Apartment Living: Noisy Kids Upstairs
 

Here's my situation... I live in a bottom floor apartment, underneath a couple with a two and a seven year old. The kids just loooove to run back and forth their apartment incessantly and it's getting out of hand. I can handle the occasional stomping, but it occurs non-stop for periods of over 30 minutes. Very politely asking the parents to calm them down didn't work. "What do you want us to do, they're kids." Now, I don't know about you, but when I was a wee lad, my ass got beat for running in the house. I invited them down so they could hear the ruckus their rugrats were causing for themselves, but they would have none of it. "We've been here for three years and nobody's every complained," is what they constantly tell me. Yeah, well I'm telling you now stinknuts. Being here for three year doesn't give you tenure. I tried to talk to them again tonight, only to have the husband tell me to "call the office," just before he slammed the door in my face.

Now, my question to you guys is this. Should the parents be responsible for keeping their children quiet, especially in a living enivronment such as an apartment complex, or is it something I "should just deal with" because they're at such a young age?

I think you oughta take the fathers advice and call the office to complain. Calmly explain to them that you tried to politely talk to the tenants above you, on more than one occasion, and that they seem to have taken the attitude that they are above showing common courtesy.

Sounds to me like he doesn't give a shit. I would call the office.

Yeah...call the office. You will never get the Kids to tone it down, not in that age bracket (speaks from experience).

I've lived for 2 + years above an elderly couple that play the tv set all freaking day and night long. Calling the office gets me no where

I checked my lease - check yours - the lease states reasonable noise is allowed - reasonable is totally subjective. However, document each instance that you have spoken to these people about the noise and the reaction. Then drop a note to the management office with a copy to the tenant.

The management office might care more than mine does..

Good luck

I can understand both your points of veiw. I live in a house quite close to town and every building was built agianst code, my bedroom wall is about 15 feet away from my neighbors house. My music had never been a problem for months but one sunny, friday afternoon I was listening to my music loudly and complained. Fair enough, I tried to moderate my music and bass levels more and about two weeks later at 9pm he stopped by agian and calmly asked me to turn it down, he was pretty nervous about the situation but thats fair enough for him to complain and I did. It has been almost three weeks now and no further complaints so I would say the problem is solved or getting better.

I am a resonable person but no one likes someone to tell them what they can and can't do in their home. I completely understood my neighbors point but I would like to be able to watch a movie at night or listen to an album so loud my testicles vibrate if I so choose, I don't like someone coming into my space to moderate what I can and can't do and I don't like that now I have to concisously choice when and how loud I can play an album or movie.

My suggestion would be to just keep your cool, if their are times when you can't stand it get the phonenumber of your neighbor and just ask them politely if they could keep it down for a little while.

Call the office, and do it every day if need be. If not, duct tape and broom stick.

Put the pressure on them. Its time to make their life hell for a change.

Do what I always did in this type of situation. Revenge.

You'll need a few things in order for this to work:

1: A bookcase or a shelf that stands almost to the celing. Put this under the area the kids run around the most.
2: A subwoofer.... to rest on top of this bookcase.
3: Speakers, which you place next to the subwoofer, pointed directly at your ceiling.
3: A stereo system attatched to the speakers/subwoofer.
4: Some really offensive CD's. If you want to scare them out of your neighborhood permantly, I suggest picking up any album by "Cradle of Filth". If you just want to give them a wake up call, get some hip-hop.
5: Next time the kids start running around.. well, I think you know what to do.


You could also leave a gift wrapped bottle of Ritalin in their mailbox.

Take this as a lesson learned.. never get an apt on the bottom floor.

One other thing to look at is your city's anti-noise ordinances. Some cities -- not most, but some -- have pretty tough laws dealing with residential noise. You can make complaints to the city, and they can stick. If the building management won't help, see if the city has ordinances or community complaint/mediation board that you can go to.

In answer to your original question: both of you should meet each other halfway. You should be tolerant, and they should be considerate. Probably a perfect solution isn't possible, but when both sides really try usually a "good enough" solution is agreed upon. Unfortunately, your neighbors don't seem to want to try.

As for "nobody's ever complained before," that may be true. Some people never work up the guts, and move rather than challenge things. Others play loud music and don't care, or are hard of hearing. But that's no excuse. What they're saying is, "you have no right to complain," and that's not true. That's what they _want_ to be true.

In NYC there are lots of apartments with hardwood floors and you can imagine that it gets noisy sometimes.

There are some riders on leases that require tenants to have an amount of area covered by area rugs in order to help minimize the noise.

Not sure it applies to you, but maybe.

I'm with Rodney. Take the time to find out ALL your rights. People's rights get trampled all the time because they don't know what they are.

The top floor is not better, if I weren't home pretty much weekends only, long enough to repack a suitcase, I'd have gone postal long ago thanks to my delightfully noisy downstairs neighbors.

Unfortunately, most ordinances dealing with excessive noise, are during normal hours (ie prevents people from running the lawnmower at 6:00am). Though it's a good idea to check into it.

I applaud your neighbor. He's come up with a perfectly reasonable solution to the problem. Call the office ;)

if they won't help, call the cops and say he's disturbing the peace.

Check your lease, then call the office, then call the cops. Do what it takes and go as far as you need. Keep going till you get results.

Perhaps you can decide a certain time of day or night when you can tolerate SOME noise. Here at our apts we have a quiet "curfew" at 7:00pm until 10:00am. No loud stereos, no loud kids, etc. Most people abide by it pretty well. Sometimes people will Oops and go past the curfew but it's only occasional.

We used to have 2 kids about that age who lived above us. They enjoyed wrestling in their livingroom or their bedroom. We could hear it and actually feel it. I had to straighten my pictures about once a week because the vibrations caused them to move. The boys only did it a couple times a week and DEFINATELY not for more than an hour. Ask the parents if they could put a time limit on the kids running. Or even possibly get a couple coloring books and give them to the parents. Say - "I was hoping this could give the kids something quiet to do while I study/read/sleep" or whatever you want to do most. It's a polite, pleasant way of encouraging them to be quiet. Plus the parents might not even have to say anything to the kids. If the kids get coloring books they may quiet down for a little while all on their own. You catch more flies with honey than with vinager.

I do think that since he said to call the office you should do that first. Let the office know that you could handle the running once in a while but that since it's constant and daily it gets on your nerves. If nothing changes call the office again. Call them daily until something DOES change.

I wish you good luck.

sprocket - I love your solution. That would be soooo fun. ;)

I second the bookshelf and the subwoofer. Get a subwoofer demo CD that just chirps out nice long basslines that are just above detectible to the human ear.

Some apartments you just can't do anything about it. We were on the top floor once and every time we walked, the floor creaked. We couldn't do anything about it. Just another reason why I'd never return to apartment living.

Well, I called the office yesterday and they won't lift a finger because they're kids and they're only usually only noisy during the day. If they were noisy late at night, or early morning, that'd be a different story. So, the manager offered me the following solutions:

a) tolerate it
b) I can move to a different apartment at no charge
c) leave the complex altogether and I get to keep my security deposit.

At this point, apartment living has left a bad taste in my mouth so I think it's time to hit the road. I'm buying a damn house. I realize it's a big committment, but you know what, I think it's time. I'm married and ready to settle in one location.

And Sprocket, you'd be amazed at how many people thought of your idea including myself :) It's fun to joke around, but revenge won't get me anywhere. Oh believe me, you have no idea how bad I would love to torture these people, but it goes against my better judgement. Although, an anonymous drug tip to the police may be in order :D

Crony

Check out a website called www.apartmentratings.com -- it's a great place to vent your spleen about an apartment complex and to hopefully warn others off moving in. Tis anonymous so they don't know it's you.

I actually checked that out during my search for a new place and it had good things to say about about this place. But thank you for reminding me about it. I'll have something to add, that's for sure.

Sounds like the managment is being fair. I'd opt to get the hell out of the apt and never look back.
I'm glad I never had to deal with apt living...

There is a chance that you may never get satisfaction. It's the reality of living in an apartment. Take it from Plato/Socrates, if you go to a bath house and expect to not get splashed, when you are you're gonna be pissed. If you go and expect to get splashed then when it happens you will handle it better. I guess expect noisiness (to an extent) and you may react to it a bit better in the future. Good luck though. I know exactly what you're going through. when I lived in an apartment I had the same type of frustrating experience except then I didn't give a shit about what Socrates or Plato would do. Hang there.

I'm checking it out now, myself. Looks like it's got shills.

I live in an upstairs apartment and the guy that lives next door to me comes home and plays the same song on his saxophone every day...the same song...over and over. At first it bothered me but now I'll just turn on some music or the TV and turn it up loud enough to drown him out. If it bothers you that much I suggest calling the office and if they didn't do anything about it I would take Sprockets advice...or at least start banging on the ceiling with a broom or something. Maybe you can start hammering something every time they out their kids down for bed. :)

Be thankful you don't live in another country. I live in Japan and I haven't had an eight hour sleep since...shit maybe a handful of times in 4 years.

They have no Daylight Savings Time so the sun is up at friggin' 4:30 in the morning and the bloody chickens start crowing....yes, chickens. People are up doing their laundry, gardening, tree trimming at about 6am. Fuckin' assholes. I sleep with earplugs but it doesn't help that the walls of my building are about 2-3 inches thick.

If they weren't paying me so much with 8 weeks vacation, I would have been home 3 and a half years ago.

At least they are willing to let you do that much. The last two apartment places I have lived in pretty much told us to fuck off.

that is crappy, some people are very inconsiderate of others. I remember when I was renting a 2 bedroom apt. main floor and the bottom was rented to sweet older man. well he moved out and the owner of the house rented the basement apt to some young kids. well i came home for a long flight from a business trip for texas, got home at like 2 am, was asleep for about 1 hour and the kids come home from the bar and turn the music up. all most went to jail that night.:) music was never turned up again!

Definitely call the office, let them know the situation, and have them insist that the rights of all tenants should be respected.

Brian, your reactionary response to the loud kids (getting them sent to jail) is childish on your own part. Your long trip gives you no right to be rude nor to get the police involved. When you do that, you mess with a person's record. That's simply not civilized for a one-time deal. A far more civilized response would be to ask politely; remember the Golden Rule.

Except that's not what he said. Try reading it again.

well if you must know i shorten the story by about two pages worth of dribble......
1. i never called the cops, i was joking that i could have killed one of them that night, hence went to jail. i did however throw the one kid to the ground when he told me no he would not turn the music down. but my common sense said that it was better not to kill him.
2. i asked them once already that night before i almost strangled the kid.
3. oh and someone who plays loud music at 4 am on a work night or any other night does not need to be warned before someone once to call the cops. say 1am sure, but 4 am is just rude. i never called the cops cuz i wanted to sleep, not wait around for hours for the police to show up....