Dealings with New Neighbor/Hallway Dispute
Hello- Looking for a bit of advice on how to handle this situation: My husband and I moved into a brownstone about two months ago, we are on the second interior level (so, we are above the parlor and have one two-floor apartment above us). In the hallway, on our floor, outside the unused second…
Hello- Looking for a bit of advice on how to handle this situation:
My husband and I moved into a brownstone about two months ago, we are on the second interior level (so, we are above the parlor and have one two-floor apartment above us). In the hallway, on our floor, outside the unused second door to our unit I have been keeping our vacuum cleaner and laundry cart. Then a few weeks ago the upstairs neighbor started keeping a bike in that corner sort or leaning up against our things. I thought, that’s sorta strange but, it’s not really in my way and it must be a pain to carry that bike up another flight, so whatever. But, I just got a text from the neighbor saying, “We are putting up a stand for our bikes in our end of the hallway if you could move your cleaning stuff at some point.” I’m wondering if I’m crazy…but, to me, the hallway isn’t theirs at all! They live upstairs, in a much bigger apartment. I don’t really know how to respond. In the ten years of living in different Brooklyn brownstones I have always experienced that the hallway on the floor with your unit is YOURS to do what you will with. Am I wrong? Also, just as the added bonus, the landlord (who lives out of state) does not want bikes in the building at all and it even says it in the lease we just signed. How should I respond? I would like to maintain being friendly with these neighbors, but I really am taken aback.
maybe the biker is trying to tell you something? (that you shouldn’t be storing stuff in the hallway and making his 3 flights up the stairs with a bike even more miserable than it needs to be?)
Wow – sounds to me like you’re both jerks. You don’t get to “store” anything in the hallway. Nor does the other tenant.
But what really gets me is this “no honor among thieves” attitude lol.. you’re insulted by his lack of consideration to your IMPROPERLY USED SPACE….
oh, the irony.
Move your stuff and keep the hallways clear.
My old building had an informal rule about anything “stored” in the hallways is presumed to be trash, and will be carried out to the curb.
Neither of you have any right to place items in the hallway. And your neighbor sounds like a jerk.
Is this a serious post?
If it is, you need to tell your landlord. And take your stuff inside the house, for God’s sake. The hallway is not a storage facility for you or your nasty neighbor. It is a public space and you are not supposed to have stuff in the hallway. There is a fire code. Does the landlord know that YOU are keeping stuff in the hallway?
I am looking at this from a landlords perspective, but I tell people and it is in the lease, NO STUFF of any kind in the hallway and that includes grocery carts, boots and umbrellas, recyling, garbage, the bag of clothes to go to the drycleaning. NOTHING. And no bikes. No bikes in the hallways, the lobby, chained to the gates, the stairway.
NADA. You get your apartment for your stuff and that is IT.
First, yeah: the second floor hallway is your turf. Just say “I think a bike rack belongs on your floor.”
Second, I’d be peevish if I had to walk past my downstairs neighbors laundry cart and vacuum to get to my apartment. I’m not sure I’d assert the right to put a bike rack there, but I wouldn’t appreciate the clutter.
Upstairs sounds like a jerk- fire code aside, it’s ridiculous of them to cop an attitude about the space outside *your* apartment. I’d ask them (politely, I guess) to put the rack outside their own apartment.
So no, you’re not crazy. they’re jerks.
(and, pete, I say this as a biker. thanks for playing.)
As I thought, others confirm that it’s a fire code issue. But I wonder — is it okay to store a bike on the wall if it doesn’t block egress? For example: http://www.yliving.com/cycloc-bicycle-storage.html
Or is this still be a fire code violation? I ask because my top-floor tenant has a bike and I would like to make life a little easier for her (and kinder to my walls as well) by arranging for her to store bike somewhere in the parlor floor entryway rather than schlepping it to the top floor.
Putting aside feelings about bicyclists generally, I know keeping stuff in hall is a fire code violation b/c my brownstone co-op bldg was inspected by the FDNY and they told us so. If LL (by which I guess you mean buidling owner, not a co-op owner of your apt) does not allow bike storage in hall, seems to me that is the end of the discussion and upstairs nabe can take it up with LL. I think a polite “no” is all you need to say to upstairs. Generally, Pstreet is correct that “rule of the street” is you get your own hall space in a brownstone.
tell them that the hallway on your floor is your space, according to the landlord (is he going to risk asking), but that you heard that no one is using the hallway downstairs.