Housing Association almost broke down my door, this escalated too fast?

October 27, 2020 12:25 PM

Does the hive mind understand what the thinking of these HA officers is? Did they possibly make mistakes in their approach? Should I talk to my downstairs neighbor, telling him to always first contact my other neighbors and leave me alone? Should I file a complaint on him, on the HA? Has this happened to anyone else in the hive? Can this just happen so easily? Is this a downside of renting from a social housing association (paying double rent as higher income earner)? How to de-escalate the madness?

Today at work, I (woman 45) discovered I had missed calls from the social housing association between 10 and 12 am and some messages of a friend/neighbor etc. Because I was in a meeting I had missed the calls (also had mistaken the name of the social housing officer for someone I thought could wait till evening or next day). At 12 in the middle of a patient consultation I saw two neighbors I’m friendly with texting me if I was allright and they were worried. The social housing association together with the police were ready to break my door down because they had had two people contacting them that I hadn't been seen for 3 weeks. They couldn’t tell me who the two different people were because of privacy law.
(Btw I rent a unit on the 3rd and 4th floor, an exception for higher income earners and am saving for a downpayment on a house. The units are six in total sharing a stairwell).

Luckily two of my friendly neighbors were home during the day and had told the police and housing association that they had seen and texted me 6 days before (one is gone a lot because of a new relationship, I’m away often too, and the other neighbor I only see once in a while in the stairwell or street). So the three-weeks-no-sign-of-life alarm was busted/falsified right away.

They took the word of this guy, and told me that I should be happy with the concern 'in these times', who with all his sincere concern apparently hadn't checked with the two other neighbors I have contact with before alarming the housing association (HA).

I am annoyed and shocked because the person I suspect of having caused this false alarm, my downstairs neighbor, is a very manipulative person that I do my best to avoid (after years of situations, like him harassing the elderly woman for which I have tried to file complaints with the police and HA), and he apparently gets taken seriously to the point that they almost forced my door.
He rings my doorbell often but I don't open the door, he has been doing this for years and I have told him I have nothing to say to him and don’t want any contact with him. He would react that I have no choice because we share the stairwell etc. It goes nowhere so I avoid it as much as possible. The SA knows I have tried to file complaints against him.
I can’t fathom why they can't convey the identity because of privacy law, but they can apparently escalate within two hours of me not calling back or texting them (10-12am) to breaking in and searching my house!

Initially during my workday I didn’t have a lot of time to think during very busy patient-consultations, and was wondering if any of my friends or family could have been this alarmed about me, if I had missed calls/texts, hadn't answered voicemails or something.

This dude (in his late 50's) wakes up daily at 2 or 3 pm, where I wake up at 4.45am and am out the door at 6 for a 1,5 hour commute, so he doesn't see me and then thinks up drama or gets all curious as to what's up, possibly.
The social housing officer did not understand at all that I was surprised and inquired about their steps of escalation because I just don't understand how this could have happened to me. They also asked why my blinds were down at the streetside of the apartment, which is my kitchen: I closed those yesterday evening cooking my dinner when it was dark out, and then didn't open them this morning because I left super early and it was still dark. At the backside of the apartment I open and close curtains daily. Also the HA asked my friendly neighbors about a woman with a headscarf coming every two weeks (my cleaning lady). Why would this be of any concern to them? It feels so weird that suddenly I have to explain myself to the HA in this way, because of this drama loving person who probably engaged one of the other people in the block somewhere.
What if my friendly neighbors hadn't been at home, and working from home to be able to tell the police and SHA? Can any weirdo just make one call and within 2 hours your door's broken down because of "sincere concerns"?

There had been no call from the HA, letter, nothing I could have reacted to before today. I love my anonymity and privacy in the down town area of a big city, I hate all this attention, but I really do understand the HA awful circumstance of having to do these house calls with worse endings multiple times a year.

posted by Mariemma to Law & Government (18 answers total)

If your landlord was the one doing it, it can happen.

I am deaf. One day I was sitting in my living room typing away on my PC when some lady from the apartment management office got my attention and asked me if I was okay. I indicated that I was fine and asked what was up. Apparently someone had heard strange sounds from my apartment. I followed the lady to my door where i saw two cops standing out in the hallway. The chain on my door had been forced.
posted by Fukiyama at 12:38 PM on October 27, 2020

What country are you in?

And can you clarify your question?
posted by NotLost at 12:44 PM on October 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: @Fukiyama Yes, the housing association is my landlord

@Notlost In northern Europe, why? :)
posted by Mariemma at 12:46 PM on October 27, 2020

Im not familiar with your setup (am not in northern europe), but if you are the only person with a job in your complex, no disability, and not impoverished, the housing association or social housing officer might not understand that you are not home all day.

Also you probably don't want to advertise the fact that you do have money for the same reasons. I would clarify the situation if needed with your friendly neighbors and get a security bar for your doors, the kind you can prop up underneath the knob so people won't just bust in on you while you are in the apartment.

Look up door jammer or security bar.
posted by jello at 12:49 PM on October 27, 2020 [5 favorites]

I asked where you are because customs, laws and regulations vary between countries.

If the housing association is your landlord -- even if they had a legitimate reason to enter your apartment, I would expect them to have their own key.
posted by NotLost at 12:53 PM on October 27, 2020 [9 favorites]

It is weird that no one bothered to knock on your door before trying to knock it down.
posted by NotLost at 12:59 PM on October 27, 2020 [4 favorites]

You could write to the housing association office not the take the word of persons a as he is a known harasser and likely got person b riled up, and to instead contact neighbors x and y if they cannot get a hold of you.
posted by jello at 1:04 PM on October 27, 2020 [7 favorites]

I mean, there is a lot that is weird about this to me (an American, especially the questions about the blinds), but one thing that I thought of is that you don't know whether it was your downstairs neighbor or someone else who they think would have a more legitimate concern (or multiple someones, if I'm parsing the situation correctly).

If the social housing officer not affiliated with the housing association?
posted by sm1tten at 1:12 PM on October 27, 2020

I think a lot depends on the particulars of this social housing arrangement. Does your lease, or other document governing your tenancy, advise when the HA officers may enter? Are they a species of police or more like private property managers? I think the first step is to determine whether the breaking in would have violated your rights as conferred by the lease. If yes, and if the HA officers are police, you could go up the chain of command. If yes and the HA officers are not police, I think you send the property owner and management a certified letter advising that entering your apartment when not permitted by the lease is breaking and entering (or whatever the terminology is in your area) and if it happens, you will call the police.

The less you engage or make this about the nosy nitwit downstairs, the better.
posted by lakeroon at 1:22 PM on October 27, 2020 [4 favorites]

Response by poster: Thanks for trying to understand me, people! I should have been more clear.

The housing corporation/association/landlord has no keys. They aren't police, just housing people, property managers. Only renters own a keyset (and some spares).

By housing officer I meant the person from the landlord/housing association.

They came and had brought police with them, because in my country only the police can legally force your door/enter in case of emergency, for (public) safety reasons etc.

Two people had reported that they hadn't seen me in 3 weeks, so police/housing approached this as a possible death/suicide, like in the case isolated people lay in their house for weeks. But I was just there daily, coming and going to work etc!
So it seems just some people saying something is enough cause to for police to force entry?

I wonder if the police (and housing) skipped a step or two, escalating to searching my house on a couple of stories without checking them. It was by accident that they met my neighbors.

They did ring my bell of course but I wasn't home, I was at my workplace in another city.

I am certainly not the only one with a job in the building, but I do feel really out of place here now.
posted by Mariemma at 2:18 PM on October 27, 2020

I think you're probably right that your odd downstairs neighbor is behind this, and that's why you are so upset/ disconcerted. It's a way of harassing you.

I would write a letter to the landlord/housing people saying basically that you found this very odd given that you chat regularly with several neighbors and asking for a copy of whatever procedure they followed to initiate the wellness check.

If you have someone you can give as an emergency contact to them, I would do that, too.

So you're basically saying "I expect there to be a pretty high bar to this ever happening again, including you texting my sister who will know if I'm alive or dead, thanks for your concern, byeeee."
posted by Snarl Furillo at 2:29 PM on October 27, 2020 [13 favorites]

Maybe you can propose a new bylaw for your housing community allowing tenants to specify procedures to be followed in situations like this. Some people might want the door knocked down right away! But yours might say “Only break in if you are unable to verify that I am alive after calling me and these other two people, at these phone numbers, and 24 hours has elapsed since your last attempt at contact.”
posted by lakeroon at 2:42 PM on October 27, 2020 [1 favorite]

Hey there, Canadian cop here. So yes, usefulness of this response may vary a lot since you're in a different country with different culture and whatnot, but I thought I could provide SOME insight into why something like this might happen.

There's a lot going on here, but since your housing authority (HA) and police are different agencies I would take a moment to split what happened into 2 parts:
Part 1) the 'complaint' to the HA, and the decision to call the cops,
Part 2) what the cops did after they got called.

I would split these up because I think you will probably have different expectations about what you can do about each, and different expectations about what the 'right' thing for each to do is.

Now on the matter of part 1, whether that was reasonable is down to your local culture and customs, but if you don't think it was then make sure you let them know that and ESPECIALLY make sure they know not to listen to that particular neighbor. You may think the HA is aware of your problems with him, but often we overestimate organizations ability to put 2 and 2 together to get 4, even if they are aware of all the little things he's done to bother you they may not have added them up to HARASSMENT, so make sure they are aware of the history and know not to take him seriously in the future. (On preview, what Snarl Furillo said).

With regard to Part 2

After the (9-1-1) or (9-9-9) or (1-1-2) call the die is cast. Short of a very well documented history of harassment (on file with the police, not something they heard of second hand from the HA) once someone is reported missing the cops will do everything in their power to get eyes on that person as quickly as is possible, not because they have assessed and determined the concern to be legitimate per se, but because the complaint has been recorded and they probably cannot go do anything else until it they can confirm the person is alive and well. Also because sometimes the person will be dead or dying.

In Canada we've had a whole big problem with missing and murdered women, turns out if you decide not to look for someone because of what you think is a good reason (they've run away before, they're involved in illegal activity so of course they are avoid the cops, etc.) then one day that person may actually be dead and your investigation will be off to a really bad start. Also it turns out if the whole community knows someone has been reported "missing" 100 times AND that the cops are lazy, it makes it really easy for someone to kill that person and get away with it.

I've spent a lot of time chasing after runways, ex's, and people who didn't want to be found [and respecting that once they were found] but I've also had people I thought were in "didn't want to be found" or "didn't need to be found" category who ended up actually being quite dead, which is why we're no longer allowed to make judgments about whether a missing persons report is "sincere". Given the events above no one in my police organization would bat an eye at having to pay for a new door. "Missing women, unresponsive" would pretty much be a blank check for repairs, although some supervisors would hassle you if you didn't at least TRY to crawl in via a window or balcony first.

Real world example: One day at work we had two missing persons files come in at the same time. One was a guy, a mechanic with no history of medical or mental health problems who was late to work, didn't show up at 09:00 and didn't answer the phone when the boss called. Boss called 9-1-1 by 10:00. The guy had been at the company baseball game the night before, played well, had been out with friends and family without incident. Obviously just hung over, we thought. The second was a shut-in, a women with a well documented history of mental illness and disability, who had been suicidal in the past and had stopped responding to her support person over the phone. Social services called at around 10:00, my understanding was that the social worker got to work at 09:00, spent an hour reaching out, then gave up and dumped the file on the cops and moved on to something else. So a slightly higher risk assessment but still nothing specific to point to.

We thought both calls were a waste of time, there was no reason reason to believe either were in any trouble, he was an hour late for work for the first time in his life, she was doing something she had done 100 times before and essentially just refusing to speak to anyone while she had a bad day. We all thought the boss was anal and that the social worker was lazy. But just because we often think the public is annoying doesn't meant we don't do the job, so officers were dispatched to both homes.

Officers arrived to both houses at about the same time, and I was listening in on the radio. On arrival both failed to answer the door or the phone. Both got their windows peaked into, and front doors banged on, and eventually both got sets of officers got supervisor's approval and kicked the front doors in. It wasn't even 11:00 at this point. She was fine, and really pissed off about the door. He was dead from a self inflicted gunshot wound. I know both sets of officers, and I'm very certain the officers dealing with the angry women with the damaged door had a much better day then the officers who had to deal with the suicide, next of kin notifications, and death investigation.

Why am I spelling this out? It's just to say that even if you don't believe the police were correct in doing what they were doing, from their perspective your annoyance/anger and potential complaint to management about the door pales in comparison to what could happen if they miss out on discovering a body or preventing a suicide. Now could the cops do a better job explaining this type of thing to you, listening to your concerns and making you feel understood, of course they could. I'm not saying you weren't ALSO right to be annoyed, I certainly would be in your situation. If I were you I would focus my efforts on preventing the call from being made in the first place, as I don't think you stand much chance of changing the policy/procedures that determine what the police will do after they've been called.
posted by BlueSock at 3:03 PM on October 27, 2020 [63 favorites]

One thing you could do to prevent this in the future is provide your HA with an emergency contact. That should be someone you have regular contact with and who could vouch for your safety if there was a concern and they couldn't reach you.

And next time Nosy Parker Neighbor tried to create drama the HA could simply say that they've spoken to your emergency contact and everything is fine and they should go about their business.

Also if something did happen to you, they would be able to call this person who could alert your friends and family if you needed help.
posted by brookeb at 3:50 PM on October 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

I would contact the Housing Assn. and say that the incident was difficult and unsettling for you, and ask how you can work with them to avoid any such events. Understand they they are looking out for your welfare as best they can and make them your ally. Be neutral about the jerk; they'll figure it out and that will be good.
posted by theora55 at 4:18 PM on October 27, 2020 [3 favorites]

Wow, really fantastic response by BlueSock.

I just wanted to say that in the US, the involvement of the police might mean that an inquiry leveraging freedom of information laws might obtain more details.
posted by XMLicious at 9:20 PM on October 27, 2020 [2 favorites]

You need to get responses from people in your country, at the very least. I am in Northern Europe, but perhaps not your Northern Europe. If you were in Sweden I would want to know if this was a BRF or if it was municipal rental or private rental or what the deal was. As written it sounds (again, in Sweden) more like a halfway house or group shelter, but that’s all moot without knowing the details of your country and living situation. Germany is not Sweden is not Estonia.
posted by J.R. Hartley at 5:06 AM on October 28, 2020 [4 favorites]

I would absolutely formally notify both your Housing Association as well as the local police that your downstairs neighbor has a history of harassing you when you've made it very clear you want no contact with them. Let them know that this person has acted with malice toward you and that no calls from them about your well being should be acted on without first making contact with you or an emergency contact of your choosing. This also puts them on notice that the neighbor has been harassing you should that escalate.
posted by quince at 10:57 AM on October 28, 2020 [1 favorite]