FTR this is in the City of Los Angeles, to give the applicable jurisiction
About four months ago we moved into a new apartment on the second floor. Our unit has the spreading leaves of a banana tree in front of its northward facing balcony, and the balcony is spacious and wide, running the entire length of the apartment.
However, the neighbor below us, a woman who lives alone, has a large husky-type dog, a female. This dog is allowed to do her business on the patio, and the excrement then allowed to stand for hours, often well into the following day. Our balcony is virtually unusable because of the flies and stench. When the downstairs neighbor does clean up–about once a day whether it needs it or not–then she lets the water stand there as there is no drain. This brings on mosquitoes which have bitten my wife several times, although they seem rather snobbish when it comes to my blood.
We have complained to the landlord’s building manager but she seems unable or unwilling to act. This is even though she tells us that other residents have also been complaining.
Is there a legal recourse available to us to get the problem resolved? I don’t see much point in going through the management. Is it possible to engage the appropriate city agencies to force the neighbor to clean up her act, or to leave? Or, to force the building owner to evict her forthwith? What about recovering partial rent due to the unusability of our balcony?
Have you tried just talking to your neighbour and asking if there is some way this could be resolved? Explain to her why there is a problem? Mosquitos breeding, disease (mosquitos bring Dengue, but don’t know if that is a problem for you), smell etc.
Yes we have asked her, quite nicely, to remedy the situation. The first time, I went down to her myself, and asked her if she could find a way to have the dog taken care of during the day, because she howls constantly when left alone. She began to make an effort, though, and a few days later my wife thanked her in the hallway for doing so. For about three minutes they were having a nice, neighborly conversation about dogs and life in general. It ended only when the neighbor started laying into me for having complained to her previously, at which point my wife ended the exchange.
Remember, this is a big dog. The droppings are little different in size from what an adult human would produce. It’s disgusting, and I see no reason for tolerance. If you have a dog, you need to clean up after it, immediately.
It is possible to get help from the city, but I think it would be unlikely here. The first thing I would do is call the health department and ask whether the situation poses any health risks or violates any health rules. If it did, obviously you’d have some options then. Assuming that leaving pet feces out for too long doesn’t violate any city code and isn’t a threat to your health, then I would think your options would be pretty limited. I doubt that there’s any way to legally force another tenant’s eviction under any circumstances, much less under these circumstances.
But that doesn’t mean you don’t have any legal options. You’ll have to talk to a local lawyer to say for sure, but I see basically three options: quiet right of enjoyment, nuisance, and warranty of habitability.
Right of Enjoyment
You might be able to prove that you can no longer enjoy your balcony, but it will be an uphill battle to argue that bad smell and mosquitos led to a partial constructive eviction. Plus, your right of quiet enjoyment is a right as against the landlord, not other tenants. There are some CA cases holding a landlord responsible for the actions of the neighboring tentant, but it isn’t open-and-shut. See Andrews v. Mobile Aire Estates, 122 Cal. Rptr. 3d 832 (Cal. Ct. App. 2005).
Nuisance
Virtually anything that consitutes an obstruction of the use of your property can be a nuisance, so long as the interference is substantial and unreasonable, and would be offensive or inconvenient to the normal person. There is significant support for noxious odor as a legal nuisance in CA. See Wade v. Campbell, 200 Cal. App. 2d 54, 58 (1962) (finding nuisance upon testimony that “the dairy odors were strong, offensive and nauseating, and the fly and mosquito populations substantially increased”). But the nuisance is usually a bit more extreme than a neighbor failing to clean up after a pet–in the above case, a flood of water carrying manure onto the property. If the odors or pests rose to the level of nuisance, you could sue the neighbor. Also, the landlord might have a duty to abate nuisances, depending on the law in LA.
Habitability
Finally, if the dog feces makes part of your apartment unfit for human habitation, then you’d have lots of remedies because it would be a breach of the implied warranty of habitability. This is usually things like rats, no heat, etc., so for obvious reasons it would be difficult to prove that bad smell and mosquitos rises to the level of a breach of the warranty of habitability. It’s also often difficult to prove that something that doesn’t violate the health code does breach your implied warranty. My uneducated guess would be that it would be easier to bring a nuisance claim than a breach of habitability claim, since the threshold of harm is a bit lower.
If its really ruining your awesome balcony and neither landlord nor downstairs tenant will cooperate, think about talking to a lawyer. It won’t cost you much to find out if you have a case, and it might even be something you could handle yourself. Indeed, you might not even have to go to court. A letter from a lawyer (or even a letter from you CC’d to the landlord) might be enough to persuade your neighbor to take better care. The local bar association is often a good place to start if you want to find a lawyer and don’t know who to call.
You might want to try mediation to resolve this conflict. This link goes to a PDF document listing various mediation services in California, organized by county.
Remember Arlo Guthrie suggesting that one big pile was better than a few small piles?
Perhaps you could use your imagination and deviousness to increase the size of your neighbor’s pile.
Until you come up with the actual solution, that is.
Getting prissy won’t solve anything. Or blaming her for some mosquito bites. Or trying to get the city on her ass. (I’m still not sure if you actually talked to her about the problem, specifically.) Or asking on how to evict her.
Not saying the neighbor’s shit isn’t a problem. Just wondering if you’re being a good person too.
This is GQ. Whether or not the OP is “being prissy” or a “good person” is rather irrelevant to the question being asked, which is what the legal recourses to the problem might be. Let’s try to focus on that issue.
This is not a warning, just a reminder to keep the thread on track.
You might mention to the landlord that, under the circumstances, you will not be renewing your lease. The prospect of losing a tenant may goad him to action.
Ask the neighbor nicely again to fix it. If that doesn’t work, call the landlord to fix it; it’s the landlord’s job to abate nuisances caused by other tenants and enable your quiet enjoyment of your unit. Did I just type that? Yes.
Check your lease or rental agreement for relevant provisions.
Call the landlord and ask nicely. Calmly inform the landlord you will follow up with a letter just to confirm your conversation. Write everything down in a letter and send it certified mail to the landlord, then wait.
If it still isn’t resolved, go back to the landlord and write a follow up certified letter with a cc to the tenant. Make a remark about partial constructive eviction from your balcony and that your rent includes the full use and quiet enjoyment of your balcony.
If that doesn’t work decide whether it’s worth it to go to court against both landlord and tenant.
Oh, and get proof, including, without limitation, video, photos, and witnesses.
Call the local housing code enforcement. They might cite the landlord for the mosquitoes.
… and you should probably start doing this sooner than later without a lot of lag time waiting for people to correct the issues before you follow up. Be diligent. Courts are not too sympathetic when people sit on their rights. Don’t verbally whine for 8 months before sending your first note. That doesn’t go over well.
Oh please. Did you miss the part about dog excrement left to ripen in the warmth of a spaight of unseasonably warm and humid spring days? I don’t understand how anyone can justify such behavior. What if the neighbor went out on her patio herself to take a dump? And left it to fester all day? It wouldn’t make any difference. We don’t watch it being deposited, we’re just living with the smell and flies.
The manager does say she’s been talking to this tenant, and that we’re not the only ones who have complained. But nothing really changes or improved.
Get the other neighbors in on it. Get all the other complainants to write certified letters. I think a landlord facing 6 potential plaintiffs with rent abatement claims will step up the efforts against one tenant who lets her shit get outta hand.
So, you told the neighbor once that her dog howls when she’s not home…but have you talked to her about the actual problem?
I would think that specifically asking her to fix the excrement issue in person would be a rational first step, not getting the city’s Board of Health or whatever involved.
There’s nothing to indicate he is not being “a good person”. Were I in his position I’d be upset too.