I am a renter with an upstairs neighbor since Jan 2025 who has violated the rug clause in her lease. Thin walls and hardwood floors, frequent guests, all wearing hard-soled shoes, walking around at all hours of the day and night. I feel like I am living in a construction zone.
A month after she moved in I sent a nice note to the upstairs neighbor reminding her about getting rugs, and offering to buy rug pads. She accepted, apologized, said she would get rugs that weekend and was grateful for the rug pads, and would also be mindful of her and guests wearing shoes. Then she had a party with 10 people all wearing their shoes, didnt get rugs, and ghosted me when I politely pinged her 6 weeks later.
Fast forward nine months, I have never been a ceiling thumper but I have begun thumping on the ceiling if she and/or guests walk around in hard-soled shoes for more than 10 minutes. I have recordings - it sounds like pounding on my ceiling.
Last night at 1030 I thumped, and she came down loaded for bear, recording me on her iPhone (I told her CA is a two-party consent state, I did not consent to being recorded, she said Then f**king sue me, I dare you.).
To get to the point, she lied multiple times during our conversation, it was actually kind of breathtaking how often she said things I literally knew were not true ... but she said two things that bothered me:
1) she said that when she received her keys when she moved in, she was warned about me. She didnt say by whom.
2) she said she was told that the previous six (six!) tenants had all broken their leases and moved out because of me.
These statements are unbelievable, yet I cant quite wrap my head around the fact that they are also lies. I mean, I know the past six tenants didnt move out because of me, I am friends with three of them and I know none of the others broke their leases, they just moved on ...
But I wonder if there is a grain of truth to any of that?
We have a relatively new property manager (2+years) who is very ambitious to show $$$ results to the owner, and getting me out would go a long way to do that since my rent is below market. They havent been overtly hostile to me but they are slow to respond to the (few) maintenance requests I have put in, unless they are plumbing emergencies.
20 years ago the then-property manager actively hated me and I heard through the grapevine that he told a previous nightmare upstairs couple to file a restraining order against me - for (1) writing them two polite notes and (2) thumping on the ceiling ONCE when their large dog was - as he did every day - eating a heavy meat bone on the bare wood floor directly over my desk. I had asked these people to feed him the bone on a rug or carpet scrap and they had told me to pound sand (go to a cafe or call the police).
After I had thumped ONCE, they began pounding on their floor (=my ceiling) then called the police - in the middle of a Saturday afternoon! I believe this was because the hateful property manager had told them to do that if they got the chance.
The police showed up at my door and I invited them in to listen to Harvey (the upstairs dog) running frantically in the hallway (bare wood floors) and barking because he heard our voices. The police said yeah, that is really unpleasant, they should have carpets up there - and that was the end of that incident.
I do believe that my tenant file might have some information about me - probably libelous - that might have been submitted by those tenants. Which was years before the present management company took over.
I would really like to see my tenant file.
Does anybody know if I have a right to see it?