So our neighbors have been a growing problem for a few months now. They seem to be a flop house for six or seven people, most of them look high all day. They go out and Rev a Harley at 3am, they burn plastic been our houses in a fire pit, they have a new dog every two weeks because they keep getting out and getting hit by traffic in the busy street we live on, the current two have bit people. I’m not one to care how someone lives, but these folks make the rest of our slum neighborhood look downright utopian.
I’ve tried taking to them, they’re stupidly hostile. I’ve put in complaints with the city, noise complaints with the police, they don’t do anything about it. Does anyone have advice on dealing with this? I’m tired, at my wits end, and my small town tactics aren’t as easy to pull off in a proper city.
I understand your frustration with shitty neighbors. Really. Esp. since I lived on the west side of Chicago and had to deal with all of the nonsense that comes with it. (Although, honestly, the local gang wasn’t too bad; as long as you weren’t fucking with them and weren’t a customer, they left you alone. Overall they seemed mostly like they were just trying to get by.)
But the problem is, where do you draw a line? Yes, OPs neighbors sound like antisocial assholes, based on how I perceive people, and how I live my own life. But if OP was a religious fundamentalist, then they would be framing things like an LGBTQ+ couple having a pride flag in the same kind of way, and claim that it was causing them the same distress to have obviously non-straight neighbors that were ‘forcing their gay lifestyle on him’, or were ‘grooming children’. And it’s quite reasonable to claim that flying a pride flag on your own property, or having a garden party with your LGBTQ+ friends on your own property, is a case where your neighbors shouldn’t have any say at all over your conduct.
I don’t like using concepts like ‘common values’ or ‘community values’ on things like this, because that’s a very steep and slippery slope to redlining neighborhoods and institutional racism/sexism/etc. So I try to look for bright lines that you can apply in all circumstances. And it seems to me that, once you can point to a real, direct harm, then you have a solid case that it’s reasonable to take action.
This one bothers me personally as well, because it causes real, proven harms to the environment. Yeah, the individual effect is small, but the failure to enforce emissions laws in general–or to toughen them–is killing us.