Think you know your neighbor? Beware.
Five years of shared meals, us watching the building in the summer when they were gone turned into a name-calling, death-threat giving, police-ignoring, tire-slashing war. A young couple with a small child forced to live in stress and without concern for safety. Shame!

And it all started with a simple request to repair some broken tiles in the kitchen and bathroom before our son started to crawl. Probably would have cost $50 in materials to fix, but ended up costing tens of thousands instead. This is our story.

THE STORY

loved living in our Brooklyn neighborhood - it had lots of old-world charm and the best bakery on earth right on our corner. No fast food franchises (until recently), a lot of really good authentic Italian food. And lots and lots of new babies around, making it a great family-friendly community as well.

When I first moved in, I was single and self-employed. The landlady would bring me up food for lunch and have me over for dinner. She stopped me in the hall to say “we are not your landlords, we are your friends”. Still, I felt I had to sneak boyfriends up the stairs, and it was sometimes too much for me. Then I met my husband-to-be, he moved in and there was renewed enthusiasm. They loved him – he did all sorts of favors for them and really extended his goodwill. We got married, got pregnant. We were having a BBQ with them in their backyard when my water broke. But less than a year later, we were at war.

Through no intention of our own, after almost six years of living there, we became the bad guys – it all started by asking them to repair some broken tiles. It escalated to death threats, slashed tires and the local police looked aside. I am not sure the apartment could be rented again, and the repairs for the apartment and the building they had to make were tremendous. This is our story.