zonemaster60
New Member
Hello,
First, let me explain our (my wife and I) situation so that you may better understand what is going on. We live in New York state in Steuben county in a town called Hornell.
We own the house in question and we (my wife, myself, and my 3 sons) live upstairs.
At the request of my best friend, who is currently stationed in Iraq in the US Army, we have provided a place for his parents and 2 children to stay since they have no where else (supposedly) to go.
At this current time my wife has not rewritten the lease for the tenants below, but due to the following situation(s), is seriously considering some drastic changes, and the fact that they (the tenants) would try to break the lease under some technicality. My wife is a first time home owner and she is not very knowledgeable about this stuff. We ONLY allowed them to be here since it was our best friend.
They pay us $400 dollars a month to stay here because they refused a government grant to rebuild their condemned home for free. Yeah I know, I would swallow my pride and accept a grant if it meant a new home that was built for free. I still can't understand to this day why they did what they did.
They are after being here now for over a year (which they were NOT suppose to be here for that long to begin with) starting to complain about my kids making too much noise.
My wife and one of my sons friends made an agreement with his friend to store his drum set in my sons room because he did not have any where else to put it. My wife and my son made a verbal agreement that between the hours of 1 pm and 5 pm daily that he could practice playing the drums. He already plays a guitar and is getting fairly good at it and wishes to add the drums to his expertise list of instruments.
For some reason this particular son of mine is a target of my tenants anger, in other words they always single him out as the cause of ANY disturbance that he may consider to be a problem in his eyes, even if it isn't his fault to begin with.
We have been living in this house for almost 10 years now, 9 of which we rented. We originally bought the house from our ex-landlords brother and have to pay a $420 mortgage, $237 water bill twice a year, $160 garbage bill, on top of constantly putting up with our tenants complaints about my son. I have to live in the SAME house and listen to the SAME noise when he plays the drums or whatever other complaints he may have, but I wasn't the one who call the cops.
The cops basically said there were NO complaints from the neighbors so there was nothing they could do about it (in other words if the neighbors were complaining my son would have to lay off the drum playing) and since we did own the house there was no reason for him to stop playing them as long as the neighbors around us didn't complain.
The officer told our tenants downstairs "if you can't put up with the occasional noise expected in living in a 2 family home, why are you renting from them in the first place?"
Well anyway this all happened within the course of the last few days starting on Friday afternoon when my tenant complained to my wife (who is the owner and landlord) when she was shoveling the snow from our sidewalk about our son playing the drums and she just shrugged her shoulders because she didn't know what to do and she didn't want to get all stressed out.
My wife is 42 and a cook for a nursing home here in our home town and has worked very hard to get where she is, let alone for us to be able to own our own home after renting for over 20 years. I am 48 and physically disabled with heart disease and collect SSI/SSD on a monthly basis.
We have been VERY fair and patient with the tenants downstairs and the fact that they are my best friends parents. But over the last few months they have seriously taking advantage of my wife and her kind heart and I am getting fed up with it.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
David Scouten
First, let me explain our (my wife and I) situation so that you may better understand what is going on. We live in New York state in Steuben county in a town called Hornell.
We own the house in question and we (my wife, myself, and my 3 sons) live upstairs.
At the request of my best friend, who is currently stationed in Iraq in the US Army, we have provided a place for his parents and 2 children to stay since they have no where else (supposedly) to go.
At this current time my wife has not rewritten the lease for the tenants below, but due to the following situation(s), is seriously considering some drastic changes, and the fact that they (the tenants) would try to break the lease under some technicality. My wife is a first time home owner and she is not very knowledgeable about this stuff. We ONLY allowed them to be here since it was our best friend.
They pay us $400 dollars a month to stay here because they refused a government grant to rebuild their condemned home for free. Yeah I know, I would swallow my pride and accept a grant if it meant a new home that was built for free. I still can't understand to this day why they did what they did.
They are after being here now for over a year (which they were NOT suppose to be here for that long to begin with) starting to complain about my kids making too much noise.
My wife and one of my sons friends made an agreement with his friend to store his drum set in my sons room because he did not have any where else to put it. My wife and my son made a verbal agreement that between the hours of 1 pm and 5 pm daily that he could practice playing the drums. He already plays a guitar and is getting fairly good at it and wishes to add the drums to his expertise list of instruments.
For some reason this particular son of mine is a target of my tenants anger, in other words they always single him out as the cause of ANY disturbance that he may consider to be a problem in his eyes, even if it isn't his fault to begin with.
We have been living in this house for almost 10 years now, 9 of which we rented. We originally bought the house from our ex-landlords brother and have to pay a $420 mortgage, $237 water bill twice a year, $160 garbage bill, on top of constantly putting up with our tenants complaints about my son. I have to live in the SAME house and listen to the SAME noise when he plays the drums or whatever other complaints he may have, but I wasn't the one who call the cops.
The cops basically said there were NO complaints from the neighbors so there was nothing they could do about it (in other words if the neighbors were complaining my son would have to lay off the drum playing) and since we did own the house there was no reason for him to stop playing them as long as the neighbors around us didn't complain.
The officer told our tenants downstairs "if you can't put up with the occasional noise expected in living in a 2 family home, why are you renting from them in the first place?"
Well anyway this all happened within the course of the last few days starting on Friday afternoon when my tenant complained to my wife (who is the owner and landlord) when she was shoveling the snow from our sidewalk about our son playing the drums and she just shrugged her shoulders because she didn't know what to do and she didn't want to get all stressed out.
My wife is 42 and a cook for a nursing home here in our home town and has worked very hard to get where she is, let alone for us to be able to own our own home after renting for over 20 years. I am 48 and physically disabled with heart disease and collect SSI/SSD on a monthly basis.
We have been VERY fair and patient with the tenants downstairs and the fact that they are my best friends parents. But over the last few months they have seriously taking advantage of my wife and her kind heart and I am getting fed up with it.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
David Scouten
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