agonyaunt | (no subject)

Dear Carolyn: Self-admitted crabby old broad here. My newish next-door neighbors are 24/7 noise. While the apartment is a studio, I can hear at least two adults and two children — one infant, one toddler.

The kids are up at all hours — either screaming in delight and running around or wailing in misery. The adults yell all the time. Movies, TV and music all play at incredible volume, and now a dog was added to the mix. It howls and cries whenever they leave it alone.

I don’t want to be That Person, but I’m tired of asking them, at 1 a.m., to turn down the TV, music, etc. Do I report them to the condo board? They are tenants. I’m hesitant, as I worry this studio may be the only space they can afford, but also frustrated by the noise.

— Crabby Old Broad

Crabby Old Broad: I do feel for you, because noise invades your home and peace of mind. But there is no way two adults, an infant, a toddler and a dog in a studio apartment will ever be quiet. No way. So I think your hope they will ever be quiet is compounding your torment. It will never be quiet.

Your options now are whatever’s left after you accept that. Move? Complain to (or join) the condo board? Invest in soundproofing and noise remediation? Ride it out? (Since the chances they’re in this for the long haul seem slim.) If you stay, then you will probably want to use various options in combination — saving the condo-board complaints for the egregious things they can control, like music and adult-yelling volume at 1 a.m.

To report a noisy baby at 1 a.m. is just … crabby. Also — do you like dogs? Maybe there’s an opportunity for grace here. A crying dog is miserable, and you’re miserable from the dog’s crying, so maybe you two can quietly upgrade each other’s lives when your neighbors go out. None of these options are great, even stacked, but all of them seem better to me than the suspense of waiting in vain for the racket to stop.

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The real villains here are the people who decided to save a few bucks by not installing adequate soundproofing between units in the first place, followed by the people who have been jacking up housing prices so that the only place a family with two kids can rent is a studio apartment.

But yeah, there's no excuse to turn the TV up so that your neighbors can hear it during normal quiet hours.

To some extent the kid and dog noises may be inevitable. The yelling and TV aren't. Also, four people may not be technically allowed in a studio, though it's an unpleasant rule to enforce and runs up against discrimination laws. I think there's generally an exemption for babies under a year, but the toddler would count as an occupant who's supposed to have more square footage (going by my state law here, but presuming there are similar laws in other places).

Ehh, some of it could be the type of construction - for example, there's a huge difference in the way sound will travel in a wood frame building vs steel frame with concrete slab. In my area there are sound dampening requirements for new construction, but older construction could be grandfathered in or some noise will be in excess of the capacity the building materials have.