Complaints About Noise Made by a Child in an Apartment Complex

[lawfacts]

A parent has lived in an apartment for eight months, without incident, but a new tenant has now moved into the apartment below hers. The new downstairs neighbor has repeatedly complained to the landlord about noise made by her two-year-old child. What could happen to the upstairs tenant?

[Mr. Knowitall]

Is the landlord treating the noise complaints as if they're a serious problem, or is the landlord treating them as baseless?

Part of apartment life is that you sometimes hear noise from neighboring units. If the child is simply engaging in normal childhood activities, not making any undue noise, then that is part of apartment life for the downstairs neighbor, and the landlord should treat it as such. If there are more significant noise issues, that could be a problem.

The landlord has the option of not renewing the upstairs tenant's lease, or ending their month-to-month tenancy, so it's best to try to make sure that the landlord understands this to be an issue of a hypersensitive downstairs neighbor as opposed to an actual problem with the parent who lives upstairs.