Harassed by elderly neighbours

[Puppytrashedmysofa]

My daughter lives on a mews with mostly elderly neighbours.Right from the start she has been harassed by three of them. Letters through her door about parking in visitors spaces , pathetic comments about what she is doing e.g smoking on her doorstep , being stared at when back from work.Her former direct neighbours about her age had the same ,but left quickly.
I'm at a loss what to do as a father.She is now looking for another rental because of it. One of them harassing is head of the residents committee, another owns two houses in the Mews.
I was helping my daughter last week and even though I pretended to not hear her ,she kept calling me , when I turned she made a pathetic comment about my car.
This is really frustrating because my daughter is a real sticker at things , wanting to move so soon is just not like her.

Thanks but I don't think she has done anything that bad to apologise for.I did think of the staring back myself but not sure if it would make things worse.

My daughter isn't good at confrontation. She said to me the other day that if only they knew what my job was.She has a senior role for supporting people of a certain age that she has received many great reports from her Directors as to how great at her kindness and motivation to her residents and staff she is.

I guess it's a no win situation.

I thought about the police at one point

But surely this is your daughter’s issue to sort, not yours? She needs to either suck it up, fight it out or move out. Why are you involved?

Parents don’t stop caring about their children as soon as they become adults. They often support them through difficult times. Who knew?

The extent of the parent’s ‘involvement’ so far is asking for ideas as to how his daughter might deal with a difficult situation, on a board called ‘Parents of adult children’.

HTH

This is quite a long way from harassment, but I do think your dd needs to brush it all off and just carry on about her business, being as considerate as possible. I'm not in the camp of "she's an adult, let her fight her own battles", what is the point of family if we can't have each other's backs, but that's not to say you should be tacking elderly people on their doorsteps either.

You sound so defeated but by the sounds of it neither of you have done anything to resolve it.

Be adults and go round and talk to them. Whats the worst that could happen? They continue to be rude? So what that's already happening anyway. It's unlikely to escalate if you remain calm and polite.

Sounds a nightmare. My neighbours looked down on me when I moved in. They were all couples and I was a single parent. I think they are a bunch of wannabe hyacinths. I laugh that they look down on me. But, not to minimise your daughter's experience... it sounds awful.
With neighbours like this, you need to very direct. "Good evening Geoffrey, good evening Irene. Oh, this also bothers you? I feel like you need to let me know about everything little thing I do that bothers you!".

I know your daughters grown adult but to hell with it, can you not go round to these people houses and have it out with them?
they sound cowardly sending harassing letters, people like that back down if you confront them face to face.

She needs to flip this around on them and make their life hell.

presumably she is young so could she agree to host her friends every weekend for parties etc?

Is she up early for work? Might be the perfect time to knock on the neighbours door and complain about something?

Do some of them live alone? Might be worth putting notes through their door telling them she is watching what they are doing and isn’t happy with them.

Parking is always an issue in a street where people have to share, so she may need to just accept that one. What was the issue with the smoking? Smell annoying them or just didn’t look good?

What does the landlord say about this?

To be fair, if you've just moved somewhere parking in the wrong place, smoking on the doorstep and having an overgrown front garden are exactly the kind of thing to get residents talking.

Your daughter is either going to have to conform, make friends of her new neighbours, grow a thick skin or move.

Parking in the wrong place. It's justifiable to point this out

I'm confused. You say she doesn't have a garden to smoke in yet the neighbours have put leaves in front of her car ?

If she does have a garden legally if something overhangs another's property they can cut it but legally they have to return the cut offs to them so perhaps that's what they did.

It's horrible having someone smoke under your window.

She doesn't sound terribly considerate

Moving seems extreme. Could she not just follow the rules re parking and maintaining her garden? Smoking on her doorstep is tacky. Surely she has a list of the community rules?

She does follow parking rules now after discussion with her landlord at the beginning after the letter..She has no where else to smoke just a 4 by 4 metre strip of garden in front with her porch.Her bedroom is above.It would have to waft a long way , but this wasn't a problem anyway. There were no lists ..its a gated Mews with about 20 houses.

Do the rules allow smoking in the strip of garden?
If they do then she should carry on smoking out there.
If they don't then she should stop smoking out there.

Smoking, especially anywhere near anyone else is just vile. I wouldn't hesitate to complain about smoke if I could smell it in my house/garden.

Tell her to park in the right place.

🙄

Her garden is stand alone, doesn't overhang.I help her with the cutting back when asked.Last time i was there it really wasnt that bad but the neighbour still walked sideways passed it with a large gap between her and the bush just to make some i dont know....Thanks but she has an extremely stressful job.Ive tried to get her to stop.

I guess talking to the head of residents when another incident occurs is the majority view.I'll talk to her but she's very independent and I don't like to invade her space unless asked for help

Have you spoken to the landlord or landlady? What are they like? I'm sure they too would not like the hassle of looking for new tenants. Does your daughter live there just with her daughter? I bet these neighbours see her as easy fodder and are just looking for ways to bully and intimidate her.

The landlord is at fault for not explaining how things work there. If she tows the line from now on, most of the neighbours will probably cease to have a problem with her. But for some, she'll probably always be the one who smokes on her doorstep, parks in the wrong place and doesn't maintain her garden.

Honestly, in your daughter's shoes I would carry on living my life and not pay attention to these people and their letters, sniping and staring. People who get that worked up about the state of someone else's garden aren't going to become reasonable decent neighbours whatever she does, so as long as I wasn't breaking any actual rules I would chalk this up to living near eejits and ignore them.

When I had an apartment, there was a list of what you could and could not do. There is always someone just waiting to complain if you 'break the rules' and sometimes if is just easier to go along with them.

It could be the person who had the apartment first did not park in visitor bays, maintained their garden and did not smoke. So if your daughter is already breaking three of the rules it will not be a good start.

I have similar neighbours, one once told me my garden would be improved with a shopping trolley and an old tyre on it 😂
I just laugh it off. After a year they soon realised I could be useful such as mowing the verges when the council stopped doing it and having a chat.
We're all friends now.

Thanks this is great advice. I'll quote this word for word , see how things go.Leave it to her decide.She laughed it off at first but occasionally I can tell she finds it hard to deal with.I'm hoping eventually she finds a new place.I'm not that confident that doorstepping neighbours is really the way to go.

These people have far too much time on their hands. I feel like they’re trying to intimidate her because they know she’s a nice girl (although doesn’t live exactly as they’d like) and therefore a soft touch. If she truly were a nightmare neighbour as they’re implying, they would be too frightened of her to be constantly engaging like this! I don’t like smoking either but I wouldn’t dream to tell someone what they could or couldn’t do on their own porch. Her garden is a little overgrown? Big deal! She has the audacity to have friends who visit her and accidentally parked in the wrong space once? Oh no. She even has a JOB? God, who does she think she is?!

I think your daughter (and any family / friends who visit and witness this) need to laugh at them and show how ridiculous she thinks they are, and that their attempts to control her behaviour will not work.

This all sounds a bit annoying but pretty trivial. Obviously moving into a mews type property people are a bit on top of each other, and jostling for things like parking, fresh air and noticing any overgrown foliage, but it's pretty average in the scheme of things. Can't she just tell them to get a grip if they make petty remarks to her and walk away? Moving out seems pretty drastic.

😁