Horrible new neighbour
I have lived in my house for 14 years, my husband has been there with me for 13 of them, and we have a tween child. We’ve been through 4 neighbours in the house just east of us in that time. The newest ones moved in last August. The girlfriend seems nice, the teen daughter is a typical teen, but the boyfriend is just awful.
Within 2 days of moving in, they had people in my large tree, which is growing in the back corner, and has been there for longer than I have. Our city has a tree protection bylaw stating you need a permit to cut branches off large trees, so they were 100% in the wrong as they cut several limbs off it. I let it go, and I shouldn’t have.
Since then, he has obsessively cut branches and whole trees down along my fence, and the trees are less stable than they were before because the keeps hacking away at them. Every 2-3 weeks he knocks on the door demanding we cut down a tree and we did originally plan on taking down a few that were near the house, but I guess we didn’t move fast enough for him so he left a nasty note about calling his insurance and then started verbally harassing us whenever we are outside. I told him to stop or I will call the cops, and he stopped for a week.
Unfortunately we just had a bout of really bad weather and a couple of branches came down. I went out to look at the damage but it was still storming so I couldn’t do anything about it. He stormed out and started shouting about how he was calling a lawyer and the cops on us. No damage was done to his property, they would tell him there is nothing that he can do.
If he calls the city on us, we’ll point out the trees were fine for the last decade until he started hacking at them, but honestly the cops/insurance/lawyers he keeps threatening to call will do nothing unless there is actual damage to something. But I am now so nervous about going outside because of this jerk. I kind of hope he does call the cops as I will report it as harassment. We have not said anything back to him other than “stop harrassing us” each time he goes off.
I just needed to rant. I hate my house now thanks to this jerk and I can’t afford to move. :(