My horrible neighbours are back, feel desperate

[lifeonmars100]

This isn't really an AIBU more a "how the hell am I going to cope"

in the Summer of 2022 the horrible house next door to me was sold at auction and I was initially so relieved thinking that someone had bought it and was going to do it up. It had gone to rack and ruin over the past 6 years or so wiht a bad landlord, a horrible tenant who was rude to everyone who asked him to tackle the broken fences, the brambles and massive buddleia that took over the tiny back yard and encroached into the communal entry making it very difficult to get bins in and out. Oh was I happy when the house was sold. New landlord arrived and spent 4 days whitewashing it and then the same weekend the new tenants arrived. They are Roma and they live a very alternative life style which is the best way to express how they are. They have filled the back yard with scrap, they broke the communal gate which I paid to replace, they then broke that, they broke into my back yard and took my bin, went through my gardening box, they shout and yell til about 2am. They used my address to claim benefits, take out a phone contract and open a bank account, I found this out when I started getting all the debt collection letters, they used my address to register a female child in school and then took her out of school and the attendance officer came to my home looking for her. I guess they managed to do all the fraud stuff by using the correct ID for their address and then saying they had moved. Anyway that is just a snapshot of the hell, there is the flytipping, the constant noise, ask them politely to keep it down and they swear at me, they chuck bin bags out on the street. I cannot use my back yard due to the constant noise, I used to have a pretty little garden out there but have given up now. This winter they must have had a blocked drainage pipe which they then tampered with and all their bath water was running out into my yard! Reported all the issues to the council who did an inspection and said there were "significant issues" and they were taking action. That was nearly 20 months ago! Suddenly at the start of December 2024 they vanished, all the curtains went, all the furniture went and I thought they had done a runner and was so relieved. My mental health began to improve, I felt relaxed at home, I enjoyed Christmas and even began to think about doing up my back yard for the Summer. Tonight I saw lights on, hear shouting and see that they or other friends/family are back. Feel hopeless and depressed, can't afford to move and anyway who would buy my house other than another slum landlord? guess I am just venting as i am so upset . I have made numerous reports to the council and to the police (forgot to say they were doing what looked like drug dealing for a while, people knocking on the door and small packages and cash being exchanged) it is a row of terraces that open onto the street so things are very visible. Feel hopeless, they made my life wretched and now they are back. It is a two up two down and they sometimes have as many as 10 adults in there, last year I caught them just about to take my mothers day flowers off the step, they called me a "mother fucking cunt" when I have asked them not to shout all the time.When it is really bad I have to wear earplugs in the kitchen In despair about having to endure it all over again.

@TellYourSugargliderISaidHi think OP is talking about properties owned by her LL in which case he already does own hers.

If you can get to a situation where you fear for your life - eg evidence of threatening behaviour and then report THAT to police I can’t believe the police will stand by -headlines would read Police ignored pleas from terrified pensioner and ignored them and the police will NOT want that.

May I suggest

1. Report everything to everyone at once, Police, HMRC, Social Services, Environment Agency, Environmental Health etc etc
2. Have a look at the Selective Licensing scheme to see what rules have been broken and frame a complaint in relation to that
3. Request an Anti Social Behaviour Case Review
4. Complain about the handling of your issues
5. After point 4 go to The Ombudsman

Good luck!

Completely agree. The issue is not Roma people but the fact the government appears to be very passive about anti social behaviour.

We need a complete crackdown of it. I don’t like living in the UK partly because I dont feel people are considerate of shared spaces and it’s definitely getting worse. I don’t live in a rough area but still I’ll frequently see dog poo that hasn’t been cleaned up for example or litter.

I lived in a new build flat in south London ,
big flashy complex with its own gym and cafe but it was awful. There would be rubbish left in the stairwells where people had used the stairs instead of the lift to take their bins out, the smell of weed was so strong it would hit me every time I left my house or sometimes even when I was in my house and it was just increasingly grimy.

Well yes we moved to a “nice middle class”area. Lived here 16 years. Not ONE issue with neighbours. People here know how to behave.

Sorry but my lived experience drains away any left wing “be kind” feelings. Easy to have virtue signal when you are not the one living next door to it.

Yeah the apartment building I lived in would have very few benefit claimants it would have been mainly professional middle class students and young solo professionals and couples with a few young families. Rent was £1400 for a one bed flat and more for 2/3 beds of course so housing benefit wouldn’t cover that.

I didn’t get the impression that many people who lived there was rough.

They just didn’t take pride in shared areas maybe because a lot of it was rented and they intended to leave soon but also because I feel that’s a common attitude in Uk nowadays.

There was a rooftop garden that I didn’t go to because I was constantly getting emails - that went out to everyone - reminding people about cleaning up after their dog. So it was clearly a recurring issue. The prospect of going up and sitting next to dog shit put me off.

The only clean shared space there was the gym.

I’d have hated to own a flat there, I’m glad I only rented.

There’s way more riff raff in the cheap areas, let’s face it. Much more.

I know loads of beggars who aren’t actually homeless.
None of them are Roma.

I met one Roma woman who was genuinely homeless but she worked for the big issue and was doing evening classes.
She was not rude or lazy, she was working hard to try and change her circumstances.

There have been multiple threads about awful neighbours on here over the years.
I think this is the first one about Roma people.

Some Roma people are twats.
Just like every other race, culture, demographic.

You have no idea what Roma means, that's obvious.

TheaBrandt: 'Easy to virtue signal when you are not the one living next door to it'.

You are correct Thea. The people who are so afraid of 'Hurty Words' never mention the poor person who's life has been made a living nightmare by this.

This country is in a mess because people have become too afraid to call a spade a spade. It's all about the poor oppressed perpetrators.

Good point and well worth reminding people that a variety of people were targeted in the real life horror that was the Holocaust, including Roma.

You can see exactly what happens when people are confronted with this on their doorsteps. Poor OP's experience is so illustrative of the problem. Their lives become intolerable, they feel like strangers in their own community, they cut their losses, they sell up, the house is scooped up by some scummy greedy landlord, and the owner moves out of the city or the suburb to a place less affected (for now) by the realities of mass uncontrolled immigration. It's been happening all over London for the past 20 years.

We had some truly awful neighbours. The house next door is a rental and we started with a bunch of male students.
Polite, respectful, would tell us when they wanted to have a house party so the kids could sleep on the other side of the house, always shut their parties down by 1am.
Then they moved….it was such a sad day when the new neighbours moved in. We got an elderly couple, the wife looked at us like we were lower than shit on her shoe and the husband just made our lives absolute hell on earth. Applying for planning permission to build over the garage (like our neighbours to match) and they had a shit fit. Landlord had no problem, so planning permission went ahead.
They moved the ladder so the builders got stuck, they were caught unscrewing scaffolding, our budgie escaped into their garden and they wouldn’t let us rescue her, reports to social services, reports about the bins, reports about parking outside our own damn house. We had a good friend who was a driving instructor who would sometimes use our cars to practise parallel parking and they complained that he “picked” on them by never using their car…
They were a NIGHTMARE! Eventually the landlord told them to leave because the complaints were way too much.

We had a good friend who was a driving instructor who would sometimes use our cars to practise parallel parking and they complained that he “picked” on them by never using their car…

@ToffeePennie Sorry but that made me laugh, absolutely bonkers!

Oh they were totally nutty.
Before DH was DH, he used to drive to visit me and parked on our driveway. Because it was an “unrecognised” car to them, they called a tow company. The company showed up and we’re having a HUGE argument outside with them because they refused to tow a car off our drive. They are ridiculous people.
I really hope this shows OP she’s not alone on the bonkers neighbour front!!

Are you attempting irony here? Your assumptions are purely yours.

Well we all know who the last person who thought that way was.

OP, your situation is horrible and I really sympathise. I hope you can resolve it.

Its a pity that your thread has attracted the ignorant and racist.

Why? What has that to do with the behaviours exhibited by this particular social group which are creating an intolerable environment for the OP? Can they not be criticised because of historical injustices no matter how miserable they’re making people? Most people already know that multiple cultural and social groups were persecuted by the Nazis. Totally irrelevant to this thread but a chance to dish out a mini lecture will never be missed by some I guess,

There's a subreddit called 'Professional Revenge'.

This would fit.

There is quite some difference between thinking people you don’t like for spurious reasons should be round up and murdered, and believe that people who move to another country and cause nothing but problems there should be deported.

So what about all of the people going through what OP is going through or worse but their neighbours aren’t Roma?

Is being Roma an excuse?
Or should individuals be judged harsher if they are Roma?
Are you saying you would have less sympathy for OP if these were a different family?

Surely the behaviour should be called out and acted on, regardless of whether they are Roma or not.

Are you saying we should ban all Roma people?
Even though there are plenty of posters who’ve said they’re Roma or know Roma people and think what OP is going through is awful.

Not one person on here has said that what OP is going through isn’t awful.
Most of the posts have tried to give OP advice or given their sympathies.

Not one person has condoned what the neighbours are doing.

But you cannot say an entire demographic of people behave this way because that’s simply not true.

It’s the same lines people used when segregation ended and black people were allowed to use swimming pools and attend mixed schools.

Ask all of the people on here about their nightmare neighbours and you will see it’s not a Roma people issue.
There are dickheads everywhere and more needs to be done to stop such anti-social behaviour.

It’s always worth pointing out as many people do NOT know Roma were also a target in the Holocaust.

People can be criticised as individuals, my idiot neighbour let her dog jump up on me despite me asking her not to and another one let their dog piss in the elevator.

Me and some other neighbours managed to complain about them and get the problem solved without focusing on or mentioning the fact they’re white british.

So yes OP should complain about her selfish and disgusting neighbours, and as I’ve said upthread action should be taken and it’s pathetic that the UK allows so much anti-social behaviour generally.

However the way some people are talking about “those people” as one big group that all behave like this is the kind of language that helped facilitate Roma and other groups to be rounded up in the 1940s and Holocaust aside just treated poorly.

It is stigmatising , unfair and inaccurate - it also misses the wider picture which in this case is that so much anti-social behaviour from people with a range of backgrounds is allowed to go unchecked. The UK needs to get a grip on this problem irrespective of ethnicity or nationality.

That’s crazy! 😂I first read that as your partner parked on their driveway but if it was your drive way what was their issue? Why would they even care who parked there if their car wasn’t being blocked? Whose first response is to call a row company - that’s something you see in movies 😆

I’m glad they are no longer your neighbours! I sometimes wonder how couples like that find each other, did they love each others crazy or was one normal then was influenced by the other?

But I did, I am supposedly virtue signalling (I.e. expressing disagreement with racist hostile generalisations against an entire much stigmatised ethnic group) but I did live in a majority Roma area for years and literally next door(adjacent flat) to a Roma family. So I'm not doing it from a distance. The racism of the white middle class neighbours would never have been applied to the south Asian or Black people in the area. There appears to be some reasoning in the UK where it's 'ok' to be racist towards Roma and other traveller communities. If these opinions were expressed towards Jewish people for example, there would be uproar. Anonymous forums really bring out the ugliest in people sometimes. I'm disappointed in MN today for this.

I mentioned their ethnicity because they do not speak any English other than through a couple of the young teenage males who do not go to school and act as the family communicator and also because culturally they tend to take female children out of school. This impacted on me as they had used my address to register a girl child at school and then removed her and the attendance officer came to my house.