Thread: Neighbor Invades my Privacy

Hi

I am frustrated at the moment. Have you ever seen the movie "Duplex" with Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore? It's a black comedy where Ben and Drew are constantly being dupped by their sweet and innocent elderly tenant. They are constantly made the bad guy, and the tables always turned. It's a situation of being very frustrated.

That's my situation, only I'm a tenant and what I'm dealing with is the owner of the property next door.

I rent an apartment (duplex) and have been here for close to 10 years. I am one of the only people (both renters and owners) who takes pride in my yard. I have flowers, rose bushes, an herb garden and a few container veggies. I do what I can to keep the place looking nice, so this is not a situation where the place is awful and we're bums. It's a nice neighborhood, but there are a lot of rentals, and renters don't *do* things to their place except live. So I'm already going over and above. You should see my gorgeous roses out front! Passersby compliment me all the time.

However since I rent, I only go so far with things I'll do here. I don't climb the tree and trim it, etc., because it's dangerous. The landlord does very, very little and that's how it's always been with this property, even before we got here. But my husband and I have really brought the place along. Many people who don't know us think we own the place because we take responsibility for it. I even water the grass religiously.

We have a gardener who is paid by the (offsite) landlord to take care of the lawn. He and I kind of work together. He is paid a flat amount so I pick up the slack on the more cosmetic things so things look nice.

The duplex next door has an onsite landlord. She lives in the back unit. She's nosy and I feel she invades our privacy continually. Besides spying on us through her windows (I know this because I feel I'm being watched and have actually caught her a few times), she has actually come into our yard to trim our bushes in the past. Now, the old gardener who was here at the time, wasn't doing a very good job, so I let that situation slide off my back, although I was quite annoyed by having someone trespass and whack away at the bushes/shrubs in my yard.

Since then, I know she instructs the new gardener on what to do in our yard every now and then. I should mention that she insists upon hiring the same gardener as us. When the old lazy one was fired, she fired him too and hired our new gardener. So catches the gardener in the middle and is very convincing at getting people to do what she wants them to do.

While she gives him the gardener orders for her yard, she throws in things like "tear out that Juniper in front of their house." (Not exact words). And he did. It did not go through the landlord - he actually, slowly but surely, piece by piece dismantled the shrub in the front on her command.

This sounds weird, I know. That's because it is and probably why I feel so annoyed. Part of it comes from our landlord who takes no responsibility for the property, so I'm on my own here.

I've had conversations with the gardener instructing him to take our instructions - period. He's to do what we want, etc., not what the neighbors want. He's a nice guy, but meek and probably doesn't want to make waves, etc. - or lose any accounts.

Anyway, last week we were gone for a few days, returning on Wednesday. We were not home when the gardener was here.

Saturday, I was in the backyard, looked up the hill and noticed that six feet of landscaping was missing, leaving a gaping hole in the hedge in back of our house, creating a spot that is not only unsightly, but completely removes the privacy barrier from the house in back. We live in an area where the houses are close together, and since we're at the bottom of a steep hill, this is a real issue for me.

Either she duped the gardener into hacking our shurbs, or she was over here in our yard while we were gone.

Either way - whether she told him to do it or whether she did it herself, I feel violated. This has got to be illegal in some way.

In the past, she has made it known that we are "less important" because we don't pay property taxes. Although we pay premium rent, we're good people and our place looks better than most on the street. (!!)

Examples of other things she's done, just so there's no misunderstanding what we're dealing with here: Last fall, she kept bringing our garbage cans in before we got home from work. This means she had to go into our backyard to put them away - through a latched gate. It was creepy. I've caught her in my backyard walking around. She's also used a ladder to climb up the fence in back and look over. She made a big stink over our bird feeder as a result and we had to take them down. She said she was getting bird mites on her patio. That bird feeder had been empty for months.

I've told her to stop these things because it made me feel uncomfortable. I was being nice, because in actual fact, she makes me feel unsafe.

Between you and me, when she's on her rampages and doing her thing like this, her actions make me feel "stalked" and my privacy violated.

She is quite arrogant, if you've ever heard of a neighbor like that. Again, I'm the one person on the street who takes care of things, and her actions are insulting.

I would like to know what my rights are and what I can do to stop her from invading our privacy like she does. This thing she did while we were gone has me pretty upset right now. We only left because we were in danger (So Cal wildfires) and to have someone take advantage and trespass, etc., leaves me feeling very creeped out and upset.

The area we live in is very difficult to easily move. It is as much as a down payment on a mortgage to do so, although I will probably do that regardless.

It would just make me feel better knowing what I can do about it, if anything.

Thank you.

I think you can take some action against your neighbour.