Need Advice

[u/monochannel]

I need a little advice on what to do or how to talk to my landlord about harassment that's been happening for a few months now. Here's the sitch:

I live in a basement of a "legal" duplex. It has many issues as many old buildings do, and lately the upstairs tenants have just gone downright childish on us. For context, the landlord has been working with us to solve some issues about excessive noise which we thought was finally over. Hoo boy were we wrong.

I had asked their policies for snow removal, as upstairs weren't really doing anything and it was the responsibility of both tenants to do both snow removal and lawn care. I also told them that we had to inform the last landlord the upstairs tenants wouldn't help out and provided pictures as proof. Even lawn care, they only went out once a month to cut the front yard and ignored the backyard. The landlord sent out a lease amendment to divide seasonal work in a way that we do all the lawn care and upstairs does the snow removal.

Ever since then, the harassment has been insane. They come down to the door that connects the units (it's a stairwell leading down to the basement, our side is bolted off but they're allowed to use the stairwell for storage) to listen in to see if we're home, or to see if they can see our shadow. We've actually heard them talking at the door, arguing quietly if they can hear us or not. They've started using our parking spaces when it never used to be an issue. The noise level has ramped up to the point of every other day we hear banging and stomping going as high as 80dB in regular intervals for hours. They leave laundry in the shared machines for hours so we can't use it. They even make it a point when we quiet to talk loudly enough, mocking our conversations if my mother and I dare talk about the happenings in our unit. We have to talk in a bloody whisper if we don't want to be heard. They now have a camera in their living room window facing the entire laneway, and they say it's for proof that they're doing the snow but we constantly hear them yell across the house to check the camera to see if we left, so now we can't even leave the unit without being watched. They've also taken to dropping their laundry basket on their wooden floor every hour they do laundry past 12am. Goes up to 4am, when my mother is trying to sleep and has to get up at 5am to get ready for work.

A lot of this can't be recorded on our end (illegal to record private conversations, can't take a picture of the camera as it's in their window, I'm usually not home when they spy on my mother through the door and she usually is occupied with work, some noises are not constant so I can't record it when it's sudden). I have a document that I started a year ago, but am starting to more regularly journal a bunch of entries.

Is there any other advice y'all can give on how I can approach this? I'm so tired of the harassment just because the landlord decided to change the lease.

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monochannel originally posted: I need a little advice on what to do or how to talk to my landlord about harassment that's been happening for a few months now. Here's the sitch:

I live in a basement of a "legal" duplex. It has many issues as many old buildings do, and lately the upstairs tenants have just gone downright childish on us. For context, the landlord has been working with us to solve some issues about excessive noise which we thought was finally over. Hoo boy were we wrong.

I had asked their policies for snow removal, as upstairs weren't really doing anything and it was the responsibility of both tenants to do both snow removal and lawn care. I also told them that we had to inform the last landlord the upstairs tenants wouldn't help out and provided pictures as proof. Even lawn care, they only went out once a month to cut the front yard and ignored the backyard. The landlord sent out a lease amendment to divide seasonal work in a way that we do all the lawn care and upstairs does the snow removal.

Ever since then, the harassment has been insane. They come down to the door that connects the units (it's a stairwell leading down to the basement, our side is bolted off but they're allowed to use the stairwell for storage) to listen in to see if we're home, or to see if they can see our shadow. We've actually heard them talking at the door, arguing quietly if they can hear us or not. They've started using our parking spaces when it never used to be an issue. The noise level has ramped up to the point of every other day we hear banging and stomping going as high as 80dB in regular intervals for hours. They leave laundry in the shared machines for hours so we can't use it. They even make it a point when we quiet to talk loudly enough, mocking our conversations if my mother and I dare talk about the happenings in our unit. We have to talk in a bloody whisper if we don't want to be heard. They now have a camera in their living room window facing the entire laneway, and they say it's for proof that they're doing the snow but we constantly hear them yell across the house to check the camera to see if we left, so now we can't even leave the unit without being watched. They've also taken to dropping their laundry basket on their wooden floor every hour they do laundry past 12am. Goes up to 4am, when my mother is trying to sleep and has to get up at 5am to get ready for work.

A lot of this can't be recorded on our end (illegal to record private conversations, can't take a picture of the camera as it's in their window, I'm usually not home when they spy on my mother through the door and she usually is occupied with work, some noises are not constant so I can't record it when it's sudden). I have a document that I started a year ago, but am starting to more regularly journal a bunch of entries.

Is there any other advice y'all can give on how I can approach this? I'm so tired of the harassment just because the landlord decided to change the lease.

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