Tag: neighbors

The great neighborly outdoors

ownership of the tree depends

Tree next to fenceAs I’ve noted, being a homeowner was new to me when we bought this house 19 years ago. Ever since, it’s been a series of neighborly negotiations with various sets of folks.

A couple months ago, a panel of the fence separating us from the the neighbor to the south fell down. The neighbor was irritated with us. He surmised that someone came into our backyard and cut the fixtures holding the fence in place. It DID look cut, but what would be the purpose?

He believed we should have fastened our gate more securely. While it is true that our gate swings open now and then with a stiff breeze, it’s not for lack of trying to correct it. We have had at least three people come and “fix” it, but it remained unfixed.

In fact, one Saturday morning, the latch was somehow positioned so that I could not even leave my own yard. I wonder how it happened? I had to use a large rock to liberate myself from my own property.

The neighborly fellow to the north pointed out that a large branch – about four meters long – that has its roots on our property but overhangs onto his, came crashing down. It may well have been that tree, though he has a similar one on his property.

He claims that the branch nearly came down on his shed, which would have cost US $10,000 to replace. I seriously doubt it’s worth 20% of that, but no matter.

This got me to wondering: who IS responsible for those branches? This article from a Rochester (NY)N newspaper notes:

“In New York, a property owner is responsible for any trees on their property — more specifically, the trees whose trunks are on their property. Ownership of the tree depends on where the trunk of the tree is located, regardless of where the branches are located.

“If a tree trunk is located on a boundary line — sometimes referred to as a ‘boundary tree’ — that tree could be owned by both homeowners, based on the percentage of the tree that is located on each property. Insurance companies will sometimes use those percentages to determine who is liable if a tree comes down and causes property damage.

“A property owner can take down branches that hang over their property — up to the property line, even without permission from the tree owner. However, the law also states that if a homeowner trims branches on a tree and that causes damage to the overall health of the tree, that person could be liable, and might have to pay to replace it.”

In fact there are a lot of articles on the topic. I imagine we’ll get the whole tree trimmed this summer as a precaution, though we may ask he neighbor to kick in on the cost.

Lydster: writing a letter of complaint

“The owner lied to our faces numerous times during this ordeal,”

The Daughter had a school exercise in one of her classes to write a letter of complaint or protest. It did not have to be a real situation, but there was extra credit, with bonus points for mailing it.

As it turned out, she had a pretty good example. I have mentioned/complained in these pages about the shoddy work done by the roofer/contractor that our next door neighbor hired. As the Daughter noted, the Dumpster being used was halfway across our lawn. When the workers left, there was still much roofing on the shared walkway between our two properties.” And so on.

What made me grimace and laugh was when she noted that her “elderly” father used that sidewwalk often. In fact, I do, but she was really milking it.

In anticipation of writing the letter, she looked up in Google Maps reviews of the offending companies. There were five 5-star reviews! But one of them was a RESPONSE by the owner of the company to a 1-star review, one of nine. And no rankings in between.

One bad review wrote about lateness and not contacting the client, false promises about the work being completed quickly. “When I hadn’t heard from anyone within the time frame, I called the company to get an update… The woman I spoke with when I called initially told me she would have no way of knowing this…” Bottom line: she was strung around for months with a dearth of info.

Suddenly, one day, “two workers showed up at my door to do the deck work. This had not been scheduled at all with me…” They DID do good work that day. She had similar problems with her gutters, seven apointments, and evasive management, before the work was done

Another: “I was lied to from the start… They took their money, removed my siding and came back about 2 weeks to start the work, ordered wrong size windows, started working on the bathroom and from the start nothing went right…

Another: If I could give this company zero stars I would, but unfortunately it isn’t an option. The… real [reviews] are the ones that come with severe negative aspects first because it sounds pretty accurate to my experience.

Another: Worst contractors I’ve ever dealt with…. We asked them to let us know when the dumpster would be dropped off so we could move cars out of the way, they did not. It got dropped off and blocked one of our cars in the driveway…
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Another: Owner talked rude and offensive to other races. Totally unprofessional. They maybe cheap, but you get what you paid.

Another: They ran the downspouts of the gutters right across our sidewalk (tripping hazard) and into the neighbors yard. During the first week, they used the neighbors yard as a prep area, and would leave garbage all over when they left for the day… They smoked marijuana right outside my back door while my 9 month old daughter was in the house. They screamed F-bombs at each other right outside her bedroom window. The owner… also lied to our faces numerous times during this ordeal, and refused to admit when he had been caught in his own web of lies. The job was quoted as a one week project, and after a month they had not finished cleaning up, so we had to hire someone else to do it.

We found out that our next-door neighbor is attempting to sue the contractor. The Daughter pointed out the online reviews to him, optimally to use to bolster his claim of the contractor’s incompetence.

Noisy neighbors

It’s 10 p.m. The Daughter and I are watching JEOPARDY! when the doorbell rings.

neighbors2You may recall an incident involving the second-floor apartment of our next-door neighbors. It’s been more fun.

OCTOBER 1 – it’s a three-day weekend for the college students on the second floor next door. The noise from the music was so loud, I went over there to ask them to turn it down around 11 p.m. It was so loud that when I was POUNDING on the door, it took about three minutes to be heard.

The music returns. The Daughter cannot sleep. I go out in front, talking to the neighbors on the front porch, warning them I would call the police if the music didn’t lessen. BTW, it wasn’t just music. It was loud and constant conversation, punctuated by occasional WOOs.

OCTOBER 2 – Redux. I call the police non-emergency number at the stroke of 11 p.m. Music diminishes, and I go to sleep. But at 12:30, music volume returns, and while I slept through it, The Wife awoke. Finally, at 1:15 a.m., she called the police. Neither of us knew that the other had called until morning.

OCTOBER 7- I’m home in the morning with a sick child. The doorbell rings. It’s a guy from the other side of the problem house. He wants to know if it was a problem for us (oh, YES), if we had called the police (yes, twice), and whether HE ought to call the police if he’s bothered by their noise (absolutely). I want it made clear that it is not just us who are inconvenienced, and TIRED.

OCTOBER 8 – It’s 10 p.m. The Daughter and I are watching JEOPARDY! when the doorbell rings; it’s the police. They had gotten a report of a loud party at OUR house, but it is instantly clear to them that this is not the case. I theorize that this may be in retaliation for our calls. The police go over to visit them.

Later, the music got a little loud, but not as bad as the other nights. It was soft enough that my white noise machine, which The Wife had purchased a couple of Christmases ago, blocked the noise.

OCTOBER 9 and 10 – The Wife and I, separately, see the absentee landlord and tell him of our woes. He told me that, as a result of my spouse’s conversation with him, he had had a chat with them.

It’s been OK since then. We have heard them talking at 4 a.m. occasionally, but not loudly enough to complain, usually when they’re in the rear of their building. The houses on both sides of us are longer (deeper) than ours, and The Wife theorizes that the noise leaves the back of the one house, bounces off the other building, and echoes even louder into ours.

Also, the midterms are approaching, and as the weather gets chillier, the windows tend to be closed more often.

Meanwhile:

OCTOBER 5 – The Wife parks in front of our house, and goes inside. The Daughter, tired from soccer practice, remains in the vehicle. The adult granddaughter of our other-side neighbors – she does not live there – is going to pull in front of our car. But she rushes, likely in response to a car barreling down our street too quickly, and clips the front corner on the driver’s side.

The Daughter runs into the house to tell her mother the car has been hit. The young woman was very apologetic, and she and the Wife discuss insurance and the like. The woman’s grandparents come out, concerned. They don’t see the damage at first -our car is white – but soon enough they do. The other car is worse for wear.

OCTOBER 6

I see the male neighbor and mention in passing that The Daughter’s OK after the accident. Very soon, the entire family’s at our door, concerned and actually angry with my spouse. Why didn’t she tell them our girl was in the car? She wasn’t hurt, and it wasn’t an issue.

The Wife dealt with at least two insurance companies, had a loaner car for three days, and as of OCTOBER 19 has her car back.

From a window

Bless them, The Wife and The Daughter had slept through this incident.

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Window

It’s 3 a.m., and I’ve been awake for about a half-hour. My general pattern is that I get up for about an hour, go to the office, read my emails, visit other blogs, maybe check Facebook, then go back to bed.

I hear a BAM! but can’t tell if it’s inside or outside, or really, from what direction. BAM! what the heck is that? BAM! I get up to investigate.

I ascertain that something, or someone, is banging on the window in the second-floor apartment directly across from our bathroom, a distance of about my height, six feet.

CRASH! The distinct sound of breaking glass. I throw on a pair of pants, and go outside, looking down the alley. CRASH! Someone is breaking the window from the inside.

I call 911. There is a non-emergency number, but at this hour, I worry that 1) there is a fire, and someone has to try to get out; 2) there’s domestic violence taking place; 3) there’s a crazy person who’s going to next break OUR window less than a couple of meters away; or 4) who knows what?

The police arrive quickly, but by this time the window breaking has stopped. I alert one officer to where the activity had been. They go in, but she, and her roommates, had gone outside. Some of the other tenants are also outside; at least one of them had been listening to music through his headphones, and was oblivious to the breakage, but heard the cops come in.

Sitting on my porch, I can’t catch much of the conversation, but I do clearly the young woman in question say to one of the policemen, “It’s illegal to break your own window?” Well, 1) it’s really not your window, it’s your landlord’s, and 2) you are, at minimum, disturbing the peace. Specifically, mine.

After ascertaining that no one is imperiled, the cops depart. No one was arrested, as far as I know. Now I’m so adrenalized that I can’t get back to sleep until about 6 a.m.

In the morning, when I can see better, I find large chunks of glass in the common alleyway. One piece, about the size of a standard magazine, was wedged vertically into the ground. This means that if a stray animal had wandered by, it could have been killed.

The implement of destruction was a plastic fan, one the face diameter of a dinner plate. The plastic frame was in the alley, but the motor was wedged between two layers of glass. The screen had been shredded as well. This was a very inefficient weapon to use to smash a window.

At 8 a.m., I called the absentee landlord and relayed the story. He seemed calm but based on arguments we’ve heard him have with his tenants in the past, the meeting with the offending tenant will be loud. He cleaned up the mess before I got home from work Monday night.

It wasn’t until I had hung up with him that I noticed that there are at least three cut marks on the aluminum siding of our house that had not been there before.

Bless them, The Wife and The Daughter had slept through this incident. The previous building owners, who lived there, sold the house to a guy who has subdivided it into student housing, featuring a rolling number of people I cannot keep track of.

Ever since, the Wife has had a dream to buy that house and rent it to model tenants. I have no desire to be a landlord myself, and, best I can tell, the building is not for sale anyway. Oh, and we can’t afford to buy and renovate it anyway.

Neighbors

One fellow has been badgering a local journalist about this topic, publicly on Facebook, concerned and frustrated that the mainstream media is ignoring this “important” issue.

Neighbors_(2013)_PosterOne recent Friday morning, I was in the home office when I heard a fire truck stop, as it turned out, right in front of our house. I looked out to see an EMT walking toward our walkway, then veered next door.

I’m conflicted about the proper “it’s none of my business”/curiosity and voyeurism ratio. I mean it’s RIGHT next door. Eventually I went out to the curb to bring back the garbage can that had been emptied overnight, and I see one of the young women Continue reading “Neighbors”

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