Help me deal with my landlord and/or provide a sanity check.

You are in a yukky situation. Email your landlord and propose to him, Dear Landlord, Our family has enjoyed living in your unit. It appears that our normal living upsets our neighbors in the unit below us. I know this must put you in an awkward position, as we all have leases. We would be willing to look for another place and move out early, if there were no penalties for breaking the lease. As you know, New York rentals can be tricky, so we'd need some flexibility, but we can begin our search now, and provide a 45 day notice once we've secured a new home. If you'd prefer, we can live out our lease through date, we just wanted to provide you with an option that might give our family and you a way of allieviating some tension in the building. Please let us know what you think, via email so we know how to proceed. Corb You never know, you may win the jackpost and your landlord will happily let you out of your lease. On the upside, it will take WAY longer than 7 months to evict you, so...there's that. Avoid the jerky downstairs neighbors. If they're menacing, I wouldn't mess with it either. Hang in there!

I should add: we are, in fact, determined to move when our lease is up (partially due to other information), but that's not for several months. Yes, but if the landlord wants you out, call them up and negotiate a mutually-agreeable end date to your lease that is much, much earlier. I mean, breaking bones? Your downstairs neighbor is violent and hates you. Moving is a good idea and it sounds like no one would mind.

I say just carry on living your life. The chances of your landlord bringing you to housing court for nonpecuniary issues like this are, in my experience, very slim. Especially if your lease is up soon. They'll just wait and not offer to renew if they really want you out. This is not normal for decent residential landlords, but refusal to make any improvements to the property is normal for residential slumlords. Don't confront anyone. Just ignore. If it gets to a point where they want to evict you, just say you'll leave asap if they let you out of your lease without penalty, and then move. They get you out, you don't have the housing court mark on your record, and they save legal costs/time. Keep in mind, based on what you've said, you will probably not get your security deposit back without a fight.

Regarding the noise issue, I've been both the upstairs and the downstairs neighbor in this situation, and I can tell you that ordinary household noise (walking around, setting something down) can sound amazingly loud to the unit downstairs, particularly if you keep different hours. There's not much that you can do about it. You can take off your shoes indoors, and you can buy "noise-cancelling" pads for throw rugs, but if you have someone unreasonable downstairs, it can get ugly. (And to be fair, as the downstairs neighbor, the noise feels intrusive and can be a constant source of stress) We sold our last place (second floor) due to an ongoing, incredibly stressful battle with our downstairs neighbors regarding noise. My blood pressure is rising just thinking about it. (in this situation we were all from the same racial/ethnic groups, for what it's worth). If you have more reasonable people downstairs (which is not a given!), would you consider a face-to-face discussion, with your landlord, where you talk about what the lease says with regard to noise (there is sometimes a carpeting requirement), how this is impacting everyone, and what you'd be willing to try, and what you cannot change? Sometimes people just need to be heard. I'd be clear, though, that some amount of household noise is inevitable, and you cannot promise silence.

I want you to photograph the old pipes and ESPECIALLY the seal between the tub and floor. I know for a fact deferred maintenance is causing your plumbing problems. You don't want those costs coming out of your deposit. Definitely document and think about sending a letter to your landlord with the pics to cover your ass if you're not going to move early. Take the pics anyway, in case you have to got to small claims to get your deposit back.

I know a lot of folks are going to say "just move," corb, and an obnoxious landlord is certainly high on the list of reasons to do so, but have you tried to set up a meeting with both the landlord and the downstairs neighbors? Maybe at a local coffee shop that would be neutral ground? Even if it doesn't work, it might look good in the event you do have to go legal. There are so many issues here (the bath-splashing vs the landlord's unwillingness to even consider the possibility of leaky plumbing, the neighbors' perhaps unrealistic expectations of quiet time and what counts as "noise", your willingness to overlook their barking dog and screamed profanities, the possibility of racism, etc) that an attempt at a respectful sit-down over coffee seems like a step that might at least dampen the antagonism for a little while. (Long enough for you to find another place, even.)

When you say "residential rental", do you mean that the landlord lives on the premises, or do you just mean renting a home vs. owning? Everyone I've known who has shared the premises with their landlord has not had super great things to report. Not always bad, but there seem to always be boundary issues that have to be negotiated. 1. The plumbing thing. Nope. I would be already reading up on tenants' rights when it comes to habitable dwellings and plumbing, because what you describe is not normal and is not due to your irresponsibility. That said, it might be easier to break the lease than to force your landlord to make necessary repairs. 2. Neighbor noise. This one's on you, and AFAIK it is not your landlord's responsibility to soundproof. Here's the deal with apartment neighbor noise issues. After 11pm should be quiet hours. Loud music, raucous parties, and other things that are a matter of noise pollution are out of the question. With more mundane "everyday life" noises, it's a little more complicated, but you should at least be considerate about it and try to keep things down late at night. I once had neighbors who I swear were nocturnal and used to vacuum or sit down for a big loud family meal after 11pm, and it drove me CRAZY. It was technically not illegal, but I hated them for it and definitely made it known that their behavior was obnoxious. Do that stuff during the day/evening, please. If it's stuff like "I heard you walking around" or "I heard your kid playing" before 9-10 PM is not a big deal, though, and you can feel free to ignore those complaints and just be aware that you have psycho neighbors. I, too, once had to go through the transition of sharing a wall with elderly shut-ins and then getting a young family with dogs, and it's rough, but no, at the end of the day hearing the occasional TV or footsteps or dog claws on hardwood is not something you call the cops over. In NYC police pretty much routinely do not actually respond to noise complaints. Especially if it's the noise of someone talking quietly with two guests, which is not really "noise complaint" territory anyway. 3. Racism. Oy, and yeah, I have a strong feeling that you're right about this. Especially if your family is of a race/ethnicity stereotyped as being "loud". Which probably exacerbates your neighbors' feelings that you are loud, even if they're not frothing white supremacists or anything. The upshot of all this? Just fucking move out. Seriously. Life is too short. You can either stay out your lease, or look into what breaking it would mean. Feel free to talk to a tenant's rights group or an attorney, but I would probably be asking more questions about whether you're allowed to break a lease in a building with obviously faulty plumbing and fewer questions about what you can force your landlord to do. Because it's really not worth the headache of getting the landlord to fix the plumbing in a living situation that is this toxic.

Ugh. We straight up left the city in part because of a situation like this. Go shoeless inside, get some rugs down. Do not let your kid bathe the cat without help. Seconding the taco above, in old small buildings noise goes through floors very easily, I think with added bass. That being said, remind the landlord in a letter that he must communicate civilly, and try to be warm to the nutters downstairs. Also, get out of there.

Ugh, this brings back memories. One thing I did when dealing with a similar problem (though in that case landlord and neighbor were the same, and she wanted me to stop using toliet paper because it was somehow damaging the pipes. Yes.) was contact my local tenant's rights org and outline my exact problems, making sure I wrote down where exactly in the city laws it said that it was a landlord's responsibility to ____. In your case, look for stuff about plumbing, leaks, etc; insulation from sound probably isn't a tenant's rights issue. I then sent a cloyingly respectful note outlining what I had discovered, laying out what action was required on my landlord's behalf, then ended with something similar to Ruthless's offer to move out before my lease ended if it could be done without penalty. Three months later, I was in a better place. Even before I knew I was moving, writing the letter made me feel in control again and that was a big anxiety reducer. It's your house! You should feel like you have power there! It might help to double check also that your apartment meets all security requirements for rentals (deadbolts, proper window fastenings, whatever). If nothing else, you know you have a potentially violent neighbor. Also, security risks are a red flag that landlords have to deal with as soon as they're brought up, and if you make it more trouble than it's worth to keep you they might be even more likely to let you move penalty free.