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by CalabasasRenter
on Fri Apr 11, 2008 3:59 pm |
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Hello Everyone,
I am a new user, having just found this site in my Google search for resources to help me in my fight against a rabid neighbor who is making our lives (mine and my partner's) a living hell in the <sarcasm>wonderful City of Calabasas, CA</sarcasm>. I can't help but wonder if her attitude may have more to do with our being gay than our smoking, although it's just supposition on our part at this point in time.
We moved to an apartment in Calabasas in April 2006, just as their new "Comprehensive Second Hand Smoke Ordinance" took effect, but too late for me to do anything about. Had I known about it ahead of time, I would have chosen a different city to move to, but will little savings and being restricted to properties run by the same management company, I only had a few choices to select from and take advantage of a Coast-to-Coast relocation program that let us move closer to my new job without having to pay new app fees and deposits.
Everything was find for the first 1 year and 4 months we lived here. We live in a second story 2 bedroom unit, with a 2 bedroom unit downstairs that is only half the size of ours, and that neighbor (Jim) was a great neighbor. The only time he mentioned our smoking was one time that he mentioned that our smoke was coming out of our front window and drifting down to his open window, and we were more than happy to accomodate him by keeping that window closed so we did not inconvenience him. We enjoyed that amicable relationship with Jim for a year and a 1/4 until he moved out in July 2007 after some issues of his own with the management of the complex.
Next, in August 2007, came the Neighbor From Hell. We started from the day we met her to be friendly and neighborly, introducing ourselves, offering assistance, basically trying to be good neighbors. We were met with snobbery and a nose lifted so high, that we're surprised that she doesn't drown if she goes outside when it rains - assuming she doesn't melt first, that is. 
Within a week after she moved in, we started getting extremely loud music from her unit (which we had never before received from any of the other units in our 4-plex building) that was load enough to vibrate our walls and drown out our own tv volume and scare our cats, well after our complex's "Quiet Hours" started. We contacted the complex's security patrol on at least 3 separate occassions to complain, which resulted in their having to go to her door and ask her to turn down her music, since she had repeated refused to respond to our repeated polite requests in person to please lower the volume of her music, especially the bass, which was causing so much noise for us.
Amazingly, within a few days of our third complaint to the security company about her noise, she decided all of the sudden to start complaining to the manager about our smoking in our apartment three months after moving into the unit. Note that this was BEFORE Calabasas. Not only that, but she has deliberately been harrassing us with all sorts of things, like loud music, slamming doors and daily complaints of every sort of made up complaints to the manager, to the point that the complex now has a residence file for us that is over an inch thick of complaint letters from her about us. Also interesting is the fact that the Manager who received those letters chose not to report even a single one of those complaints to us, who told me personally that she considered them to be frivolous and not worth reporting or dealing with.
Strangely enough, after our last complaint about her noise to the Manager, the Manager and her staff actually went to inspect our neighbor's apartment. While they did indicate that there was a strong smell of smoke in her apartment (clearly the fault of the complex for having built it with interconnected air ducts and ventilation shafts) she amazing no longer has "any audio equipment in her unit capable of generating loud music of the sort that could generate the type of music of which we have been complaining. The odd thing about that is, when we did call security after 10 pm (the start of "Quiet hours" and they knocked on her door, the music magically stopped. Strange how that happened if she had nothing in the unit to generate that type of music, eh?).
Starting this couple of months, she has starting doing things bordering on the absurd, if not the criminal level.
After complaining about her excessive noise (again) to the office, she came up to our unit shouting at him to "quit making false claims against me" and that "you'll be sorry you messed with me" - while the complex manager was on the phone listening to the entire conversation (rant).
On 4/1, She decided to post an enflamatory note on her door (visible by anyone walking past on the sidewalk to the temporary leasing office setup in the sports courts in front our units during construction. The note made false claims that we had been "knocking on her door and running away, to harrass her at all hours of the day and night. Incidentally, we have written affadavits from the former occupant of that unit reporting that kids in the unit were doing the same "knock and run" tactics, which is one of the reasons he left the complex when his lease was up.
The next day, on 4/2, she posted another note, more insulting this time, saying that we were again knocking on her door and that our smoke smelled like open [rear anatomy] and so do we when we knock on her door.
After this second note, I complained personally to the Community Manager for Malibu Canyon Apartments, Rocio A. of AIMCO Properties (NYSE:AIV). She told me in no uncertain terms that she was "Tired of the feuding between the two of us, had no desire to be involved in the situation any longer, and that it was up to us to resolve the issue in Civil Court because they (AIMCO) would no longer be involved in anything to do with either party unless there was a clear violation of the complex rules or lease agreement. She was also the one that told me that the resident of this unit has been sending in DAILY complaints against us, even going so far as to claim that we walked by her on the sidewalk and deliberately blew smoke in her face as we passed by her, which is a complete and utter lie.
Yesterday, 4/10, the resident literally came up to our door (on a private stairway that accesses our door only and is not common access property for the complex) and shouted through the door to us that she had "Talked to her lawyer who confirmed that she could now sue us for "damaging her health due to our smoking and failure to properly ventilate our apartment to keep the smoke from entering her unit. You better turn on a fan and open your windows to clear the smoke, or I'm going to sue you for everything you are worth." She then followed that up with a complaint to the front office, who called us to ask us to please try to cleary the smoke from your apartment because the smoke is "pouring into her apartment excessively" due to our smoking, as well as yet another note on her door.
This morning, 4/11, we were both woke up by another person calling from the front office with the same complaint about us smoking "too much" and "forcing smoke into our downstairs neighbor's apartment." Only one problem with that - WE WERE BOTH STILL ASLEEP IN BED AND WERE WOKEN UP BY HIS PHONE CALL!!!! Not only that, but the bedroom window, which opens onto the parking lot behind our building and does not connect anywhere near her unit or windows, was open all night long and there was no smoke in the apartment!
Incidentally, I have been unemployed since 3/12 after a round of company layoffs and my partner is disabled with epilepsy, so is unable to work. We are living off my pitifull severance package and what little savings we have and the joke that the government calls Unemployment Insurance. We simply cannot afford to pay for high priced lawyers and legal fees at this point in our life. The "lady" downstairs, however, hasn't worked a day since she moved into the complex, and with the obvious silicon body parts that she sports flagrantly, she is clearly living off some form of alimony or unreportable income that probably makes her well afford to hire any of the Antis' do-gooder lawyers to trump up all sorts of "experts" to prove that we are causing her "bodily harm" by our smoking.
If all that wasn't bad enough, due to the complaints that this "lady" has been making against us and the conflict between the two of us, we received an official notice from the management company that they have decided to exercise their option to not renew our lease when it expires at the end of this month. While we have talked to the Manager, who told us verbally that there is nothing prejudicial about the action, it was only an attempt to get us to move to another unit that has no downstairs neighbors and separate us from the troublesome neighbor. Surprisingly, she was decent enough to at least extend us on our current least until the end of June. However, I have read the latest Calabasas law banning smoking in apartments, and it clearly says that residents who were smoking in their units as of 2/1/08 have the right to be grandfathered in their current units until they choose to move out and cannot be forced to move out or move to another unit just becaues of their smoking.
It seems to me, that if the apartments are so interconnected that our smoke is causing that much trouble to the neighbor, then it would be a responsibility of the complex owner to address the problems and retrofit the apartment to ensure that there is no way for smoke to move from one unit to the other. However, it also seems to me that we are the ones being harrassed here by her constant, made up complaints and libelous signs posted on her door falsely accusing us of things that we didn't do. But, because this is Calabasas, we are getting absolutely ZERO support from anyone in the city to help us resolve this issue legally.
So, I'm sorry to dump on everyone in my first post here, but I'm hoping someone here with your vast experiences can give us some pointers, maybe direct us to someone who can help us legally without charging an arm & a leg, or at least give us a direction that we can pursue legally to fight this [female dog]. If nothing else, it helps to finally get this off my chest to someone and maybe get some third-party input on the situation that someone might be able to give us some insight that we hadn't thought of before.
Thanks for your patience in reading this extremely long post, and you can be sure you'll be seeing a lot more of me in the future.
Bob in Calabasas |
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CalabasasRenter
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Joined: Apr 10, 2008
Posts: 10
Location: Calabasas, CA
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by CalabasasRenter
on Fri Apr 11, 2008 6:36 pm |
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I should point out (I forgot above) that the manager of the complex DID offer the offensive neighbor downstairs the option to move to another unit in the complex where there were no smokers twice - she refused both times. They also offered her the option to break her lease and move out of the complex free & clear with no penalties, which she again refused.
I have to wonder - why would someone who is "allergic" to smoke and "physically ill" from the effects of so-called SHS choose twice to ignore the offer to move to another unit and get away from this supposed "harassment" that she is having to "endure" on a daily basis?
Could there be ulterior motives here - like someone hoping to get a nice fat cow settlement from a lawsuit?
Hmmmm. |
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CalabasasRenter
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Joined: Apr 10, 2008
Posts: 10
Location: Calabasas, CA
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by I_Say_Take_away_Diet_Coke
on Mon Apr 28, 2008 10:17 pm |
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CalabasasRenter wrote: I should point out (I forgot above) that the manager of the complex DID offer the offensive neighbor downstairs the option to move to another unit in the complex where there were no smokers twice - she refused both times. They also offered her the option to break her lease and move out of the complex free & clear with no penalties, which she again refused.
I have to wonder - why would someone who is "allergic" to smoke and "physically ill" from the effects of so-called SHS choose twice to ignore the offer to move to another unit and get away from this supposed "harassment" that she is having to "endure" on a daily basis?
Could there be ulterior motives here - like someone hoping to get a nice fat cow settlement from a lawsuit?
Hmmmm.
Dude your problems go way past smoking, You seem to have issues. I didn't notice you asking to get out of you lease either pal.
You all deserve each other. The problem is I'm not sure who hates who more, you guys or her. Just move and avoid your own
ulterior motives and stop hers.
Now on to the real point.
As far as smoking is concerned, The 'pollution from fires is so bad, I can't believe anyone would even notice in California. |
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I_Say_Take_away_Diet_Coke
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