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Neighbours with some sort of issue

teejay

teejay

Here's the deal:
 
I own my house. I look after it. I love my front garden. I have recently sowed a new front lawn from seed. It takes time, cost and effort.
 
I have one neighbour, very close, who rents. The landlord is their brother.
 
Said neighbour does not look after their property
 
Said neighbour is also, as we call in Australia, a BOGAN. In other countries this might be called feral, or trash, or perhaps worse.
 
Said neighbour's brother (owner), is also a BOGAN.
 
Said neighbour has no respect for my wife or I, and police have been out over various issues, but we have been incident free for about 2.5 years.
 
Last night though, said neighbour and ex- or current-bikie boyfriend come home, get drunk and carry on until at least midnight.
 
I wake up to see that someone has decided to walk onto my new lawn and do some sort of dance, ripping some of it up.
 
The police are called, and come to speak to said neighbour who acts all innocent and claims to have no idea of what's happened.
 
But, they forget that in their drunken state, their boots have dirt on them and walk back over my driveway into their property.
 
So, based on the history of events, and muddy footprints, we are 99.9% sure it was the bogan neighbours.
 
It seems like we can't have anything nice without them doing something stupid every now and then.
 
What would you do?
 
 
Tryextremely hard to keep my cool.  Maybe even strike a conversation and try to reason with them, find a common interest or something?  Neighbor issues are horrible.  They rarely get solved and seem to only escalate.  Good luck buddy
 
Thanks Browning - your advice is cool, calm and collected. Quite logical and rational.
 
BUT
 
it takes two to have a decent conversation.... You know where I'm going don't you ?!
 
Shortly after the neighbour moved in, we had serious dog barking issues. I'm talking louder than my highland bagpipes, and anywhere from 1 to 3 am in the morning.
 
I'm also talking about 3 metres from my bedroom window - told you they were close !
 
My wife and I went over, rang the bell, and were told to "deal with it".
 
We did the same thing a couple of months later, with audio evidence of what could be heard in our house, and the door was shut on us.
 
No respect I tell you.
 
I have to find a way to get their attention, i.e. something that hits them in the pocket or jeopardises their rental agreement, if there even is one.
 
I get the felling from your first words that you too have had neighbour "affliction". If it doesn't open any wounds, I'm happy to be an ear/shoulder to lean on :cheers:
 
Hi Mr Hill,
 
My wife and I spoke about CCTV with IR recording just an hour or two ago.
 
Based on the geometry of the situation (where we need to record and where we could put cameras, plus the night-vision distance needed), we are looking at two cameras or more with 10+ meters range, plus a sparky to install power and data outlets for a DVR.
 
Looking at the products I can get, this would set us back about $1000 by my estimates. Probably a bit over the top for damage to a front lawn, and no problems for the past 2.5 years.
 
As I said to the police, we have no idea of what brought this on and where to from here ?
 
If something unusual happens from this point on, police will be called again and I would probably be best placed to use the sequence of events to apply to what we call the "residential tenancies tribunal" to have her evicted. That however assumes that a rental agreement exists, otherwise it has to be civil action. Even if I won and tried to reclaim costs using that path, it takes a *long time*, and you can't get blood out of a stone.
 
Here in Australia, we have what's called "housing trust", i.e. low income housing for those in need. The thing is, most are, from my experience, in need because they are bogans and refuse to work, etc, so they don't care about looking after the property assigned to them. So, the courts have more on their plate than this sort of issue, but let me reassure you, blind freddy can see what's happening. (I wish to add at this point however that some people are doing their VERY best to get out of their financial situation and our of housing trust, but there is the social stigma, etc).
 
Your advice is appreciated and duly noted - it may have to be our ultimate path, or capsaicin spray (this is a chilli forum :shh: )
 
Regards,
 
Tim
 
It's just gone 7pm here, and the neighbour is home.
 
That's incredibly unusual for a friday night.
 
Perhaps she is worried about some sort of retribution ?
 
Problem is, if I do that, I simply incriminate myself.
 
They did actually make landmines with a nuclear payload however  :fire:
 
The property that was damaged is my responsbility as the land owner, but it's part of the council "verge" at the front.
 
The council has been notifed of what has happened and subsequently logged a report of malicious damage to their land.
 
An inspector is supposed to make contact with us and come for a site visit.
 
I may use the opportunity to discuss putting a fence across the property boundary, all the way down to the storm water gutter, which means I would need council approval to erect the structure.
 
In that case however, I am also entitled to ask for the owners of the adjacement property for a contribution to the cost (according to the Fences Act 1975). All of a sudden they would become interested in the why's and how's of the situation I'm sure.
 
But, at the end of the day, the fence could only be 500mm high across the verge because of the necessary visibility concern up and down the street (cars backing out of their driveways need to see the road about them), and a fence that small is not going to deter fools - at best they might not see it in the dark and walk into it while out and about and drunk, falling face first into my concrete driveway....
 
I know there is no easy answer, but I can't be sure I have thought of all options so far. I need to put the issue back on the neighbour somehow so there's no desire at all to do stupid things in the future, or no belief they could do stupid things and get away with it. According to the law, CCTV seems to be it, but what a shame to have to fork out such a large amount of $$ for things that *may* happen in the future. As they say, the law is an (insert alternative name for donkey here).
 
The neighbour has gone now, but I wonder what I will wake up to tomorrow morning ?!
 
From my experience, living close together in the city makes neighbours want less to do with one another, wheras living far apart in the country makes for a community of people who want to get along.
 
Probably lower cost here, have you thought about putting in a bright, like Halogen, light aimed in the direction they would approach from and set in a motion detector? You won't get the video evidence but even drinker than Cooter Brown left hand dog it'll be a deterint. Drunk the light would be even more of an iritant as their eyes would be more light sensitive I'd think. Also if you were to put said light close enough to the house where you could hear if they tried to do anything or set something to wake you when it turned on, you could take all the pictures you want from a window with a camera you already have, bam evidence :)
 
teejay said:
- at best they might not see it in the dark and walk into it while out and about and drunk, falling face first into my concrete driveway...
Click to expand...
God willing. :rofl:

You are absolutely right about city/country living. That is a big part of why I live where I do. My nearest neighbors are a Tiger Woods 'driv away, but we look out for each other, and visit whenever we see each other at our mailboxes. If i were in your situation, i would definitely get a motion sensor porch light like RM suggested ($15 at your local hardware store). I would also be tempted to run a rail fence with a hot wire (electric fence) and maybe even barbed wire, laws be dammed. I know there are laws, and councils and approvals needed etc, but again, if it were me, I would do whatever I had to, to protect my property.
 
I use to live next to a drunk and not a nice drunk but a mean wife beating drunk, while I was a renter and he owned his place he made it a point one night to get ugly with me, and tried his best to " punch my lights out,"  didn't work out that way for him, but two days later I set up a electrict fence, with a staggerd three wires a motion light and a stop action cam that they use for taking pics of wild life. I have a freind thats is the main sherif and informed him on what was going on he gave me a Tazor and told me not to kill him.
Well one night the fellow got really drunk started out beating his wife,  after she took off with her kids he decided to trash my front yard, first thing he hit the fence which would stop a raging bull, the lights came on and the camera started while he was trying to get his drunk ass up I walked calmly to him and tazored his butt, walked back to the house and called the sherif who came quite quickly and hand cuffed him and threw his dirty butt in the car took my camera and said good night to me. After that his home went up for sell, and his wife got him on abuse charges along with some others, He went to jail for some time,  I never saw him again, still have my Tazor though, it works like a charm and will make you crap your pants in a second.
Some times you just have to get ugly back, just make sure your right with the law.
 
Why the fan? just stick the whole bag over his head and send him screaming back home, Oh I forgot that would be a waste of hot pepper powder, you could get a big high powed water gun and make up a big batch of pepper spray then you could hose him down and then you could tazor his butt if you felt like it. :P  :P
 
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