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Quiet Enjoyment-Trying to break lease

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Dutchman1101

Junior Member
What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? Colorado

Need some advise. First time poster here.

I moved into my apartment in mid August. I looked at the place twice and it looked and felt like a great place. A week after I moved in I realized these places are super thin. You can hear everything. At the time there was a family with 2 adults and 4 young kids. Needless to say the noise was excruciating. I complained to the office multiple times and they claimed they talked to them about being quieter but nothing ever got better. This family ended up moving about 2 months later. The place above me was then vacant for about a month until in late November the complex moves in another family with 4 young kids this time. These people are even worse. Their kids wake me up at 7:00-8:00 in the morning on weekends. They yell at the kids all time. About a week after they moved in I had to call the cops on them because it sounded like they were abusing these children. These people shake my apartment. They rattle the dishes in my cabinets, they loosened a light fixture above my fireplace, and they even loosened a patch that was done on the bathroom ceiling. All things the apartment complex does not care about

I've told the complex about these people and their noise level. They tell me this isn’t noise that they can do anything about. They state if it were loud music, etc they could do something about it. I had one of the people from the complex come over one night to check it out (of course the noise wasn’t nearly what is usually is) and he stated the same thing that they can’t tell these people how to parent and it’s just something that I'm going to have to deal with.

What are my options here? I've been doing some research on Quiet Enjoyment and it seems this could fall into that. Can I break my lease here? Note, my lease has nothing in it as far as Quiet Enjoyment.
 


Dutchman1101

Junior Member
Any suggestions on what I can do at this point? I can't get a single second of peace and quiet in my own place. These people completely take over my house.

The more I think about it the more upset I am at the complex for actually moving a family with four young kids above me when I complained so much on the previous people with three kids. Just goes to show how they value my business. I ALWAYS pay my rent on time and never cause any problems for anyone around me. The sheer lack of respect really gets me.
 
The more I think about it the more upset I am at the complex for actually moving a family with four young kids above me when I complained so much on the previous people with three kids. Just goes to show how they value my business. I ALWAYS pay my rent on time and never cause any problems for anyone around me. The sheer lack of respect really gets me.
It would be illegal for the apartment complex to discriminate against a family with children, no matter how good a tenant lives downstairs.
 

Hot Topic

Senior Member
Call the police the moment you start hearing the racket. They, of course, have more important matters to deal with than noisy tenants, but if the police arrive in time to hear the noise themselves, they may cite the tenants. Citations in California can be as much as $100.00. It's something you need to discuss with the police.

Don't expect anyone with the complex to knock on the offender's door to tell them to quiet down. And don't you go to the apartment to tell them to "knock it off." A police officer told me that verbal confrontation can easily turn to physical confrontation under some circumstances.

If you like the building otherwise, see if it's possible to move into another apartment, preferably one on the top floor.

You can break your lease, but you'll have to pay the attached penalties.
 

DeenaCA

Member
The more I think about it the more upset I am at the complex for actually moving a family with four young kids above me when I complained so much on the previous people with three kids.
Had the managers refused to rent to the family based on the presence of children, they would have violated the federal Fair Housing Act and could have been subjected to fines in the thousands or ten thousands of dollars. See Fair Housing -- It's Your Right - HUD. HUD has filed three fair housing cases so far in 2010, and two of them are violations based on familial status: FH Act Enforcement Activity - HUD.

Realistically, neither the apartment managers nor the police are going to be able to make four small children be quiet. The noise of children is not considered to violate your quiet enjoyment, at least not in any cases I've seen. As you noted in your first post, the apartments are "super thin" and you can hear everything. This is part of the problem and your options include moving out or requesting a transfer to the top floor. A lot of complexes charge a higher rent for top floor units precisely because there is less noise.
 

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