General Etiquette > Life...in general

How do I politely handle our inconsiderate neighbors?

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Chartreuse:
In the past five years, we've lived in our house.  Neighbors have come and gone, and unfortunately the ones that have stuck around are the ones that are in question.   :P

This family has absolutely no sense of consideration for anyone but themselves.  This is going to turn into a long vent, after five years of the same problems continuing on and on.

The moment that the weather warms up, their herd of kids hauls their movable basketball standard up against the curb, and uses the street as their own personal basketball court.  It'd be one thing, but it's the only entrance to this section of the subdivision.  While kids will be kids, these delightful kidlets have a problem with getting out of the street when there's oncoming traffic.  In fact, if you just happen to have the nerve to try to need to get to your house, the herd glares at you for daring interrupting their game time.  When they were 10ish, it wasn't so bad.  Now they're a bunch of teenagers and it's just gotten worse.  We've never seen the parents supervising the herd, with the exception of tossing them in the van and driving them locations.  In fact, back in the day it wasn't unusual to see both parents drive off and leave the young kids home outside playing ball for a few hours at a time (probably should have called CPS with that, I realize that now).  Now they've got teenagers that seem to rule that household.  I'm not easily scared by anyone, and those kids make me nervous.

The neglect of things in their care has extended to family pets.  For a period, they had a cat.  The cat "belonged to the kids" and the kids apparently couldn't afford to get it spayed, so they let Ms. Cat get pregnant and have kittens repeatedly.  For a good couple of years, there were black and grey cats all over this area of subdivision thanks to this family.  And even better, all those kittens that they claimed were their pets weren't being fed.  Every day, we'd have at least three kitties show up on our front porch with their ribs showing.  We did sneak some of the smaller kitties food, but the herd and Momma cat all disappeared.   >:(  When approached about the cats, they were pretty apathetic their care and condition.

Now they own a chihuahua/terrier mix.  The little terror barks most of the night.  He goes for people's ankles.  He chases cars.  They never tie him up or fence him in, they actively let him roam the neighborhood.  He thinks he's the boss of a two block area and treats it like such.  These neighbors actively watch the little twit's behavior and don't care.  They leave the house, and little twerp-dog is still running around making the rest of our yards pretty much unusable.

Now, after all this venting, these neighbors have been approached about everything up until the cursed dog.  They don't care.  And considering how their teenagers act most of the time, I worry about approaching them again about this kind of stuff for fear of retribution.  Other than calling the humane society, is there a better way to handle the dog situation? 

I hate my neighbors.

sotadragon:
Honestly, I think the humane society would be the best way to handle the dog situation.  Not only is the dog a terror, but your neighbor's treatment of the dog is cruel.  I'd definitely call the humane society.

I'm sorry you're having so many problems with the neighbors, that's a sticky situation.  I have a friend whose neighbors in the apartment building he lives in have a lot of domestic disturbances and drug use (as far as I know it's only marijuana) and he just calls the cops on them every time they get out of hand.  Of course, it works differently in an apartment setting since the cops will let management know what's going on and eventually the neighbors could be evicted for their bad behavior.  Wish I could give more/better advice.  :-\

Lexophile:
Yes, call the Humane Society. My DH and I live in a strictly controlled covenant subdivision because we had horrid neighbors for years at our first house. Really, the story is nightmarish. I completely understand the discomfort. Unfortunately, people with this mentality (that the whole world has to live by their terms) only understand it when you hit them in the pocketbook, and the only way to do that is make sure they get fined for their rotten behavior. We were very unpopular with our neighbors (to the point of being threatened several times) before we finally left, but they never went beyond words because we made sure they knew that the police were aware of the situation. I shiver to think about it today.

I don't get why some people must insist on such incredible social ineptitude. Judging from your avatar, I deduce that you would probably have no problems telling them to go away or you will taunt them a second time!!  ;)

Seriously, though. Call the Humane Society. If they don't care enough about the dog to shelter it properly, they certainly don't care enough to watch out for it when they are driving their van back down the street. People like that shouldn't be allowed to have pets.

mumma to KMC:
First of all, re: the little doggie...call your local animal control. It isn't safe for the dog to be out running the neighborhood. (People could get bitten or accidents could happen from people avoiding the dog.)

As far as the kids causing problems...keep the non-emergency number for your local police department handy. When the kids get out of hand (or won't move from the street) call the number and ask for a drive by. From my experience it helps. We had a neighbor who lived on the opposite corner from us who would have porch parties all day long. We aren't quite sure if drugs were involved but a bunch of shady people would stop by for a few minutes then leave. Instead of calling 911, I would call the non-er number and ask for a drive by and let the police decide what to do. I guess I wasn't the only one because soon the police were doing drive bys 5-6 times a day. (And their upstairs neighbor, a friend of ours, went to the police and met with a member of the drug task force, turns out they were watching the house for drug activity.) The landlord found out about the disturbance they were causing in the neighborhood and after a while they got evicted. (I think the actual reason was non payment of rent...but they landlords would come by and tell them they couldn't have their porch parties as the police were getting involved!)

Chartreuse:
Thanks.  I kind of figured as much, just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing something in there before taking that step in regards to the dog.

As for calling the cops in regards to the kids, our county's police force is stretched incredibly thin right now.  Response time is poor if at all for a lot of non-emergency things.  We (and other neighbors) have had to call the non-emergency line more than a few times thanks to noise complaints and another family that used to live near here.  :P  It's worth a shot, though I suspect from prior experience that it may get ignored.  It is a good idea, and I'll give it a shot.

And yes, if I happened to have a catapult and some barnyard animals handy, I'd love to use those neighbors as targets.  Others on the board have evil alter-egos, mine just happens to be played by John Cleese.   ;D

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