ForAcademicPurposes
Gold Member
You have to launch an assault on Middle Earth also known as your back yard. Carpet bombing with fireworks..
-
Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.
Dealing with crazy drug addled neighbors | A Saga
- Thread starter jshackles
- Start date
8bitpill
Member
I read over everything you've (OP) written out here, and damn.
When I read your original title for your post, I was like " I have a bad neighbor story to add in here", but yours takes the cake. Going to tell it here and give possibly give some insight, but also, sounds like your township is pandering, not my problem, and not doing their job.
We bought our house June of 2020 on the coast of Maine. It was peak pandemic, the months before as we were looking for a house up and down the coast of Maine was an experience due to the lock down. I remember when my wife and I were pre approved for the loan from the bank and got the news, it was the last week of March 2020 and my reaction was "this is great, but I doubt we will be able to go house shopping due to the lock down." Long story short, our realtor was able to get us into the places that we wanted to look at but had to work with special terms for each place (mask, fully gloved hands and shoes, etc).
The day we looked at the house we bought, when we got out of the car to check it out (outside and inside) we noticed the neighbors to our right were on their stoop. It was a guy and a couple of kids. Then realized there was a reconizable smell from what he was smoking, it was weed. The house isn't butted up to ours and has a decent amount of room between our house and the house they were renting. I could have cared less about him smoking weed, but the two kids that were sitting next to him were 6 and 8 at the time. I also didn't think much about it since the house we were looking at was exactly what we wanted with a huge piece of property and it being only 3 blocks from the ocean.
Fast forward a couple of months past us buying the house. We could tell there were issues with the family that was renting the house that was next to ours. I originally was born and raised in Philadelphia, you tend to know when a person, or persons are going to be an issue by the way they handle themselves. We come to find out the woman along with her boyfriend are the two renting the place, she has five kids and from what I heard two to three baby daddies. Her oldest that lived there with her was in her early twenties, the youngest 6/7 at the time. She didn't have a kid with the boyfriend that was currently living there and the lease was in his name.
One day, I'm in my living room and I see the one feral child, on our property digging in this dirt mound that was left by the previous owners and his project. I go out on our porch and looked at the kid as he is face down digging like a mole rat in it. He turns around with fully covered dirt face and goes "is it OK to dig in here" he was the 8 year old and I didn't see harm in this because it was a mound I was going to dig up and move for a shed, so I said "yea buddy, just don't get dirt everywhere" well that was like inviting a vampire into your house, because once you do, you can't uninvited them. To be honest, he was the least of the problems.
There were small issues here and there (kids randomly running around on our property, issues with the teenager and 20 something but they were typical teenager and young adult things for the type of situation they were in). It was early winter 2021 when one night we hear yelling, we looked out and the woman and her boyfriend were loudly fighting. I told my wife to just call the cops since it was about right before 12am and the kids were all up and witnessing the two "adults" of the house in an argument. Well before the cops came he hulked through the back door in anger (junkie strength). After the cops came, that was the last we saw of the boyfriend that thought lighten up in front of kids was a good life decision.
Till May of 2021 things were quiet over there, the younger kids would play with our daughter who was at the time 4, of course it was with us watching, but some how, the two youngest kids for the situation they were living in were nice and knew how to play nicely with a kid, we did come to find out later they those two were in and out of foster homes due to their mothers bad decisions and a lot of their good behavior was due to their short term foster care. Well memorial week of 2021, I wake up one morning to the sound of a diesel engine that sounded like it was right in our drive way. I open the binds that look down and out to their backyard and I see a truck towing a small caravan. In my head I knew this wasn't just someone stoping by and hanging out for the holiday week.
Well over that week the guy that was sleeping in there was constantly in the yard, in and out of the rented house. Looking like he was setting up for the long haul (waste bucket under the caravan, extension line running out to the caravan for electricity). His blinds in the caravan were Twisted Tea card board cut outs from the case they came in. He had the typical junkie look that you would see in Philadelphia and I knew this guy was setting up to live in the caravan as long as they rented that house. This was the first time I contacted the landlord that lived in New York. I let him know there was a person living in a caravan on his rented property. Before I contacted him, I looked up the laws to make sure this wasn't something that was allowed in the township (surprise it isn't and the only way you can, is if you're immediate family, meaning father, mother, son or daughter, and it wasn't't allowed past a specific point). I'm guessing our township had a specific issue with this in the past and made it so you can't live in a motorhome or caravan on a piece of property. After I talked to the landlord, he said he would handle it. Just shy of two weeks later nothing changed. That was the day I decided to contact the township. I didn't need a transient right next door that has no obligation to lease or rented home, hoboing about while my daughter was playing on our property.
I kid you not, not a day later the township sent out two people, and told him he couldn't live out of the caravan and if he isn't on the lease he has to leave. Credit to our township for following through and not even questioning it. We pay the second highest taxes in the state for property tax, this was a nice way to actually see our taxes dollars being used properly. We only knew about this because right after it happen, caravan guy saw my wife outside and asked if we called the township on him, she replied "I don't even know what you're talking about", because she didn't. I didn't even have time from the previous day to tell her I contacted the township because I didn't think it would process that fast and I had my mind on other things through that day. He also told her after he heard her reply "I lost my home in a fire and I'm not a bad person." He then went over to our other neighbor to ask him if he did.
Before you feel bad for caravan guy, well after he left, we ended up finding out he blew his previous "home" in a meth exposition due to him not properly cooking his drugs right, guessing he didn't do well in chemistry.
there were micro issues here and there after. The teenager had a bunch of his friends decided to pull the basket ball net that caravan guy brought and left after his departure into our driveway and play a full game. I went out and told them that they need to put the net in their drive way or on the street. They didn't argue and did it right away. The 20 something sister was always drunk and had her friends over that would occasionally park in our drive way and go into the their house for extended times. I would wait outside by their car to let them know if wasn't OK to park in our drive way. It only happen twice and each time I waited out there, they wouldn't come out and I could see them through the window looking out and waiting for me to leave. It didn't happen again, think they got the point. One time one of her friends was in their drive way, drunk and laying on the horn for her friend to come out and yelling the whole time. It was about the five minute mark of this, I went out and shouted "Can you please stop honking the horn" She turned nervously towards me with a big nervous smile and said "Yes and I'm sorry", the minute I went back into the house she just started yelling from her car at the house for her friend to come out and bad mouth none legible things about me. Alls I caught was "your fucking neighbor... and some obscenities here and there. I didn't care because she was in her early twenties, drunk and at the time, was in my late 30's, but the honking stopped then.
We then come to find out, the Mom wasn't the legal guardian of the three younger kids 7, 9, and 14, and the sister was because the mom was in and out of jail and wasn't fit by court, to take care of those kids. The next issue was with her the kids aunt and their mother where they were about to get into a fist fight in front of the kids at 11pm at night, after the cops came, the mother was told she couldn't be near the house anymore.
At this point the garbage started piling up in their yard and car (they packed the car with garbage because the landlord stop paying for trash removal. This garbage at times started following over to our yard. I contacted the landlord (only the second time) and he said he was going to be in Rockland and wanted to meet in person. I told him to stop by. After the niceties, he then switch to talk about his tenets, and went right too "Those people in my house, they're shit heads". He then told me the only reason he hasn't evicted them since they stop paying after the original boyfriend left (at that point they hadn't paid rent for 8 months), was because the laws at the time due to the pandemic wouldn't allow him, but he planned to do it once that was lifted. This was only rough to hear since the youngest of the kids were at risk of not having a home and they were good kids.
There was more to this but it's already long, like for instant during caravan guys short stay, he was burning treated wood in an metal barrel and all the kids and teenagers were all around it just sucking in all those chemicals from the treated wood. The give away that it was treated lumber besides the chemical smell in the air was the large green flames it was giving off.
My advice, stay on top of your township about this. They will just let it go to the side if don't have someone consistently hounding them. I highly doubt that rancher is even habitual from the looks at it. It might be in the area of being condemned. Make sure you keep all responses from them (it's weird they would even hit you with that white privilege blanket statement to make you feel guilty). Use that when you get to the point where you can show the township and lawyer how piss poorly they're handling the situation.
I could only imagine how this is mentally weighing on you. Talking to the people squatting like you've described doesn't get you anywhere. I hope to see an update in the near future for you and your family that they just leveled that house and cleared it out to be sold. Hang in there.
When I read your original title for your post, I was like " I have a bad neighbor story to add in here", but yours takes the cake. Going to tell it here and give possibly give some insight, but also, sounds like your township is pandering, not my problem, and not doing their job.
We bought our house June of 2020 on the coast of Maine. It was peak pandemic, the months before as we were looking for a house up and down the coast of Maine was an experience due to the lock down. I remember when my wife and I were pre approved for the loan from the bank and got the news, it was the last week of March 2020 and my reaction was "this is great, but I doubt we will be able to go house shopping due to the lock down." Long story short, our realtor was able to get us into the places that we wanted to look at but had to work with special terms for each place (mask, fully gloved hands and shoes, etc).
The day we looked at the house we bought, when we got out of the car to check it out (outside and inside) we noticed the neighbors to our right were on their stoop. It was a guy and a couple of kids. Then realized there was a reconizable smell from what he was smoking, it was weed. The house isn't butted up to ours and has a decent amount of room between our house and the house they were renting. I could have cared less about him smoking weed, but the two kids that were sitting next to him were 6 and 8 at the time. I also didn't think much about it since the house we were looking at was exactly what we wanted with a huge piece of property and it being only 3 blocks from the ocean.
Fast forward a couple of months past us buying the house. We could tell there were issues with the family that was renting the house that was next to ours. I originally was born and raised in Philadelphia, you tend to know when a person, or persons are going to be an issue by the way they handle themselves. We come to find out the woman along with her boyfriend are the two renting the place, she has five kids and from what I heard two to three baby daddies. Her oldest that lived there with her was in her early twenties, the youngest 6/7 at the time. She didn't have a kid with the boyfriend that was currently living there and the lease was in his name.
One day, I'm in my living room and I see the one feral child, on our property digging in this dirt mound that was left by the previous owners and his project. I go out on our porch and looked at the kid as he is face down digging like a mole rat in it. He turns around with fully covered dirt face and goes "is it OK to dig in here" he was the 8 year old and I didn't see harm in this because it was a mound I was going to dig up and move for a shed, so I said "yea buddy, just don't get dirt everywhere" well that was like inviting a vampire into your house, because once you do, you can't uninvited them. To be honest, he was the least of the problems.
There were small issues here and there (kids randomly running around on our property, issues with the teenager and 20 something but they were typical teenager and young adult things for the type of situation they were in). It was early winter 2021 when one night we hear yelling, we looked out and the woman and her boyfriend were loudly fighting. I told my wife to just call the cops since it was about right before 12am and the kids were all up and witnessing the two "adults" of the house in an argument. Well before the cops came he hulked through the back door in anger (junkie strength). After the cops came, that was the last we saw of the boyfriend that thought lighten up in front of kids was a good life decision.
Till May of 2021 things were quiet over there, the younger kids would play with our daughter who was at the time 4, of course it was with us watching, but some how, the two youngest kids for the situation they were living in were nice and knew how to play nicely with a kid, we did come to find out later they those two were in and out of foster homes due to their mothers bad decisions and a lot of their good behavior was due to their short term foster care. Well memorial week of 2021, I wake up one morning to the sound of a diesel engine that sounded like it was right in our drive way. I open the binds that look down and out to their backyard and I see a truck towing a small caravan. In my head I knew this wasn't just someone stoping by and hanging out for the holiday week.
Well over that week the guy that was sleeping in there was constantly in the yard, in and out of the rented house. Looking like he was setting up for the long haul (waste bucket under the caravan, extension line running out to the caravan for electricity). His blinds in the caravan were Twisted Tea card board cut outs from the case they came in. He had the typical junkie look that you would see in Philadelphia and I knew this guy was setting up to live in the caravan as long as they rented that house. This was the first time I contacted the landlord that lived in New York. I let him know there was a person living in a caravan on his rented property. Before I contacted him, I looked up the laws to make sure this wasn't something that was allowed in the township (surprise it isn't and the only way you can, is if you're immediate family, meaning father, mother, son or daughter, and it wasn't't allowed past a specific point). I'm guessing our township had a specific issue with this in the past and made it so you can't live in a motorhome or caravan on a piece of property. After I talked to the landlord, he said he would handle it. Just shy of two weeks later nothing changed. That was the day I decided to contact the township. I didn't need a transient right next door that has no obligation to lease or rented home, hoboing about while my daughter was playing on our property.
I kid you not, not a day later the township sent out two people, and told him he couldn't live out of the caravan and if he isn't on the lease he has to leave. Credit to our township for following through and not even questioning it. We pay the second highest taxes in the state for property tax, this was a nice way to actually see our taxes dollars being used properly. We only knew about this because right after it happen, caravan guy saw my wife outside and asked if we called the township on him, she replied "I don't even know what you're talking about", because she didn't. I didn't even have time from the previous day to tell her I contacted the township because I didn't think it would process that fast and I had my mind on other things through that day. He also told her after he heard her reply "I lost my home in a fire and I'm not a bad person." He then went over to our other neighbor to ask him if he did.
Before you feel bad for caravan guy, well after he left, we ended up finding out he blew his previous "home" in a meth exposition due to him not properly cooking his drugs right, guessing he didn't do well in chemistry.
there were micro issues here and there after. The teenager had a bunch of his friends decided to pull the basket ball net that caravan guy brought and left after his departure into our driveway and play a full game. I went out and told them that they need to put the net in their drive way or on the street. They didn't argue and did it right away. The 20 something sister was always drunk and had her friends over that would occasionally park in our drive way and go into the their house for extended times. I would wait outside by their car to let them know if wasn't OK to park in our drive way. It only happen twice and each time I waited out there, they wouldn't come out and I could see them through the window looking out and waiting for me to leave. It didn't happen again, think they got the point. One time one of her friends was in their drive way, drunk and laying on the horn for her friend to come out and yelling the whole time. It was about the five minute mark of this, I went out and shouted "Can you please stop honking the horn" She turned nervously towards me with a big nervous smile and said "Yes and I'm sorry", the minute I went back into the house she just started yelling from her car at the house for her friend to come out and bad mouth none legible things about me. Alls I caught was "your fucking neighbor... and some obscenities here and there. I didn't care because she was in her early twenties, drunk and at the time, was in my late 30's, but the honking stopped then.
We then come to find out, the Mom wasn't the legal guardian of the three younger kids 7, 9, and 14, and the sister was because the mom was in and out of jail and wasn't fit by court, to take care of those kids. The next issue was with her the kids aunt and their mother where they were about to get into a fist fight in front of the kids at 11pm at night, after the cops came, the mother was told she couldn't be near the house anymore.
At this point the garbage started piling up in their yard and car (they packed the car with garbage because the landlord stop paying for trash removal. This garbage at times started following over to our yard. I contacted the landlord (only the second time) and he said he was going to be in Rockland and wanted to meet in person. I told him to stop by. After the niceties, he then switch to talk about his tenets, and went right too "Those people in my house, they're shit heads". He then told me the only reason he hasn't evicted them since they stop paying after the original boyfriend left (at that point they hadn't paid rent for 8 months), was because the laws at the time due to the pandemic wouldn't allow him, but he planned to do it once that was lifted. This was only rough to hear since the youngest of the kids were at risk of not having a home and they were good kids.
There was more to this but it's already long, like for instant during caravan guys short stay, he was burning treated wood in an metal barrel and all the kids and teenagers were all around it just sucking in all those chemicals from the treated wood. The give away that it was treated lumber besides the chemical smell in the air was the large green flames it was giving off.
My advice, stay on top of your township about this. They will just let it go to the side if don't have someone consistently hounding them. I highly doubt that rancher is even habitual from the looks at it. It might be in the area of being condemned. Make sure you keep all responses from them (it's weird they would even hit you with that white privilege blanket statement to make you feel guilty). Use that when you get to the point where you can show the township and lawyer how piss poorly they're handling the situation.
I could only imagine how this is mentally weighing on you. Talking to the people squatting like you've described doesn't get you anywhere. I hope to see an update in the near future for you and your family that they just leveled that house and cleared it out to be sold. Hang in there.
Last edited: