AIBU or is my neighbour?

Cabbagesandcustard · 2014-07-18 13:32:35

We live in a terraced house and have a generally good relationship with our elderly neighbour who has lived in the street forever. That said, she's bit "odd" and very private: there are some fairly serious hoarding issues going on and I have never once been invited even to step into her hallway in the fifteen years we've lived here, despite the fact that I regularly pay her to come in and feed our cats when we're away. At the end of April I noticed a damp patch about 2ft x 1ft appearing in my bedroom, high up on the party wall where our house abuts hers. I mentioned it to her and she seemed keen to get it looked at, although she admitted due to the corresponding bedroom in her house being "completely full of things", she didn't actually know whether there was any sign of damp on her side of the wall. I then asked my builder to come and have a look at the roof - his diagnosis was that the cement fillet where her tiles hit her side of the parapet has pieces missing and needs replacing, plus we should do some repointing along the shared parapet: about £650 worth of work in total (which I was relieved about as frankly her roof is in a pretty poor state overall and I was worried that no builder would want to touch it. Our roof, in contrast, is pretty well maintained.) We have offered to pay half, which my builder describes as "more than generous" as at least two thirds of the required work is on her side, but she is now stalling, telling me two months in a row that she "can't afford to do it this month" because of another large expected bill. I'm now hanging on on the chance she "might be able to afford to do it later in the summer". If she wants to get her own quote from somewhere cheaper elsewhere, she's of course free to do so, but she hasn't. While her insurance company might pay out for water damage to my decor, (I haven't even got so far as that far yet and probably will just leave it even though it has made a brown stain on the painted wall and has caused the about 9sq feet of plaster to "blow" off my bedroom wall meaning that it is only held on by the lining paper.), of course they won't pay for normal wear and tear to an unmaintained elderly roof, so no chance of them sorting it out for her. I feel really bad for her: she's 80, is on her own with no family and I think has some fairly serious health problems which may affect her longevity and I do understand that she'd probably rather not spend loads of money on her house at her age and state of health. BUT I really do want to get this fixed before the autumn when it starts raining again and gets worse - and I think she has a responsibility to us to address this problem and not just leave it. What bothers me is that she spends a lot on mail order items (I know because I take parcels in for her) and regularly puts whole van-fulls of stuff into storage - this is not a cheap thing to do in the long term, so there must be some money around. It's not like I'm talking thousands of pounds here: I only need her to find £330! What would you do? -Give her a fixed deadline to get the work done (or what consequence ? - not sure of the legal standing here) -Involve the insurance company and see what they say (we have legal cover). I don't want to go down a legal route of forcing her to get it done as I don't want to fall out with her / upset her. -Lend her the money to get the work done (really don't want to do this as it sounds like a recipe for arguments and anyway, she might die before she pays us back!) -Pay for the whole lot ourselves (but why on earth should I pay for repairs to her roof, and in any case, I would still need her consent to get the work done.) Interested to hear how you would approach this and if anyone knows whether one has a legal responsibility to maintain ones own home so it doesn't damage someone else's....

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AIBU?

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Hello. The OP has recently become concerned that there is info in this thread that could identify her IRL - we've therefore agreed to take it down for her.