Neighbor’s Stinky Ass Weed
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Okay, so this is a low stakes problem. Nonetheless, I need some advice.
My neighbor (condo) has started smoking the most stinky ass weed I’ve ever smelled and the smell is coming through the wall. It’s so bad, we’ve had to close off the office (which abuts their wall) and my husband’s clothes in that closet have started to reek of it. Air purifiers don’t help. Candles don’t help. I’m at my wit’s end. And, for the record, I don’t care that they use weed. I just care about the smell!
The people who are in it are renters and I know it’s designated as a non-smoking unit. Weed is alto technically illegal in my state. I don’t know them very well, but they seem pretty nice and I don’t want to turn them in to the landlord, which might make them lose their lease or possibly worse. Any suggestions for a nice way to say “for the love of god get some edibles!”? (Short of offering them some of my own, which I will not do because see technically illegal above.)
Gross. We have people down the hall who make the hall reek, and if it was coming into my unit, I would say something to the owner. You’re a lawyer, right? Sounds like you checked the condo docs. Given they’re a renter, I would say something but ask that the owner not tell them who complained. If that’s possible. A note probably won’t get you anywhere.
Are these people of color? If so, I might try to address it personally before alerting the landlord. If they’re white people who would likely not even get a slap on the wrist for their illegal behavior, I might go ahead and alert the landlord and phrase it the way Kate did: their smoke smell is really strong and affecting your quality of life. You don’t have to specify that it’s weed, though I wouldn’t lie if asked directly.
I’d say something personally notwithstanding. Maybe something along the lines of: “Hi. I wasn’t sure if you knew, but the smell of your weed is not contained to your unit. I have tried to cover it up on my own, but our clothes are starting to smell and we’ve even had to close the office. I’d rather address this with you than go to the landlord. Any chance you can [insert alternative of choice here: smoke less, go outside, switch to a vape pen, eat an edible]?”
And then if they’re unreasonable or say they’ll change but don’t, I’d go to the landlord.
Do you know the landlord? I assume it’s the condo owner, so maybe you do know them and have a sense for how they’d react. An owner of one of the units in my 8-unit building had renters a couple years ago. It was two guys in their early 20s and they’d throw loud parties in a building where everyone else is 30s+. He had zero desire to intervene with his problem tenants, so the HOA board had to get fairly involved. We were pretty new to the building so we didn’t know the owner, but some of our other neighbors did know him from when he was living in the building and they were not at all surprised by how hands off he wanted to be.
Sending better smells your way!
I guess my concern with addressing the neighbors personally is that you don’t know them very well and they might be kind of crazy and start doing wacky things just to push your buttons (while not doing anything about the weed smell) and then you have double the problems. And if you go to your landlord and the landlord doesn’t do anything, you’re in a not great place for pushing this forward, because your neighbors will know you’re the one causing problems for them and they may retaliate. I know this sounds paranoid, but I’ve lived in big cities for 23 years; I’ve seen some crazy neighbors do some wacky stuff.
Are there any other neighbors you know better who might be also smelling the weed?
I’d definitely prefer to talk to them directly before going to the landlord, but I’m not sure what to suggest, I guess? They can’t smoke outside. Are there filters or smoke catchers or other things I can suggest/buy as a gift to help?
Yes, there are filters but I’m not familiar enough to recommend a specific one. I did a search, and a few came up on Amazon with good reviews:
These are all under $25 and may be worth the price of potentially solving the problem while maintaining a cordial neighborly relationship (best case scenario!). And if the filter doesn’t work, at least you’ve given a head’s up to the neighbors and if they are at all respectful and decent people, they’ll make an effort to remedy the issue.
Knowing they are people of color in a red state (regardless of whether the city is blue) would make me hesitant to reach over their head’s before trying to work something out with them first.
