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Breaking Point of Apartment Tolerance
By
Jen Chung
Published Oct 23, 2006
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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By
Jen Chung
Published Oct 23, 2006
Modified Mar 7, 2008
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This weekend's New York Times real estate story for the "New York City real estate is strange" folder was about the extremes that push people out of their apartments which are otherwise quite lovely. We're not talking a change of financial situation, we're talking neighbor who drops-TVs- from-ladders/ plays-very- loud-music/ stomps-around- in-platform-shoes situation.
According to the article, these are some of the things that have driven people out: Upstairs neighbor's grandchild using a trampoline; strange landlady who monitored goings on and demanded meetings in the tenants' living room; wiretaps on mobster neighbor ruin cable reception; and neighbor who threatens people with 8 inch knife, calls couples names (like Nazi and incestuous), and uses stick to intimidate new mother with baby. Our favorite anecdote, though, is this one:
One downstairs neighbor, an elderly woman, grew irate when the 5- and 10-year-old boys upstairs bounced balls. “She would complain to the doorman, the super, the managing agent,” said Jennifer Roberts, a senior vice president at Bellmarc who had sold the boys’ parents their three-bedroom apartment in the East 70’s. “One day, she came upstairs when the mother wasn’t home, and she took the ball and hit the kid."
There's definitely a loud-upstairs neighbor dynamic that drives many peolpe to leave. What's funny is that most people don't want to rock the boat and start a war with another tenant, so when they complain, the situation is usually pretty bad.
Have you ever complained on your neighbor or had your neighbor complain about your music/smelly cooking/loud dog? One time our downstairs neighbor complained that our TV was too loud, but it was the normal volume it usually is night after night. But we did mute it and keep it on closed-captioning for the evening. Previously from the Times' "NYC real estate is strange," smells in apartment buildings and stinging a newspaper-stealing neighbor. And here's an Ask Gothamist post about bad neighbors.
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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