of the house from roughly 9:00am-7pm every weekday. The woman at management was rude to him and wouldn't give specifics, but said something along the lines of "I don't know if you have some kind of issues going on, but it needs to be taken care of." We have never argued or even raised our voices in the apartment.
I called a little later, apologizing for any noise. I let her know that I do software for a home automation/security company, and could confirm what was going on in our apartment at any time, even when no one's there, and if there are any other complaints to please give us a time or date so I could check if something was going on. I also let her know that our daughter is on the spectrum, but doesn't have tantrums or make any more noise than a neurotypical child (more to kind of imply that I wouldn't tolerate being targeted for that reason). She had a completely different attitude when I spoke to her than when my partner spoke to her, and was not rude at all and seemed to understand.
There is another family in the building with a young child who we can sometimes hear crying from our apartment. The man who lives under us (not an older man, maybe in his early 40s) has a dog who barks constantly, and when he scratches himself with his foot slapping the ground we can hear it. I briefly mentioned this in passing to the woman at management when I spoke to her, but made sure she knew I wasn't complaining about it because I realize I live in an apartment in a family-oriented complex and if I wanted silence I would live in a house out in the country.
The man with the dog who lives under us was the one who complained about the noises coming from our apartment. I found out he actually works for the management company that runs the complex. The company owns 3 complexes; ours is the 'family' one, there's another more ritzy/'luxury' one (the man who complained works for leasing at the luxury complex), and the last one is a budget-type place. He works in the same office as the woman from management who we spoke to, and they're personal friends.
Today, 5 or so months later, he rang our doorbell (at 5:00pm, on the weekend, during summer break) to complain about how the 'running back and forth needs to stop because it's getting a little ridiculous'. I apologized and he went on his way. I can only assume he was referring to the brief dancing down the hallway of our daughter - to get something from her bedroom then out into the living room again. I want to emphasize that this was not running, or even skipping -- literally a peppy walk with 1 or 2 small hops.
I'm not going to pretend we have the world's only silent 3-year-old, but this definitely wasn't stomping, or hard running, or jumping, or yelling. I'm a quiet, homebody-type person, and to me this is a perfectly reasonable amount of noise for the middle of the day in an apartment building. Normal noises that people make. Her 10 or 15 footsteps were not louder than a refrigerator door closing, and I'm very paranoid about being one of those bad moms who has a loud kid who can't behave, so we're always conscientious about behavior and noise level. We've been sitting on the couch in silence for 45 minutes because I'm worried about being "loud".
I'm not interested in moving, because we have a lease for 6 more months and this is a great price for an otherwise good apartment in an amazing school district. I don't want to retaliate, but it bothers me that he thought it was appropriate to come to my door and be rude to me over something that was objectively not disruptive.
This man will leave his dog alone for a day and a half, and the dog howls the whole time. I can tell when it's going to be one of those weekends because I hear his shower running at 8:00pm on a Friday. I don't feel like I can rightfully complain about this because a) it doesn't actually bother me because I expect this kind of stuff in an apartment building, I just don't like that he's a hypocrite, and b) he's personal friends and coworkers with the woman in charge of noise complaints, so I doubt it would go anywhere.
I'm not sure what to do, I just don't like feeling like we all have to literally tiptoe around all the time. Our floors are carpeted and quiet is our baseline -- what can we do so that this guy doesn't come to us again?
Submitted August 07, 2017 at 03:58AM by upstairsaptthrowaway http://ift.tt/2hAiVU4 legaladvice
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