My neighbors are really pissing me off
by Mr. Brown on Jun.26, 2008, under Bull
I was at work today, captioning Professor Trahan’s family law class over at LSU, when I got a call from Jennie, which went something like this:
Tony! You know the naked girls next door? They’ve got one of those PODS things – Portable On Demand Storage – and they’re trying to put it in their driveway but its not fitting. The guy’s blocking our driveway and I can’t get out to go to work. They tried putting it in our driveway, but I ran out there and stopped them… I left with Ariane, so get home soon just in case they try it again! Love you!
Ugh… so I get home and I notice their POD is in front of their house, facing Europe St., on the sidewalk and city’s right of way. They totally destroyed a tree in front of the house with the POD… yes… they put the POD on TOP of a tree and SQUISHED IT.
These people REALLY piss me off. Their house has been raided by state police, they have a band over there at least twice a week practicing, they park on their neighbor’s lawn, they don’t maintain their yard (the grass is about 3 feet high), and rather than being responsible pet owners and walking their animals, they just let them out to roam the street (Their beautiful black lab got lost a couple of weeks ago, and has not been seen since).
Not to mention they leave their garbage can in the sidewalk, which blocks my view when backing out of the driveway – turning every trip out of the house into a SUICIDE MISSION since people come down our street at 50-70MPH (in a 25MPH zone).
They’re trashing up the fucking place. I live in a nice neighborhood (Beauregard Town) and all of our neighbors have historic homes, which they maintain and take care of. I’ve tried calling city government and 311 – they won’t do anything. I’m not even going to bother with my council woman (update: I did email her, lets see if she emails me back)
I believe it would be against the Code of Professional Conduct to go over there and burn down the house, so that option is out. They have also committed no crimes that I know of other than failing to maintain their lawn according to city ordinance and blocking the sidewalk – which no law enforcement agency is going to send somebody out for. Anybody have any ideas how I should handle this situation?
December 31st, 2008 on 3:37 pm
I do think that there are nuisance laws… Do contact the registered property owner because a lot of times an absentee owner hires someone to manage rentals and those people can care little more than to get a place filled ASAP and collect the rent… chances are that if the owner were renting out this place they would have cared more about who they rented to… also if they are absentee owners that may not have any idea about what is really going on over there. And even if they are doing the renting and management they could be given further info than they are able to glean from their vantage point ( afterall they probably aren’t staked out in front of the place to observe in the way a next door neighbor could). So contacting them could actually help a lot and even if they don’t respond at first, keeping on them with continued complaints can also influence them to move those people along, afterall if it is not kept up it can be considered to be “an attractive nuisence” exposing them to liability if others crash there and are at rish of getting caught in a house fire if it is a fire hazard inside, or if under aged kids are partying there, etc. Just stating that may also get the owner to sit up and pay attention. So at least write to them at the very least, if you don’t want the stress of speaking with the owners. But you can look up the name of the person who owns the place with the county town or city hall. That is a matter of public record. Good luck! I do sympathize!
December 31st, 2008 on 3:51 pm
About a week after I posted this, they moved out. A good family moved in next door and they’ve really spruced the place up!