Once my refuge, my calm from the storm, my home, my sanctuary. Now? I can’t be there without feeling like I’m crawling out of my skin.

The kitchen in the neighboring apartment (my former apartment) shares a wall with my bedroom. My headboard backs up to said wall. There is no other way for me to arrange my bed – it will not fit. The insulation is so lacking that I can hear if my neighbor opens a drawer, puts a dish in the sink, sneezes, or farts. It’s more like having a roommate than a neighbor. The tenants – who I will call Adam and Eve for the sake of this story, I have no idea what their actual names are – who ended up moving, used the kitchen from 8 in the morning until midnight. Every bang, every time they closed a cabinet, every time they put a dish in the sink, the constant floor creaking from them walking back and forth back and forth back and forth all night was akin to chinese water torture. I very kindly asked that they try to be more quiet to no avail. Eve told me to move my bedroom into another room (my apartment consists of an open kitchen/living room, bedroom and bathroom.)

One night after a long, grueling day at the store, I was laying in bed watching TV, attempting to rest. The banging made it impossible. Then they turned their music on. I was watching something on my phone and opened my bluetooth settings to connect it to one of my speakers, and I saw a device that I didn’t recognize. I tapped it and the music went silent next door. I quickly disconnected from it, immediately went to YouTube and searched for “video of really loud farts”, which I then played after re-connecting to their bluetooth device. I could hear the video playing; the loud farts followed by Charlie Brown muffles through the wall. I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe. Then I searched “loud noises to piss off neighbors” and played it. I listened in delight to shrieks, squeals, bangs, and other bizarre, loud noises while they tried to figure out what the hell was going on. I didn’t play it for long and when I stopped their music died and they vacated the kitchen – they probably figured out it was me and thought I was some sort of hacking mastermind. Nope! Just connected to your bluetooth device.

One morning, at 11:00 AM, I left music on and ran down to open the store.

10 minutes later I got a text from my landlord.

“The neighbors complained about the music. Can you please turn it down?”
“Are you joking?”
“No.”
“I left 10 minutes ago. I turned the music on 5 minutes before I left. So they’re complaining about my music being loud for 15 minutes at 11 in the morning?”
“Please just turn it down.”
“Okie dokie.”

Adam then came down to my store and threatened me by saying “If you think we’re making your life hell now you have no idea.” I told my landlord immediately. He did nothing. When those tenants left my landlord blamed me and said I chased them out. I stayed at my apartment 12 nights during the one year period they lived there. I’ve been in my building longer than anyone who lives there. I know of only one tenant who stayed there longer than a year – never a good sign. It might have something to do with the fact that there is zero noise insulation and you can hear people talking at a normal decibel outside, people fly through town revving their engines at all hours of the day and night, and you can hear everything your neighbors are doing through walls and doors. When I first moved into the building I was woken up every Tuesday at 5 AM by the street sweeper, I don’t even hear it anymore. The recorded “Walk sign is on for all crossings” that plays when the light changes and signals for people to walk across the street is something I’m going to have nightmares about.

There were nights that I emailed my landlord at midnight, crying, explaining that I was sick, in pain, and needed to simply be able to sleep. I could not sleep in my apartment for well over a year. Instead I stayed at my Tiny House, which is in the middle of nowhere, with no running water, plumbing or electricity. I stayed there through the winter while I continued to pay $1300/month + utilities for what essentially became a really nice storage unit. I went home only to shower and get clean clothes. My landlord did not provide garbage removal so I had to either pay to bring it to the dump or bring it to a dumpster I have access to in Hudson. Tenants – including myself – would leave bags of garbage in the hallway until they were able to figure out what to do with it. 

My building is in the center of the village of Saugerties. It is the tallest building with the steepest stairs I’ve ever had to carry 5 bags of shit up at one time. My landlrod did not provide garbage removal after he was asked by multiple tenants to do so. He told us we had to bring our garbage to the dump, which costs money each time. If you don’t have a car then I guess you’re SOL. I looked up the laws as they pertain to garbage removal in multi dwelling buildings and informed him that he was required to provide garbage removal by law. When I followed up with him about it he said he couldn’t figure out how to do it. Good story, bro.

noise-regulation

All the tenants in the building – myself included – left bags of garbage in the hallway for days until we could figure out what to do with it. My apartment has had a nasty infestation of pantry moths for 2 years. Last summer there were worms on my ceiling, my bed, my headboard – literally everywhere. I could not get rid of them. So…I didn’t stay at my apartment until the weather cooled off and some of them died. I set traps and went home to kill what I could in between. I asked my neighbor if he had seen any in his apartment – he said he had to throw out all the food in his pantry because it was infested. I thought I had FINALLY gotten rid of them because I didn’t see any this summer…until a couple of weeks ago. I saw a moth flying around. Then I looked up and there were 3 worms. I sat on my kitchen floor and started to cry. 

My landlord’s attempts at evicting me were 100% retaliatory in nature. After a year and a half of begging him to fix a noise issue that is so bad I cannot sleep in my bedroom, I withheld my rent – and I was fully within my legal rights to do so.

He agreed to fix the issue, but he never did. He was “looking into” it for 2 years. Once I withheld rent, he stated that he would do it only if I paid all of what was back due. I paid him a year’s worth of back rent in full so that he would do it. He never did. He continued to come up with reasons as to why he hadn’t, wouldn’t, didn’t, etc. I told him on more than one occasion he may enter my apartment at any time to get started. He had someone come and look at the wall for about 10 minutes, years ago, and that was it. 

During that time, he:
– Harassed me on the street as well as my business
– Harassed me via phone and email to the point that I had to block him because the stress and anxiety was not something I could deal with.
– Stalked me
– Intimidated me: this includes towering over me with his “repairman” who walks around with a large knife, while I was kneeling on the sidewalk fixing my dogs collar. They were both standing so close to me that if I had moved back one inch I would’ve bumped into them. I froze.
– Gossiped about me with other tenants 
– Committed fraud with ERAP as well as violated multiple ERAP rules, including raising my rent shortly after receiving payment from them 
– I had put my rent in escrow and was days away from being removed by a sheriff, told my landlord I would pay the rent and he demanded I pay his attorney fees as well, which was double what I owed him. That is why I had to get ERAP. Stephen chose to pay an attorney as opposed to paying to do what he said he would do on many occasions and fix the noise issue. I did not make that decision, yet somehow he believed I should be the one to pay for that decision.
– Served the last notice of eviction himself 
– The affidavit of service had the wrong amount of money owed on it, which his attorney changed in court AFTER I had been granted an adjournment
– The process server, former Cairo police officer Thomas Plank, who supposedly served me, also states that he called me on 3 separate occasions in May — I did not receive a single phone call from anyone. I have official records from my phone company as evidence of this. 
– On May 9th, 2023, when the last affidavit was served, I was at home the entire day. Yet the affidavit said an attempt to call me and to hand me the papers personally was made. No one called me, there was no knock on my door. I am 100% certain that whoever did serve that affidavit did so very quietly to prevent me from hearing them — I can hear everything from inside my apartment. I believe this is because the server did not want to actually serve me because the server was my landlord, and he knew it would be improper service if he had. (When papers are served in a lawsuit, the person doing the suing cannot be the one to serve them.) Not that it would have mattered, the judge wouldn’t have cared. 

All that had to be done? Properly insulating a FUCKING WALL. Which, by the way, would have taken much less time, money, and energy from all parties involved.

The CO detectors have gone off repeatedly and the fire department called to my building far too often. 
After My downstairs neighbor was found dead in his apartment. I happened to have been recording a video when it happened because I press record every time I leave my apartment. Stephen told people that my neighbor died in the hospital. There have been many, many days that I have woken up dizzy a pounding headache and my fingers red. I decided to sleep with my window open about 6 inches regardless of how cold it is outside and I no longer wake up feeling sick.

Additionally, the shower door needed to be attached properly before I even moved into this apartment. On New Year’s Eve, a friend of mine stayed at my apartment, the shower door fell off, smashed my vanity mirror and dislocated her shoulder. 

I have a novels worth of emails, texts, etc., attempting to get him to deal with all of the issues I brought to his attention, he continually made false promises of doing so. He is aware of my history of abuse, as well as my chronic health issues. He does not care. My leases are concerning – they make no sense, I have emails from him, a recording of him, and the leases themselves, all showing different amounts. 

What he did to me – it was literally criminal. I have always been as close to a perfect tenant as someone can be, and before I put my foot down and withheld rent he said the same.