Asshole Neighbors Might Make You Run for the Hills As We Did

Sometimes direct confrontation only antagonizes the person. Try doing an end run to solve the problem.

The neglected and territorial dog next door barked for 5 consecutive hours to welcome us to our new home the night we moved in. Photo by Robert Gramner on Unsplash

There’s a reason I live on six acres in a rural area. I absolutely enjoy the beautiful views, but if I’m totally honest, I didn’t want to deal with asshole neighbors anymore.

I thought of those neighbors after reading Shamontiel L. Vaughn’s story, “The Walk of Shame: When you’re ready to buy the home” which offers smart tips to check out the neighbors and the neighborhood before moving in.

In the 15 years immediately before we moved to this rural area, we dealt with some real winners. We called the police (although it wasn’t obvious at first that it would involve our neighbor), we reached out to Animal Control, and we dealt with an annoying Homeowners’ Association (HOA) president who lived next door.

I never expected to have such problems with neighbors. I grew up in a sleepy suburban neighborhood mostly filled with retirees who had purchased homes when they were first built. A few neighbors had dogs but they were all regularly exercised and well-behaved, so we never faced hours of nuisance barking. There was no HOA, either, so I wasn’t prepared for nightmarish HOA rules when my husband and I bought our homes in planned neighborhoods with younger residents.

The most unusual incident involving asshole neighbors also involved the police. I called 911 after arriving home one evening after work because I thought someone broke into the house. A window in our kitchen nook was broken with glass everywhere. It scared me as our neighborhood had experienced a rash of daytime burglaries around that time.

It turns out the neighbor shot the window with a BB gun. We never learned whether it was the father or one of the teen sons. The police officer who came to investigate found the BBs and told me the shooter could only have been in that house because of the window’s position (it was a side window of a three-part Bay window overlooking our back yard). I was upset, but not surprised. We had an unpleasant relationship with that neighbor.

Nevertheless, the police officer told me the local prosecutor would never file…