CNA | Talking Point | E21: How to deal with difficult neighbours in Singapore

this was supposed to be the start of a new home and a new family my work she's like you over the moon prior to getting the key like she was really counting down to today's definitely sporting let the kids have a normal life but instead of the dreams that the family was hoping for things turn ugly really fast for Shafie and Ida our new neighbor came in about three months ago from death on my life and my family life actually is in such a tremendous state of any anxiety trauma [Music] shafy and Ida claimed the neighbor pounds violently on the walls at night waking the family this family isn't the only one in 2017 the Housing and Development Board said they received about 3,500 complaints about bad neighbors and social media is filled with videos like these with close to 10 disputes lodged every single day I'm on a mission to find out what is causing these disputes and what we can do when we're caught in the middle of one [Music] neighbor disputes typically only make the news after they have been broiling on for many years or at least when one party takes a dramatic action Ida's family has been embroiled in a dispute with a neighbor to three months they are desperate for help this is the wall that he likes to bang unexpectedly during the day during the night and how many times the night this this banging happened it could be five it could be more than that by unexpected times he will use an object you'll bang door I can't have a good night's sleep in this room anymore I keep hearing the bang unexpectedly and do you still sleep here anymore no at night we pull out to be go out at the living room so all of us will sleep outside the alleged constant banging also scares their children aged seven three and one is already rich roman by going through all the things he he has to go see a psychologist help and yet inside [Music] there's no way around this situation I approach the age to be about the family's case the board said together with other agencies they're working with the parties involved to try and reach an amicable solution but it added it would take time before the resolution is reached the Housing and Development Board is one of the first places residents turn to to voice their grievances about neighbor issues but the HDB is primarily a property developer so some residents turn to the town council instead which is the estate manager but the Town Council only imposes rules for common spaces like corridors and void decks not what happens inside the flat in July this year Shafi and Ida made a police report but even that didn't really help because there are no legal decibel limits when it comes to sounds from residential homes in order for any action to be taken I don't Shafi need to prove that their neighbor's noise is a nuisance in court and that is going to take time and it's going to cost money according to the community mediation center the most common types of neighbor disputes are harassment followed by abusive words and unacceptable conduct coming in at the top noise Mykleby is a noise control expert he has spent the past 30 years working on noise monitoring I'm meeting him to find out why noisy neighbors get on our nerves we and sometimes not conscious about how much noise we actually generate children playing can be a very wide range of noise some things a board game it can be quite quiet maybe 65 70 decibels or you can be playing a chasing game when you're running around jumping around screaming when you so that can be going up to about 85 to 90 decibels so it's actually really quite noisy our everyday activities but what's more important is the perception of that noise let me show you an example okay so this is a device that is generating a calibrated sounds sound level so I want you to stand over here and listen to the sound that's being generated okay so this is how white noise this sounds like the ocean to me compared to this this is a speech intelligibility test voice so now if I'm trying to speak to you how do you feel when I'm trying to say something to you and you I'm not actually listening to you anymore although both these noises are actually generating if you measure them they are the same at 62 decibels seriously Jesse but this is a speech intelligibility task voice however one affects you more than the other yes because one of them is actually exciting frequencies that are close to the human speech frequencies and that's what you're most sensitive to because we communicate using those frequencies right so I'm in direct competition to it so it turns out the noises made by our neighbors tend to irritate us not necessarily because they are loud but because they impair our communication with others so let me show you another source of noise this is called the tonal noise this is the same sound pressure as the other two I feel almost like vertigo like I wanna yes faint that's right so it's only exciting a specific frequency and that frequency irritates us so we have that sometimes in some mechanical equipment like an aircon compressor as you my neighbors the other day complain because our air condition units so old the whole night just goes ah at this one frequency that's right and it caused us issues yes one more thing I'd like to show you is how ambient or background noise affect how we perceive sound all this time that we are doing a recording we have been actually putting some pressure into this place to actually artificially increase the sound pressure really so right now we're gonna turn it off okay and you you're gonna realize that it's a much quieter environment yes now when I subject you to this you will notice that this is even louder than it was before although it is actually the same song sauce [Laughter] oh stop it's more cutting yes everything is more cutting that's why there's a difference at night is right because at at night there's less noise pollution that's right but during the day there are all these others so noises don't even have to be loud but by agitating certain frequencies different kinds of noises can evoke strong reactions in certain people I want to experience for myself what Shafi and Ida are going through so I've asked to stay the night at their place I've discovered that one of the main culprits of disputes between neighbors is noise something which Iron Chef II have been dealing with over the past three months I want to know how bad it can get especially in the dead of the night so I've asked for a sleepover this is my kitchen so this is the toilet all right okay this is the bedroom okay thank you thank you before turning in I set up cameras and noise monitoring devices around the room [Music] [Music] so the families just got to sleep and they're sleeping in the living room and in the master bedroom let's see how tonight goes gonna get to my pajamas and get into bed [Music] [Applause] I'm slowly easing myself to sleep but soon I hear someone knocking against the bedroom wall and close to midnight I hear this so I just had to really love prominent bangs that definitely came from this way and made me feel really uncomfortable it felt like it was meant to provoke me and it I feel very vulnerable a good night seat I keep getting woken up but these two bangs definitely put me out of my comfort zone I'm not feeling comfortable today I can understand now the strain on Shafi and his family I want to help Shafi and Ida find a solution to their ordeal the community mediation center under the Ministry of law was set up in 1998 to handle disputes between neighbors in an amicable manner Krishna V is an expert mediator who has been helping resolve neighbor disputes for the past 21 years mr. Krishna why should the affected parties seek the help of a mediator in the presence of a mediator helps them because he guides them allowing the parties whom to speak go to answer sometimes they may come to a deadlock then it is used sometimes the mediator will have a private session with them and may help them with some suggestion look what about looking at this issue in this way sometime in the during the mediation there comes some very good ideas among themselves which you can't think of what is the percentage of cases that go through mediation that eventually find a resolution what's that % o story it's about 70 percent we've been successful rates which in my opinion I think is quite high so how about 30 percent then you can result called the proceedings so I'm learning that mediation can be a powerful tool to resolving disputes especially between neighbors I'm wondering if Ida and her family would be open to having a session of mediation with their neighbor to hopefully resolve their dispute I'm giving Shafi a call hi well I just spoke with the community mediation center and they suggested that you and your neighbor go for mediation what do you think okay wait hold on why do you think mediation won't work I mean as much as I really want to make it I think [Music] for mediation to work both parties must believe that they can reach an amicable solution which isn't always the case as I've just heard from Shafi yet with every passing day living with a bad neighbor can be torture the residents from this block in another part of the island have been terrorized by one particular household for close to a decade until that said household finally moved out is that what it takes for resolution to be reached [Music] hi hi I want to ask you some questions about a neighbor that lived on this floor that caused some trouble before what sir I will be lenient on Ida T to alumni tablet up eating it who like to see Ottawa attendant howdy thousand Utah once a new Tao what and then government poor sweet home from the total while away coli her woman turned Andal home Belen was a book what was it like for you to experience something like that contained a little excusing tell Donna how long did it last but Elena did ago bacteria will attend undo but is the problem always with the neighbor or could it be the way our plants are built I think earlier I spoke to Madame la she lived next to a neighbor who slashed liquids at her front door for close to 10 years 10 10 the little is using to tell that one option is to move out but is that easier said than done I'm meeting housing agents Janet out I know she's been trying to sell a flat at this estate in the western part of Singapore for a number of years so this is the unit that dog owners tried to sell in fact that by is it legal in a step by a bit open stop at the common area okay he's put all of his items outside on the corridors yes he's kind of claimed it as his own space so how did the problems caused by this labor affect the sales of this flat basically there aren't any takers you see the pka's Mumbai account to see a property to buy they don't just look at the interior they also survey the surroundings that how neighbors gonna live in because this is like an everyday affair right from then on and they are faced with a neighbor situation like this it were actually raised concern about the potential buyers about whether is going to be a livable environment for them in future let me show you something you can see from the past transact that prices that's been recorded before the owner started selling the market value is around 420 to about 450 range so unless I'm able to ask at such a price and here to ask at about 3 to be about 360 range in order to you know attract buyers wow that's a real significant drop yes it is how long has this owner been trying to sell the flat spot two years two years yeah you still haven't been able to sell it yes Wow I was starting to think that if you had a problematic neighbor then you just move out and it's easy but I'm really starting to realize it's not that easy to just move out and sell the flat correct because he can't get it so he's unable to move to another replacement home right so therefore he stopped so moving out is not always an option and even less so when you have a family of five like Shafi and Ida I've been trying to have a word with sharpies neighbor [Music] he went out okay I finally managed to get him on the phone he declined an on-camera interview but agreed to let me share his views so I've just gone off the phone with sharpies neighbor and he apologizes if he had made a noise saying that it was unintentional and just a result of his lifestyle but more importantly he's decided to move out and sell his flat upon HDB's pending approval and hopefully this brings some closure to shelf unites case [Music] but does the problem always lie with the neighbor has Lina Hamza moved into this flat in Pongal four years ago soul infants living here what are the noise issues you've experienced in this flat no kidding dragging the cupboard and they were top Kim is brilliant through I mean like throwing things can heal the dawn the Muslims life is really reaching Moses but the doors know when you're never on top or no but below right when you closing the door they impact the pressure you can get no no no as a poem and you know they're doing something sorry so why do you think you can hear these noises loudly here I think is the wall the wall yes it my husband drill don't do all this is not like last time the house in flat it's really like food so my husband said like the world is like empty easy to go to hear the song oh no you have to carry yeah yeah I understand how follow this yeah is literally nothing in this wall this this is only this area right but that's a few hip has Lina believes the sounds are amplified in newer HDB flats because the walls are thinner so I'm putting this theory to the test I'm pitting has Lina's for upon go flat against my friends thirty-five-year-old flattened to Appa yo I'm getting help from acoustic consultants they'll measure how much noise can pass through the walls and ceilings from one unit into another in both flats we will know in a few days if there's any difference between the two [Music] three days later the moment of reckoning so Bruno what did the tests tell us so we did two types of tests yeah one is called an STC test in which we measure the noise traveling from one room to the other to a wall and then the other test is III sita's which actually measure the sound traveling through this lab and then to the room downstairs the reservation system in between the old HDD image to be okay so they're almost the same thing yes they match quite well mmm this confuses me a little bit why is it some people say that living in the new flat is actually noisier than living in the old flat so one of the factors behind that is because some of the newer developments the units are smaller and the development itself is more than sleep packed as opposed to the order of elements or the units are bigger and not nonsense so what happens is now don't live in close quarters you're going to be able to listen to another situation that may aggravate the issue is because sometimes in your developments the surrounding area is not totally developed yet so especially during night time any sound on your neighbor makes its gonna pick up your attention even though the actual noise is not high so walls amplifying sounds not really turns out we could be just lured densely packed these days so how do I deal with the neighbor from hell well I could try and find an amicable solution through various third party agencies but when the dispute is about noise that's going to be difficult because you can easily find out the permissible noise levels for factories and construction work in your residential area but when it comes to your neighbors it's often discretionary perhaps it would be better for everyone if there were clear noise limits that would help us and agencies take quick action before things get out of hand [Music]

Channel: CNA

Views: 165,245

Keywords:

Id: 4MzWTj0-xaI

Length: 23min 33sec (1413 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 21 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/teambea]

introduces social credit score based on manners

[u/Satireisus]

A better talking point is the ability of HDB / Town Councils in resolving neighbour issues. These sort of conflicts are best handled by an independent body such as HDB / Town Councils which also has the ability to set and enforce rules.

[u/[deleted]]

Refusal to change after multiple complaints should have their conservancy charges raised for wasting public resources