Anti-social behaviour where I live

gazzer

I was wondering if anybody had any advice for me concerning the estate i am living in? I moved in to my house 4 years ago which i got under the afordable housing scheme from Fingal county council.. It was a godsend for me and i was delighted to get it.. The estate is a mixture of affordable, social and private housing. 2 years ago i bought the council's share of the house so in 23 years time the house will be mine .

The problem is the estate has gotten really bad in the number of months. I have posted on another part of boards about the general anti social behaviour and how it is getting worse.

Beside my estate is another council estate and the majority of the problems are coming from the kids from there.. At first i ignored it cos none of the neighbours were giving out to them and i didnt want to be the only one.. However in the last couple of months i have had enought and Ive gone out a few times to them to ask them to stop but i just get abuse of them and for the last 4 nights there have been eggs/stones been thrown at the sitting room window.. last night 2 fireworks were let off.

About a month ago two robbed cars knocked down 3 of the railings that bother the esate i am in with the other estate.. I rang Fingal last week cos they have replaced the railings with boulders.. I asked them when the railings would be fixed and they said around 2 months.. FFS 2 months.. its rediculous.. the lack of railings is making it easier for these scumbags to get away quicker when they are annoying the residents.

I rang up the anti social behaviour section of the council and they said i would have to get names of the people involved.. How the hell am i meant to do that.. Also i have video footage of the kids throwing things at the houses (and writing on some of the house windows in marker) but apparantly that is not good enough if they cant get names of the kids.. I rang the police on Thursday and last night about the kids but they never arrived.. or if they did i didnt see them around..

Surely the council have a duty of care to the residents in the esate.. When i moved in first there were huge railings up and there was no access into our estate from the other one.. after about a year those railings came down and smaller ones (with a walkway) were put in their place.

THere are apartments opposite me that have loads of graffiti on them for the last 2 months.. the council still havnt done anything about that either.

I dont know what to do at this stage.. Can i sue the council for letting the problem escalate, what the legal implications of getting the access to the other estate blocked off? Im paying a hefty mortgage but to be honest at this stage I would rather move somewhere else and pay more (stamp duty etc) cos it looks like Fingal and the guards arnt doing anything and i am really afraid i am going to get one of the kids one day and batter him. The next door neighbours are already selling up..

I would hate to be driven out of my home but i dont know what to do at this stage. Then again if i try to sell the house i probably wont get any buyers if word of the anti social behaviour gets out... any advice would be appreciated.

lostexpectation

have you enquired into anyway of having kids occupied elsewhere for one more night a week, if not do then come back to us... and ask for more help

antoinolachtnai

That is really a terrible story, I am sorry to hear it.

Two things I will say.

1. There is an election coming up. This gives you some sort of chance to get things moving.

The best thing you could do is get some sort of committee or group together to sort this out. It sounds to me like this is going to be difficult, but this is really what you have to do.

2. It is strange, but this stuff tends to happen a few years after an estate is built. The reason is that you tend to end up with a big crowd of kids of a particular age in the area. However what you are describing sounds really bad.

The council has no real 'duty of care', at least not to you. They might have some duty to their tenants, but since you have bought them out, they have no duty to you. It's basically up to you to bring pressure to bear.

This is just a guess, but I would say your best chance of getting the railings repaired in a hurry is to get the gardai involved. The lack of railings is a hazard which makes life much more dangerous for gardai, because it provides a rat-run for joyriders whom gardai may find themselves pursuing. A Garda (or someone else) could get killed.

dools

Gazzer,

Sorry to hear about your troubles.

We had similar problems on a really nice private estate on the Northside. We were facing onto a park that a number of other private estates backed onto. It was the gathering spot for all the teenagers. These kids were very privileged and had the best of gear

We had the gardai up about 4 times a week for a year and a half. It got really bad - bonfires,drinking, urinating in gardens, stones thrown, bangers through doors, vandalism everywhere,etc. A meeting was called for the whole estate and we met with the local community Garda and all the local representatives. The gardai were really on board, but to be honest, there is only so many times they will come up and ask a gang to move on. It was a terrible situation and we hated living there. We ended up having to clean up the cans,fag boxes,condom wrappers, etc in the the park area after them and put the rubbish in our own bins and we had to paint the walls ourselves that they had vandalised on numerous occasions. They even knocked down the wall across from our house with a sledgehammer just before I got home from work one day. The gardai came up and took the hammer off them. The council could'nt tell me when it would be rebuilt

We ended up moving because of it. We could'nt sleep for stress and worry and every morning we'd get up dreading the car had been broken into or something and we'd spend the working day dreading going home cos they were always there, right in front of our house burning something or vandalising something. We were comfortably off paying the mortgage on the house but have a much larger mortgage now and had to pay a lot of stamp, but we don't regret it for a second. So glad to be out of there...

Sorry, I know this is of no help to you, but that is our story. People kept telling us that it would pass, but there are loads of kids coming up behind them who will just perpetuate the problem.

You do need to try and organise something between all your neighbours and your local community garda. I wish you all the best and hope it all passes

D

bomb_thrower

Sorry to hear about the problems your facing.

I'm having a few problems, minor in comparison to yours but still rather worrying. I'm living on a ground floor apartment in west Dublin. As usual it's these scummy kids that cause most of the problems. There's a lot of noise (esp at weekends), some trash and some crayon graffitti on the wall in the lobby. On the odd time you'd get some (unseen) kid ringing the apartmental intercom which is another minor nuisance. Hard to tell if its just kids being kids or if it is deliberate. Someone also tried to smash in the locked lobby door that leads to my particular block but didnt succeed. My apartment patio is also overlooked from above by 3 aparttments directly above which means the charming people above me chuck their cigarette butts/sweet papers/plastic bottles on to my patio (luckily when i'm not there). It's this anti-social behaviour that angers me but I feel if I confront directly, problems will just increase.

I'vee had no need to call the cops yet but I feel it may be 'leading in that direction'. From what I've heard in general its pointless calling the guards. I reckon that if I do get any sh!t from the kids in the estate I'll just pay a bunch of teenagers to threaten them or maybe something more drastic. I know that sounds bad but living in these types of areas has made me think that you have to fight fire with fire and that this is the only language they understand. If I lived in Killiney or Rathgar I'd be able to discuss the problems with the neighbours in a civil manner but out in knackersville things are a bit different i'm afraid. Touch wood things wont escalate beyond the current minor anti-social attitudes im encountering at the moment.

JP Mulvano

lostexpectation wrote:

have you enquired into anyway of having kids occupied elsewhere for one more night a week, if not do then come back to us... and ask for more help

I can clearly see your point here and agree with the idea behind your point. But what you seem to be saying is just because the kids parents are incapable or unwilling to look after them or because no one (council or otherwise) has provided them something to do it gives them the right to run around terrorising people. CRAZYYY!!!

I totally agree that the only way to get these kids of the street is to give them somewhere to go in the evening and something to do. Arresting them or contacting the council won't do a thing you need to tackle the root cause and find a solution otherwise they'll just move somewhere else after getting run out of this place.

gamer

if you have residents association maybe you could offer to pay for large railings to be installed ,this tends to happen when kids reach certain age,its upto the gardai to maintain law and order.i notice sumtimes lanes are closed ,right of way extenguished ,if theres compaints from numerous residents in regard to crime or antisocial behavior.if someone is causing trouble thru drugs or antisocial behavior ,the council have the power to evict em,take em off housing list.they may not take much notice of 1 person complaining though.