Living in an apartment building comes with some inconveniences in the form of inappropriate neighbors.
The most unpleasant thing is being next to someone who drinks. In this regard, the issue of eviction of an alcoholic is quite relevant.
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How to deal with neighbors who are alcoholics legally?
Drinkers are quite common among residents of apartment buildings.
They cause a lot of inconvenience to neighbors that they have to endure. And most citizens do just that, believing that it is useless to fight alcoholic neighbors.
Meanwhile, in such situations, the law still stands on the side of respectable residents. The Housing Code of the Russian Federation (Articles 17, 91 and 83), the Civil Code (Article 293) and the Code of Administrative Offenses of the Russian Federation (Article 7.21) provide for protection measures against noisy and otherwise inconvenient neighbors.
A neighbor who is an alcoholic, on the basis of these laws, can be punished with an administrative warning, a fine, eviction, and even deprivation of living space . Eviction is a last resort, and the procedure depends on the basis on which the rowdy lives in the given living space. Read here what legal methods exist to deal with troublemakers.
Noise
You can only make noise at times specified by law. Each region has its own schedule for this. Thus, in Moscow you cannot disturb the peace of neighbors from 23:00 to 7:00, make repairs from 19:00 to 9:00, from 13:00 to 15:00, on Sundays and non-working holidays. This will result in a fine of 1 to 2 thousand rubles.
“At a meeting of homeowners, you can also ask for additional hours of silence in the house. If the majority votes for it, then the neighbor is obliged to comply. If you break the law, call 112, record the sounds on your phone voice recorder before arriving,” says lawyer Andrei Mozol .
First steps towards eviction
How to get rid of a drunk neighbor?
It is unlikely that it will be possible to resolve the issue peacefully, since conversations and appeals to the conscience of a person with inappropriate behavior are practically useless. Simply presenting a claim will most likely cause aggression on the part of the drinking citizen. Therefore, you can only talk to him when he is sober.
Every violation by a noisy neighbor should be stopped with the help of the police . You can call squads or ask the local police officer for help. By the way, your joint actions to solve the problem with other residents of the house .
Collective complaints will have a greater effect, and the district police officer will be forced to actively respond to them. Read about how to correctly write a statement to a local police officer here.
all your appeals in writing, keep copies or separate copies of complaints to the police. This will be your first step towards completely getting rid of your unwanted neighbor.
Of course, you can’t count on a quick solution to the problem. Therefore, be patient and do not deviate from your intended goal.
✅ Additional recommendations
Before submitting an application to the district police officer, you need to consider the following points:
- Complaints about neighbors should only be based on violations that the applicant personally witnessed (and not from the words of other residents of the house).
- Providing false information can result in serious liability for the applicant.
- It is advisable to complain to the police if there is evidence confirming that a neighbor committed offenses. Otherwise, the latter has the right to file a counter-complaint accusing him of libel.
- You should not involve relatives of the violator as witnesses, since they will most likely recant their words during a personal conversation with the OPD.
If the police don't help
Often in such situations, police officers are reluctant to respond to citizens' requests.
There are even cases of ignoring squad calls at night. In such a situation, you should complain to representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs.
Complaints about negligence in official duties should be filed with the prosecutor's office.
To avoid police response to you, make all statements in duplicate.
Compose the header of the application, addressing two addressees at once: police officers and prosecutors .
Procedure depending on housing status
There are factors that influence the specific procedure for eviction of an alcoholic from a residential premises. How to evict an alcoholic:
- From council housing
The owner of municipal housing is the administration of the city or rural locality. The tenant of such an apartment is obliged to comply with the terms of the social tenancy agreement , on the basis of which he occupies such living space.
An alcoholic can be evicted from an apartment owned by the authorities on the following grounds:
- failure to pay utility bills for six months;
- inadequate sanitary and technical condition of the apartment provided to the tenant;
- residence in an apartment of strangers without registration.
main allies in the process of eviction from public housing will be your local authorities . Send complaints to Rospotrebnadzor (SES).
An alcoholic neighbor living under a social contract. rental, is evicted by the administration without providing alternative premises. Your main goal is to collect evidence, that is, document your complaints to various authorities and record the response actions of authorized employees.
It is more advisable to act in these circumstances with the involvement of a competent lawyer, otherwise all attempts will be in vain.
As in other cases, you need to complain to the Ministry of Internal Affairs for every violation of order . Contact the SES with a complaint about the poor condition of the apartment.
But the only effective way will be a collective appeal to the court . Only this measure will give a chance to move the drunkard away from you.
In these circumstances, an appeal from the management bodies of an apartment building: HOA, management company or local government can be really effective. If there is well-reasoned evidence, the court will most likely rule in favor of those filing a claim .
You will have to go to court twice. First, the court may issue a warning to the alcoholic neighbor, demanding that he stop the violations and bring his own home into proper condition.
It is unlikely that a degraded person will fulfill these requirements. After the period for correcting the situation has expired, a second application will be required. After this, the alcoholic will most likely be evicted. Housing is put up for auction and the owner, having received them, can purchase another apartment.
- non-payment for services;
- violation of neighbors' rights;
- inadequate sanitary condition of living quarters and common areas.
You must act in the same order: first file complaints with the police, SES, and Housing Inspectorate. Then, together with other residents of the communal apartment, file a claim in court, demanding to collect debts for housing and communal services and to bring the living space into proper condition.
When living together in a communal apartment, all these requirements must be strictly met, so eviction is quite possible.
What is a district police officer obliged to do upon a citizen’s application?
First of all, in accordance with Order 1166 and the job description, the PMO must register the received message in a special journal. This rule also applies to oral appeals - they are also recorded in it.
Then the district police officer accepts the application for consideration, carries out work on it - requests the necessary documents, conducts inspections, etc. If we rely on the sample presented by us, the UUP is obliged to interview the neighbors and the owner of the residential premises, the applicant R.S. Pavlova. and request information from the Federal Migration Service on the registration of foreign citizens.
The entire check can take place within 3-10 days , in some cases the period can be extended to 1 month. Based on the results, the applicant is given a response.
Specifically, according to our example, when the district police officer detects the actions of violators of silence, he brings them to administrative responsibility and draws up a report on the implementation of preventive work. If illegal border crossing is confirmed, the material for initiating a criminal case under Art. 322 of the Criminal Code of the Russian Federation is transferred to the body of inquiry or investigation.
How to complain to Rospotrebnadzor and the Housing Inspectorate?
The purpose of complaints to regulatory organizations cannot be a demand to evict an alcoholic neighbor, since these organizations do not have such powers. You should contact them with a request to conduct an inspection and draw up inspection reports , which you can later use when filing a claim in court.
- Rospotrebnadzor (SES) should be contacted in case of improper maintenance of residential premises. The Housing Code in Article 30 obliges residents to keep common property clean, that is, to comply with sanitary and environmental standards.
If the alcoholic’s apartment is not kept clean, there is an unpleasant smell coming from it, cockroaches and rodents live in it, then Rospotrebnadzor can conduct an inspection and draw up a report . Then the neighbor will be required to correct the deficiencies.
- A complaint to the Housing Inspectorate is made in case of inadequate technical condition of the premises. If pipes in a neighbor’s apartment periodically leak and the apartments on the floor below are flooded, regulatory authorities can draw up inspection reports and demand that accidents and leaks be eliminated.
For more information on how to submit an application to various authorities, read this material.
What documents will help evict a person from a communal apartment?
It is worth understanding that the court will operate with specific facts and documents, and not with unfounded statements. Therefore, it is worth collecting all the evidence to defend your case. For example, you should not be embarrassed to call the police every time citizens disturb peace and order. The squad will record the data, and eventually there will be something to show to the court. You can try to approach it from the other direction: contact the sanitary and epidemiological station if there are grounds to blame the residents for not maintaining order in their housing and for unpleasant odors emanating from it. It is worth contacting the management company and finding out whether the offender regularly pays the receipts.
We have to admit that all these procedures are very lengthy. Sometimes you have to spend a lot of time and nerves to collect evidence that your neighbor in a communal apartment is rowdy, abuses alcohol and stirs up dirt. But this will not be a guarantee that he will be evicted. After all, the Civil Code protects violators, especially if they have nowhere else to live. On the other hand, history knows precedents when it was possible to evict tenants who did not belong to disadvantaged categories from communal and ordinary apartments. For example, if they refurbished the home and used it for other purposes. In this case, the citizen is obliged to return the property to its previous condition and compensate for possible damage.
Algorithm for filing complaints
The application-complaint has a standard form, like any application. The text is compiled in any form; only a few points should be taken into account:
- A single complaint is filed from several affected persons at once.
After the name and position of the person in whose name the document was drawn up, list the full names of all persons dissatisfied with the actions.
A complaint to any authority is drawn up according to this sample.
Tackle your alcoholic neighbor
Once upon a time, during the march of the ideas of historical materialism across the country, there was an institution of LTP, which has now been completely erased. But really, how can a district police officer deal with this widespread phenomenon?! But I don’t recommend beating, much less killing! Our Themis is an eccentric aunt: she will elevate a drunkard to the rank of victim, and you to the status of a villain! The solution is to adopt laws that give district police officers the right to harass these bastards quickly and convincingly.
Also, figure out what exactly your neighbor is drilling. Suddenly he’s planning a prohibited redevelopment?! If not, you still need to complain to the DEZ or the Moscow Housing Inspectorate of your district (the district government will tell you the phone number). Then the neighbor will at least be bothered with inspections, and at the most he will be fined so much that it will not seem too much.
How to file a claim in court?
Article 17 of the RF Housing Code requires citizens living in residential premises to respect the rights and interests of their neighbors.
The behavior of alcoholics who violate order is grounds for their eviction from their living quarters . Therefore, a claim to evict a noisy neighbor is completely legal.
The main condition that the court can take into account is the systematic nature of the violations .
Only in this case can the judicial authorities decide to apply an extreme measure of influence - eviction.
Your task is to prove to the court that no other measures taken by you have had any effect , and the neighbor continues to violate the order and thereby infringes on your rights. All work done before going to court must be documented.
The package of documents when applying to court must consist of:
- Complaints you file with various authorities. Each must bear the signatures of the persons who accepted the application and the date of receipt.
- Copies of resolutions of the administration and management companies.
- Certificates from the Criminal Code about the presence of arrears in payment of housing and communal services.
- Copies of police reports.
Inspection reports from the Housing Inspectorate and SES, copies of which must be required from the authorities conducting inspections.
Only the presence of written evidence of the futility of attempts to influence can give a chance to hope for a positive court decision, so documents must be prepared with special care .
Thus, it is possible to evict an alcoholic neighbor only through the court and only if the apartment is not his own only living space or he lives in a municipal or communal apartment .
In any case, this process is quite lengthy and requires a lot of effort. In addition to problems with drinking neighbors, it may happen that someone is being too noisy in your entrance. Where to complain about noisy neighbors, how to write a complaint correctly and to which authorities, read the articles on our website.
Smokers
In Russia, you cannot smoke tobacco, consume nicotine-containing products, or use hookahs in hallways, attics, basements and rooms that constitute common property in communal apartments. Violators of the federal law can be fined from 500 to 1.5 thousand rubles.
“If you suffer from your neighbor’s smoke, feel free to sue for compensation for moral damages. Even if a neighbor smokes on a balcony or loggia in his own apartment, and you have to breathe smoke, this violates your rights. The Supreme Court came to this conclusion. You can sue about 5 thousand rubles,” advised Andrei Mozol.
Sometimes, in order for a neighbor to stop smoking in prohibited places, it is enough to clearly explain to him that smoke negatively affects the health and well-being of others.
“The man was smoking through the door crack from his apartment, releasing tobacco smoke into the entrance. Neighbors took photos and videos of one of these episodes and called the local police officer. He warned the smoker about the inadmissibility of exhaling tobacco smoke into the stairwell and a possible fine, and notified him of the presence of evidence against him. The man started smoking through the window,” shared the managing partner of the law office, lawyer, forensic expert Anton Palyulin .
