Next door neighbors smoke weed all day everyday and it's permeating our home.
We purchased a 2 family home in Bushwick last year. Great neighborhood and good people. Unfortunately, we live next door so chronic (not Dr. Dre) marijuana smokers. They smoke all day every day. Our stoop wreaks of it because they leave their window over. Our home wreaks because the smoke permeates through the walls. Talking to them about their habits will be futile. What are our rights as home owners when a tenant of an adjoining building are polluting our home, endangering our children with their secondhand smoke, and driving my wife absolutely insane. We feel powerless, hopeless, and no rights as a homeowner or human being to stop it. Moving isn’t an option. Is there legal action we can pursue? Is there anything that can be done? Sealing the walls is a tremendous task and will cost 10’s of thousands of dollars. Surely there’s someone here with experience.
Thank you Brownstoner
whalien
in General Discussion 5 years and 10 months ago
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13 replies
Putnamdenizen | 5 years and 10 months ago
oiodof: calling the police because the neighbors are smoking weed in their own house is not a recommended course of action. Weed is about to be legalized, and certainly isn’t a high level offense even now. While I would hope such a call would not result in a tragedy like happened a few days ago (woman shot dead in her own house through a window by police who had been called to do a “safety check”), using the police like that against one’s neighbors is really inappropriate. Seems like the original poster is aware that s/he is on thin ice in demanding change of behavior by neighbors. There are a lot of good ideas here on who he/she can try to resolve the problem.
brownstonenoob
in General Discussion 5 years and 10 months ago
stevecym – Funny, because I’m thinking about leaving Brooklyn because of the weed. I smell it Park Slope whenever I’m there which is quite often.
whalien – If your neighbors are renting, try to speak to the landlord or building management. Also, consider contacting your local council person/rep and see what they suggest. Contact legal aid society and see if they can recommend a housing lawyer you can consult for legal options. Lastly, call 911 for non-emergency or call your local police department. I was advised by 311 to call 911 or the police directly. They may at most issue a warning, but it may be enough to make your next door neighbors alter their behavior or become aware of the situation. It’s interesting how many smokers seem to be oblivious (and deluded) to how obnoxious and noxious the smell is to others or that anyone else can smell it. I wish you a lot of luck.
stevecym | 5 years and 10 months ago
boo, i came from sunnyside where everyone said hello. i just could not imagine. i work in brooklyn now and after two or three days on a house, 1/2 the nabe knows me and everyone stops by and says hello (I usually work on entry doors). here i walk around in my own nabe in my work clothes and the people who do not know me think i am a down and out. i walk around park slope after a day’s work and moms walking alone with their babies say hello to me.
we can’t wait to find our way to Brooklyn.
kenzdesigns | 5 years and 10 months ago
i’m not an hvac expert but seems to me that introducing positive pressure into your home could prevent the smoke from your neighbors from penetrating into your house. i’m not sure what form this would take in a rowhouse, but if you had a fan blowing fresh air into your house at a higher cfm than any exhaust and/or leakage, that would accomplish what you’re looking for.
greenworks | 5 years and 10 months ago
Oh and we actually looked extensively in Bushwick between 2012 and 2014, before we got priced out, and in most areas people were pretty willing to talk to people interested in the nabe. At least that’s what we found.
greenworks | 5 years and 10 months ago
@steve we actually nixed neighborhoods off our list where people weren’t willing to talk to newcomers — how did we do that? by just spending extensive time walking around and seeing how people reacted to us — for instance the neighborhood that one lady mentioned she has issues in as a newcomer, we nixed completely because in our travels thru there, no one seemed to like each other or anyone else from outside the nabe.
In our current neighborhood in our recon walks, we were happily greeted by strangers, people actually shouting “welcome to the neighborhood! your dogs are beautiful!” and people were happy to talk to us.
I’ve read much of what you’ve written about your nabe — a nabe I’m actually a bit familiar with since I’m not so far away — and I’m really sorry that they are apparently jerks (the comments about burning the shelter down were atrocious along with the following applause).
But in my bit of time in this City, living everywhere from Brooklyn Heights in the 90s to Upper East Side to Chinatown to Dumbo and where we are now, among others, I’ve never NOT been ab le to get a good feel for a place — it just takes a bunch of time most people aren’t willing to commit to.
Now will you get to know every single thing about a place? No. But if the weed smoking was THAT pervasive I am totally baffled as to how it was missed.
stevecym | 5 years and 10 months ago
in the above post i meant to say “it does not even rise into our living space”.
stevecym | 5 years and 10 months ago
wallen, i have a business that uses oil based stains. if did not have an exhaust fan in the basement, my neighbors would go nutz when i stain wood. i have had to work with them and really try to accommodate them. the fan i have is a tiny little thing and the negative pressure on my basement draws all the odor on one direction and sends it out. it does not even rise. any way you can make friends with these people and buy them a fan of some sort for the window?
stevecym | 5 years and 10 months ago
@boo: not sure if you saw what I had to say about some of the people I live around but when I moved in here, I was very displeased to realize what kind of area i had moved into. and i do not know if i could have figured it out prior to buying because i could not imagine in a million years how bad it really is or that such people exist in a civil society. even if i looked at voter registration records, i might have thought, “well, my grandparents were the way these people are, so that should be ok”. the mistake i would have been making is assuming these people conduct themselves like ladies and gentlemen as the way my own grandparents behaved.
(btw, I live around the people who were on the news the other day shouting over a proposed homeless shelter; some civil person threatened to burn it down; worrying about children as Wallen does? I don’t want my son to see people behaving like this; i think i can find an easier way to justify weed to my son than i can this behavior)
It is hard to tell what is going on in a neighborhood because the people who don’t want ch ange will not talk to potential newcomers as they don’t want people unlike them moving in and the people who want change will not disclose the bad things about the area because they are afraid of scaring decent people away. when they were selling the house across the street from me, i dared not tell anyone looking at it that a drug dealer lived six doors away even though i felt deceitful hiding that fact when potential buyers asked me about the neighborhood. had i said anything about the dealer, all i would have gotten across the street was an empty house or more drug dealers.
with what someone had to say about realtors the other day on another post, i would not be surprised to learn that the realtors paid the people next to Wallen to not smoke when they were showing the house. even when the house next to me was for sale, i cleaned my own crap from my business up because i wanted conscientious people next to me.
looks can be very deceiving.
greenworks | 5 years and 10 months ago
Not arguing with the guy who pulls out the “if you don’t have kids surely there is no way you can understand” stuff. Best of luck to you —
whalien | 5 years and 10 months ago
@Booisgolden point taken and no offense at all. You’re absolutely right. That being said, we did scope it out thoroughly. The numerous time we were here inspecting and reviewing the space before the signatures were on the papers we never smelt it. I really have no issue with the act of it all. I respect peoples personal space and ideals but when they encroach on our personal space, it becomes a problem.
My wife is highly sensitive to smoke and having two small children means we have two other lives to consider. Do you have kids? I ask because if you don’t then you probably can’t relate to the concept of protecting something so dear and important as your child’s life. Sounds dramatic, but the long term effects of this stuff isn’t good. I’d like to protect them as best I can in their home. They deserve that.
Yes, I’ve posted about this before and do appreciate your patience with me. Hopefully there’s a solution that isn’t “move”.
greenworks | 5 years and 10 months ago
Hi whalien. I had some measure of sympathy for you the first time you posted about this same topic not too long ago — but now that you have likened it to terrorism and are posting again about it, I do have a few things that have stuck in my brain since then that I’m curious about. I’m sure this is going to come across the wrong way but here goes anyway:
-How did you not notice this before you moved in, if it was so pervasive and frequent? You probably paid north of 1.5 mil or so for your property, wouldn’t scoping out the place 24/7 for a little while and talking to the neighbors behoove you before plunking down that huge chunk of money? We paid less than a third of that for our property and dear god, I made sure to scope everything I could before plunking down the most $$ in my life.
-These guys have probably been hot boxing for years there — how is it that they now have to change now that you moved in?
Just playing devil’s advocate here.
stevecym | 5 years and 10 months ago
whallen, i read your thanks written back to me in your other post and now read this, i do not think sealing the walls would cost as much as you think. btw, i am not offering my services here. you can do this yourself over the course of a few mornings depending on how much you feel you need to do.
i did read what you said about drilling holes in the floor boards and opening the ceiling in the apt below. first, you do not have to “open” the ceiling. if the floor boards are old pine, you can drill holes in them and plug them. if they are parquet or strip, you can remove a strip (i know, this is beyond most homeowners, especially with T&G) and drill into the sub floor and blow this in. but you would have to create a “dike” of foam to the outside (away from the common wall) first to force a second round of foam against and into the crevices on the brick wall. I would do this by drilling a large enough hole to direct the first application away from the wall and once that dries, i would apply a second round and blow it toward the brick and really fill that cavity. a good handyman can do all of this once someone else removed any tongue and groove flooring strips.
I have done little bits of this in my own house as my shop is in the basement and have had to deal with odors (i have a small exhaust fan) and dust and my wife has at times felt much the same about this situation here as you do there.
also, at one time we had gotten a giant air purifier. I did not research it and buy it, it came to me from someone who thought i would want it so i know little about it. it was the size of a small dishwasher. i have not recommended that here as i do not think it will process the air fast enough for your needs. but these things exist. the one i had was highly rated and had multiple filters, including coal. i cannot recall the name but it was so big it was rated to work an entire floor in a small house. i never put it into service and cannot comment to its effectiveness. i just looked the name of it up: IQ Air Purifier.
maybe between some blown in insulation and that IQ Air thing, you can find something you can live with?