Driving the neighbours nuts!

Los Pollos Hermanos said:

Wow! Big thanks for all your replies and ideas.

Now to clarify, summarise and ask further questions:

Nouveau Riche - the term tends to be associated with those that have made (some degree of) money and constantly flaunt it, as if it makes them better than everyone else. This is what the people are like, rather than those who've successfully swelled the coffers and remain grounded about it. They expect people to bow and scrape to them because they perceive themselves to be better than those around them. Definitely "Keeping Up Appearances" types (a UK TV reference for non-UK people). Locals are decent, but fed up of the attitude!

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You'll need to be careful how you portray it so it clear it's that and not snobbery. Maybe balance it out by showing they're not snobs, e.g. maybe another family on the street are wealthy working class (and it's obvious, e.g. by their accents etc) but they're not obnoxious and they're accepted. And maybe someone in the street does fundraising for Shelter or other homeless charities or they all collect things for the local food bank.

No homeowner association - people are relatively house proud so maintain their properties.

People might notice:
* Getting rid of the gardener
* Child(ren) being moved from a fee-paying school to free state education
* Downsizing the car(s)
* Debt - although I assume they'd do everything possible to cover this up
* Not maintaining the house, or only doing what work people will see

Tactics:
* Excluding them socially
* Gossip - even if it is based on observation/experience
* Potential sabotage of property (e.g. car) or garden

Questions:

1. Could they pretend to flaunt their dwindling wealth more as things decline behind closed doors? For example, upgrading the car rather than downgrading? Maybe they'd "borrow" money from the business/overdraft?

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Up to a point they could. Their credit rating would get worse and worse and they'd end up being unable to take out any more loans.

If they start off with a good credit rating, they can probably borrow a lot before their credit rating goes bad (i.e. when they start to fail to make repayments on time). They probably would be able to get credit cards with a load of different banks and if they did that when they had lots of money they always paid them off on time and in full, their spending limits on each card would be very high - I've heard of people having credit limits in tens of thousands because they have excellent credit ratings and always pay everything off in full each month. I don't know how long it would take to get a credit limit that high though. It probably takes years.

At the point they start struggling financially, they could max out all their credit cards and get a crap ton of expensive goods. It wouldn't last long though because they'd have to at least make minimal repayments on each card and if they're all maxed out to a very high level, the repayments will be much higher than the money they've got coming in and they'd probably end up having to declare themselves bankrupt and they'd be repossessed/evicted when they stop paying the rent/mortgage.

They wouldn't immediately be declared bankrupt, they'd start off by making agreements with each of the banks they owe money to - they have departments you can call when you get into difficulty and they can make agreements for lower payments, less interest, etc to help people pay back what they owe but their credit card would be frozen and their credit rating at that point would be shit so they won't be able to borry any more money from anyone.

There are companies that do debt consolidation loans, they may go for something like this to avoid declaring bankruptcy - the company lends money to pay off all the debt, but they then owe this company instead, but they will do smaller monthly repayments with a much longer term. The term might end up being longer than their mortgage term and it's a bit like having a second mortgage, but without owning a house at the end of it.

While they still have a good credit rating, they could get a better car on credit. Say the first car was bought in cash without any credit plan because they had loads of money. If they sell that car that will give them money they can use for whatever. Then they get a new car on payment plan with the garage, which could be a better model than their original car (the garage is likely to encourage them to upgrade the car and get the new one on credit, because they make more money that way). I don't know how much deposit they'd have to pay initially, but they have the money from selling the first car so they'd be able to pay it. If you go to any car dealership online you can see how much they'd have to pay in deposit and monthly repayments to own any make/model of car. Of course, if they're doing the above with their credit cards then buying a car this way is worse than foolish and would hasten them on the road to bankruptcy, but it could be done while their credit rating is still good. The garage would credit check them before agreeing to the plan and as long as that came out fine, they'd make the agreement.

Borrowing from the business - if a self employed person's in financial difficulty, then would the business even have funds that they could use? If they're a sole trader or 100% shareholder in his own business then they'd be earning the proceeds of the business anyway. If it's the case that the business is doing okay but they're living beyond their means, there wouldn't be additional funds. If they're not a 100% shareholder of their company and they're using additional business funds for their own use, this would be technically possible but would create an epic level legal shitstorm if they're doing this without the knowledge/permission of the other directors/shareholders, because that's basically taking their share of the business/funds. I don't know the legal technicalities here you'd have to look it up, but if you want the character(s) to face an epic level legal shitstorm as well as going bankrupt, then they can do this. I mean it would certainly add spice to the story.


Also bear in mind that if they were never as rich as they were claiming to be, they wouldn't get a good enough credit rating to borrow huge amounts of money. If they're maxing out credit cards from the start then they're never going to get that good a credit rating. The amount they can borrow and the amount of financial armageddon they find themselves in would be limited - which is the whole reason why there's a credit rating system to begin with.

2. Say the neighbours decide covertly nasty/subtle illegal is the way to go, what could they do that wouldn't get them caught?

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I don't think they'd need to do anything if they're making the financial decisions stated above. They'd be bankrupt and repossessed/evicted within a few months. Now it could be that one of the neighbours is a financial advisor who deliberately gives bad advice to them with the intent that they'd end up bankrupt, repossessed/evicted and out of the neighbourhood. That would risk their professional reputation though, as this family may go round telling everyone what a crap financial advisor they are. There might be some other more subtle ways they could nudge the family in the direction of an epic financial meltdown.

Bear in mind that the data protection act governs what companies (including all employees of companies) can and can't do with people's personal information, so it would be illegal for someone to look up their neighbours on the system at work and then tell other neighbours what they found out about them or use the information to do something bad to them (or even use the information in any way outside of work for that matter).

A lot of the prosperous villages around my way don't have much police coverage so low level vandalism is unlikely to get much police attention.

If you want 'subtle nasty', why not have a couple of the neighbours egg them on in spending what they can't afford to spend, under the guise of being 'friendly' : take them to the golf club, emphasis how wonderful the place is, that 'anyone who is anyone' goes there, the networking, the cameraderie, this is what the 'right' people do - suck the husband into buying a hugely expensive membership. Convince the wife that home-made party food won't do - it must be catered, and that so-and-so is the only one that's suitable. They are, of course, hugely expensive, but hey, money doesn't matter, does it.
The children must have 'enrichment' classes, school trips, extra tutoring so they don't 'fall behind'. A pony for the girl, a 'whatever is local' for the boy (skiing, sailing, whatnot). It all adds up, and quickly,
and can all be hard to classify as anything other than 'friendly information'. It will also make the victims feel as though they're the ones at fault, because 'everyone else' is apparently doing it.

General thought - neighbours and how much you interact with them in the UK. Varies quite a bit with location. My experience is southern half of England. So cities - on "good morning" terms with neighbours either side is the usual level - and you don't know anyone else on the street though you might recognise them. Modification to this - children playing with other children so parents get to know each other and people who own dogs walking them. (But a lot of busy people these days have hired dog walkers.....). If you have a neighbourhood watch group then some more people will get to know each other. There is no automatic assumption that your neighbour will help or lend you tools.
"Deep rural" areas - real farming - everyone knows everyone and it is rude not to stop to talk when you see a neighbour. Once you've known each other for a bit, then calling on neighbour for assistance is OK (they may say no and that is OK) but you mustn't ask too often.
Villages - variable depending on how many townies have moved into them. Some villages near big cities are commuter dormitories. In really nice rural areas, especially coastal holiday areas, there are places where almost all of the cute old village has been bought up as second homes and is empty half the year, with the original locals all moved into the council estate or just gone.

So this is a round-about way of saying neighbours ignoring you - often the norm. Also I've only twice been invited to a big party at a neighbour's place - and it was all the neighbour's idea and none of the rest of us had a "return party".

In terms of minor vandalism - letting down tyres on the cars on the drive?
Assuming that the people don't have their own CCTV on their house which a lot of people do these days.

In the South West (bearing in mind that I'm from the South East) it doesn't seem that unusual that people will know several other families in the street. Usually they'd be people who've lived round here since forever. A guy at work says where he lives everyone knows everyone else, drinks in the local pub etc. Not sure exactly where he lives but there are lots of little villages in Dorset. Also what Bolero said about villages being bought out by commuters isn't really a thing round here because it's too far from London. It's affordable to live and work in the same town. The cheapest properties will be in the towns, just not in the nicer parts of the town.

In the North and South West people are known for being friendlier whereas in the South East, especially London, people have a reputation for not having a clue who their neighbours even are and keeping themselves to themselves. Sometimes this is interpreted as them not being friendly, but even in London if you're stuck at the bus stop in the rain, you can end up chatting to complete strangers. It's a different kind of friendly.

I live in a small block of flats and know the other people in the flats to say hello to, but don't know them that well. I sometimes chat with them, usually about the ongoing parking issues (ongoing saga with someone parking beaten up old Volkswagens in our car park and leaving them there. Always Volkswagens, never any other make of beaten up old car). There's no residents association here, but there probably needs to be because it might make it easier to stop people parking beaten up old Volkswagens in our car park. Also it would sort out whoever's putting plastic bags in the flat's recycling bin. ...For the USA people on the thread, we have two bins (very large bins as it's a block of flats), one for regular rubbish and one for recyclables. The regular rubbish is meant to be bagged up and the bag placed in the correct bin. Whereas the recyclables aren't allowed to be put in bags (because the plastic they make them out of isn't recyclable) they have to just be thrown loose into the bin (presumably they get sorted out at the tip) but if the bin men find plastic bags in your recycling bin, they won't take it away. As no-one wants to climb into the recycling bin to take them out, it won't get collected the next week either and can become an ongoing saga until someone gets sick enough of it (or has recently been to Ikea and has a lot of cardboard to throw out) and moves the bags.

There's two potential ways neighbours could get pissed off at each other and/or get petty revenge on each other... if they live in houses then it would be taken more personally. Like if an old Volkswagen was parked in your drive and left there... that's a lot more blatant than in a flat car park. A sneaky neighbour could put a plastic bag of non-recyclable rubbish in someone's recycling wheelie bin so the bin men don't take it away. Again, it would look like deliberate sabotage not like one person in a block of flats who forgot which bin is which.

Won't work in the UK, but in the US you just build a back yard gun range.

Or start caring for farm animals. Open a day care for underprivileged kids. Take in refugees. Open a drug lab. Don't take care of the landscaping. Set fire to their house, with or without them in it. Escalate as needed.

Seriously, much of what you can do depends on the environment you've written and the characters in it. Stay in character and make it happen.

Jeff

A notice on the front door announcing the water has been shut off. Really, you don't have to be able to read the notice. In a small town a notice flapping on the front door says it all. --s6

There's always the property tax rolls. A person can dodge paying property taxes for years before there are serious repercussions, but at some point in the tax year, the list of tax deadbeats is published. Our small town newspaper not only publishes their names and the addresses of the property, but charges the non-taxpayers the cost of advertising in the newspaper, adding insult to injury.

I sometimes let the yearly taxes--due in the last week of December--go till July (Give me a break, we have 360 + acres and other stuff in two different counties. The taxes can be staggering at Christmastime. ) with only a 20 dollar penalty, but never any longer. I share property with my siblings and not one of us wants to see our names published--around here that is a black eye for a family. The thing is, newcomers often let the taxes slide. They are amazed at how much property they can buy and then they see how small the penalty is for sliding, so they slide. Once their names are published they are furious. Never saw that coming. --s6

Publishing lists of local tax defaulters is not something that is done in the UK unless the case ends up before the courts

Prosecuted for a noisy party perhaps. Classic nasty neighbour behaviour to make a series of complaints about noise.

Mmm. You'd have to do it very cleverly for it not to be detectable by a forensic tech looking at the logs.

Noise complaints - look at environmental health (noise pollution) - that is the council department that deals with it.

For publication stuff - look into ASBOs (anti-social behaviour order) - that can be for all sorts of stuff.

Speeding fines certainly used to get published in a local paper - and while frowned on is live-down-able.

Water cut-off - never known a notice stuck on someone's door. Have experienced a neighbour going under financially and there were bailiffs circling the neighbourhood, trying to find out where they'd gone, or when they'd be back. They were technically still living there as the house hadn't sold/been foreclosed on at that point - I talked to a lady who was trying to catch up with them on behalf of the electricity company.

What if someone local who doesn't like them does a court search on them and finds out they've been bankrupt before? And/or there are outstanding CCJs (County Court Judgements) for debt?

Make a complaint/raise concern with social services about the kids. (That probably wouldn't result in anything permanent, as social services would be well aware of the potential for spite and grudges and false complaints, but it wouldn't be nice during the investigation.)

Los Pollos Hermanos said:

I was thinking of someone somehow getting child porn on their home computer and then giving a tip-off to the local Plod...

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There are a ton of plausibility issues with this. Firstly, the character that's doing this sabotage - how did he get the images in the first place? From the point of view as a reader, no matter how he got the images, the fact that he didn't immediately report them to the police the minute he came across them makes him total scum because the images are of real children being subjected to horrific abuse. Anyone who can be aware of their existence (as in specific pictures) and not want to help rescue the children who are being abused has something badly wrong with them. How does someone have access to images of children being abused if they're not part of a paedo ring or a paedo acting alone? Bear in mind that paedos operate with high levels of secrecy on the dark web to avoid being caught by the authorities. They don't want police finding their images and tracking them down just from a simple google search.

When the police seize computers and other media to check for stuff like this, they check everything, including google search history and they can tell when images on someone's computer have been viewed. If someone else planted them there remotely the police would know that the images haven't been looked at. Even if the person planting the images knows how to cover their tracks, the character being framed won't be. He'd have no reason to be so the police would know exactly what he's looked at and not looked at. They'd know that this person's history doesn't involve searching for images like that and they'd also notice a lack of proxy servers or anything related to the dark web. The police would know when the person logged on to their computer, so if, say, their computer was accessed and the images downloaded at a time when the person wasn't actually present and were never viewed since then, they'd know it was sabotage. And they wouldn't just want to arrest the person who put them there for trying to frame someone and wasting police time - they'd want to know where they got the images from and would suspect that they were part of a paedophile ring.

When questioning the guy, his reactions to being questioned would be that of someone who's innocent and had no idea that the images were there (while this isn't hard and fast evidence, police still use it as it may help point them in the right direction or support other evidence). The evidence on the computer would support his insistence that he didn't know they were there and had never seen them before, and maybe someone's out to get him. If he has an alibi for the time when the images were put there and/or remembers that he gave the password to a neighbour so the neighbour could fix his computer or anything like that, the police will turn their investigations elsewhere and if there's a clear link to the neighbour, then that's who they're going to question next. And when the neighbour's computer's searched and the police find they've been google searching for child abuse images... well it's not going to look good for the neighbour.

In any case, I'd find the whole thing really implausible, and even if the neighbour was enough of a tech wizard to not get caught, I'd lose any sympathy I may have had with the neighbour on account of how they were able to access the images in the first place.

In a wealthy neighbourhood, being overly generous would i imagine be a form of insidious bullying....

Frequent invites to parties/events knowing full well the family cant afford it.
Discreetly offering cards of financial planners/accountants etc as a jibe
Delivering cooked food or hand me down clothes in front of an audience.
Mentioning job adverts at "menial" workplaces well below the percieved status of a homeowner in that neighbourhood.
"I must have been mistaken, i thought i saw you raking the bargain bin at xxxx store/charity shop/budget supermarket"
community fundraising to help out the poor dear family in no.42

as a sign of someone losing previous wealth - becoming overly concerned with payback of loans/lost small sums of money

When we moved into our house in '97, there was a patch on the corner that was not landscaped. It's a corner house, at an intersection, and anyone turning into the little neighborhood would see it. The patch that was not landscaped couldn't have been more than 15x15 feet. Probably 12x10. We planned to get to it the next year.

We have no HOA.

I was surprised when a policeman showed up at our door shortly after we moved in and said there had been a complaint. That our yard was an eyesore. Everything was well maintained except for the one bad patch. Really?I asked, and my heart was pounding because there was a *freaking policeman* standing in my doorway telling me I had done something wrong.

Let me remind you, we had just recently bought the house.

Anyway, I said, well, we plan to take care of that patch next year, after the heavy winter rain, because we don't want new plantings to wash away.

He said, Yeah, that makes sense to me, and I had to drive by your house three times to make sure I had the address right. (He couldn't believe this neighbor was being such a #@#% either.)

To this day we don't know who or why, but our best guess is that someone wanted to put their house on the market and thought our little patch of unlandscaped land on the corner was going to lose them the sale. Or something.

more insidious stuff

Parking close too but not necessarily blocking access to driveways
Bright security lights with a slightly off beam into neighbours house
"spite buildings" close to perimeter fencing etc which are annoying but legal
Commentary along lines "we thought of buying your house but it was too small" "Used to have that car until xxx got a promotion" "youve done well for someone in your job/from your old neighbourhood/your kind" "i wish i could just wear cheap makeup like you, my skin is just to delicate for it" "wish i had your confidence to go out wearing that"
"accidentally" spilling something on a carpet etc

Los Pollos Hermanos said:

2). Hit me with your ideas for how these people can be made to feel they have no option but to move on (assuming the possible financial stuff doesn't get rid of them first). It needs to be underhand, insidious stuff - preferably legal but hey, this is fiction, so illegal with little chance of being rumbled is open to consideration. Psychological manipulation (gaslighting?) in addition to untraceable physical methods could work.

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This reminds me of a thoroughly enjoyable legal opinion out of Ontario. I'll just quote a few paragraphs and maybe you'll see something you can use. The bracketed numbers indicate paragraphs from the actual opinion.

April 25, 2014

[1] The parties to this action live across the road from each other in Toronto’s tony Forest Hill neighbourhood. The video footage played at the hearing shows that both families live in stately houses on a well-manicured, picturesque street. They have numerous high end automobiles parked outside their homes.

[2] The Plaintiff, John Morland-Jones, is an oil company executive; the Defendant, Gary Taerk, is a psychiatrist. They do not seem to like each other, and neither do their respective spouses, the Plaintiff, Paris Morland-Jones and the Defendant, Audrey Taerk.

[6] The hearing before me started off with counsel for the Plaintiffs playing a short excerpt from security footage shot by the Plaintiffs several years ago, in which Ms. Taerk is seen performing a “poop and scoop” after a dog did its business on her front lawn. The Plaintiffs’ security camera shows her crossing the street with the plastic bag-full in hand, and then walking toward the Plaintiffs’ driveway where the garbage cans were out for collection. Although the impugned deed actually takes place off camera, Ms. Taerk can be seen moments later returning to her side of the street empty-handed.

[10] And it goes downhill from there. For example, the Defendants are accused of occasionally parking one of their cars on the street in a legal parking spot in front of the Plaintiff’s home. The Defendants do this now and then, according to the Plaintiffs, just to annoy them. This accusation was admittedly pressed rather sheepishly by Plaintiffs’ counsel, since the Plaintiffs have conceded that they park one of their own cars in front of the Defendants’ home every day. Indeed, the Plaintiffs cannot help but concede that fact, since their own non-stop video surveillance of the Defendant’s house shows the Plaintiff’s car sitting there day after day.

[11] The Plaintiffs also complain quite vociferously about the fact that the Defendants – in particular Ms. Taerk – are in the habit of sometimes standing in their own driveway and taking cell phone pictures of the Plaintiffs’ house across the street. Apparently, the Plaintiffs, who keep two video cameras trained on the Defendants’ house night and day, do not like their own house being the target of Ms. Taerk’s occasional point-and-click.

[16] In what is perhaps the piece de resistance of the claim, the Plaintiffs allege that the Defendants – again focusing primarily on Ms. Taerk – sometimes stand in their own driveway or elsewhere on their property and look at the Plaintiffs’ house. One of the video exhibits shows Ms. Taerk doing just that, casting her gaze from her own property across the street and resting her eyes on the Plaintiffs’ abode for a full 25 seconds. There is no denying that Ms. Taerk is guilty as charged. The camera doesn’t lie.

[17] For their part, the Defendants have not been entirely innocent. They appear to have learned that the Plaintiffs – and especially Ms. Morland-Jones – have certain sensitivities, and they seem to relish playing on those sensitivities. They realize, for example, that Ms. Morland-Jones does not enjoy having her house photographed, and so Ms. Taerk tends to take her cell phone out and point it at the Plaintiffs’ house precisely when Ms. Morland-Jones can see her doing it.

[27] There is no serious issue to be tried in this action. The Plaintiff’s motion is therefore dismissed.