I’m not sure what to do any more with a neighbor who moved in across the street from me…
In theory, an 18 or 19 year old and his mother rented a house across the street from us… In reality, it turns out the mother has a live-in job somewhere else and this guy is there by himself all the time…
The guy plays music so loud I can’t open my front door any more, and there is a constant stream of kids in and out of the place… On the fourth of July, I saw him and his friends run out of the house throwing firecrackers into the middle of our street that were large enough to sound like a bomb and cause car alarms all around to go off at once…
I don’t know much about gangs, but one night the kid and his friends were out front of my house discussing how a bunch of other guys had shot holes in his car… This while they were all wearing the exact same t-shirts with a picture of some guy who had been killed on them - I figured that out from the “born” and “died” info under the pictures…
There are now couches and garbage on the front porch, and the place is just looking more and more like a slum…
I called the landlord, who told me the kid and his mother are on Section 8, and there’s nothing he can do… He told me I could call the police if there are problems and refused to do anything.
I tried calling HUD, and all they said was that I could call the police - they weren’t allowed to tell me anything - like if they’re on Section 8 - Which wasn’t really my question, since I already know they are…
Does anyone have any ideas how to deal with this mess? I certainly don’t want to get in the middle of some kind of fight with a gang… But I don’t want to live like this cuz of one neighbor from hell…
Do what everyone else has recommended you do, next time they are loud just call the police. That would be better than confronting them yourself. They will not tell them who called. I have been on both the giving and receiving end of such complaints. Or you could move.
I once caught some kids moving some street signs and sandbags onto the middle of my street as I approached to park.
I thought of parking and calling the cops. Instead, I drove past, drove to the police station, reported it, and went for a coffee for about 90 minutes.
Came back. No kids, no signs out of place. Nothing to link me to the complaint.
Survivor, you don’t mention in your OP if the mother knows what is going on and just doesn’t care or if she is away so much that she hasn’t a clue.
If she doesn’t seem aware of what is happening then the obvious approach is to confront her about her kids behaviour but you’d want to be careful about how you went about it.
If all else fails I agree with the other dopers and let the cops handle it.
Yes, call the police. Use the non-emergency number, obviously, but build up a record of complaints.
Keep a log - write down every time you call the police and what it was about, and write down every time you notice something relevant that wasn’t worth calling the police about.
Keep a tape recorder handy, loaded with a tape that you only use for this. Use it to record exceptionally loud events. Say the date and time and where you are when you record it.
Take photos, and label them with the date taken and the reason you took it.
We’ve dealt with a neighbor from hell, too, and these things got the police to take it seriously and deal with the problem. He hates us now, of course, but he has stopped doing all the annoying cr@p. Good luck!
I had the kids from hell living next to me too. I called the cops about once a week, they would show up and the kids would chill for a day or two, then right back to the same old stuff. I finally moved.
I work for a city and this type of thing in very common. What I have seen work best is…
Alert your city government that the house has code violations. They will send out an abatement officer, the violations (like trash in the yard) will be written up and the land lord will have to fix them or pay a fine and maybe go to court. Keep doing this over and over. The land lord will figure out that it is not worth having this family renting his house. All of this can be done anonymously.
