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Loud patio parties are a pandemic nightmare

BY ANNE HAYES | Loud and late parties are growing exponentially across our neighborhoods since COVID-19 guidelines restricted capacity and hours at bars and restaurants. The retreating surge from those public outlets has driven entertainment home — and not always for intimate, conversational, socially distanced gatherings of families and friends.

Unfortunately, more often than not, we become an unwitting participant in our neighbors’ DIY party revelry. The actions of a few are holding a lot of us captive inside our homes and behind closed windows. Miserable and straining at the edges of our coping abilities in order to get through an evening.

The actions of a few are holding a lot of us captive and miserable inside our homes and behind closed windows. Bombarded by vigorous hooting and yelling, pumping baselines, blasting music and group sing-alongs.

My home is in one of the three buildings located at 50-58 E. Third St., between First and Second Aves., where neighbors with patio apartments have been throwing outrageously loud parties on weekends. True to the form described, there’s music blasted outside and yelling, which typically and noticeably begins around 10 p.m. and goes on until 3 a.m. or later.

For most of us, our homes are our safe space, and even more so now, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when we are all spending most of our time at home. There is a standard of habitability and public safety, a social contract: an implicit agreement among community members to cooperate under certain rules for greater social benefit. Some of these assumptions are so widely held, so basic to the well functioning of a community, that they become our local laws upheld by our government agencies and our elected and appointed government representatives. Now, in mass, we need to call on our representatives for assistance in combatting this pervasive noise issue.

We New Yorkers are a tolerant lot. We live in densely populated and culturally diverse neighborhoods. We learn to adapt to long waits in line, crowded public transportation, and tend to accept louder living than other parts of the country. However, there is a noise code in place to address noise pollution and protect the health and comfort of residents. Local Law 113 specifies New York City Quiet Hours in all five boroughs from 10 p.m. to 7 a.m. Despite this local law, many of us are flexible in tolerating infringement of the NYC Quiet Hours in a neighborly fashion, to accommodate infrequent occasions, but multiple excessive noise incidents are an assault.

The Washington Heights / Inwood area has formalized the issue of noise pollution by forming a Noise Violence Task Force. You may ask what exactly is noise violence? While making the case for a threshold test for “obscenity,” a law clerk to Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart offered the now-famous quote, “I know it when I see it.” In a similar attempt to describe the aural assault we are now experiencing, my neighbor said, “It’s hard to explain what noise violence is but you understand completely when you experience it.”

I’ve joined with several neighbors in my building and others on the block to address our ongoing and intolerable noise issue. One tool employed to build local outreach was to post on the Nextdoor app. We hoped to hear from others who were similarly affected by the noise and with whom we had not already made contact. We wanted to build relationships with community residents who might have ideas and energy to join in an effort to tackle what might be a long battle. Through this hyperlocal social-media platform, we began receiving a number of responses describing equally impacting incidents of noise violence. It soon became clear that this issue has grown in scale well beyond our block, across the East Village, and into other areas of New York City since the pandemic.

We’re diligently reporting each incident to 311, our on-site superintendent, our off-site property management company, to our local New York Police Department neighborhood coordinating officers (NCOs), and will be writing to our local politicians. On a positive note, we’ve had success, on a per-incident basis, by reporting to 311 and contacting our Ninth Precinct NCOs. The NCOs have responded and the music was shut down, for which we are immensely grateful.

On the other hand, concerned neighbors have not observed much of a response from NYC Management Company, at least no obvious evidence of reining in the offending tenants. While the responsibility lies with the landlords to set expectations with tenants, I don’t hold out much hope for the owners’ cooperation. With recent reports of apartment vacancy rates climbing to a historic 14-year high, landlords are less likely to crack down on paying market-rate tenants, particularly those residing in larger, expensive units. That’s the ground zero case in our buildings — multi-bedroom, renovated mega-apartments with monthly rents at $10,000 or more.

So many issues tug at us but this too deserves attention, as we all are very much home-centered, particularly now. We need relief from the outrageous and thoughtless partiers treading on their neighbors’ right to a reasonable level of habitability. We need deterrents in place to stem the activity before it becomes an extreme nuisance and health threat.

I encourage folks to regularly report such instances to 311, engage their elected officials, and talk to fellow neighbors about ways we can live as a mutually respectful community.

These days there’s no deficit of stressors or serious issues, such as fair elections, our health and that of our families, people facing eviction, our isolated and vulnerable elderly, food insecurity, domestic violence, underemployment and unemployment, kids safely returning to school, and saving our local businesses. The list is long and any of these issues requires our full energy and focus — fueled by restful respite, not diluted by sleep deprivation and frayed nerves owing to frivolous, rowdy revelers.

Hayes has been a resident of E. Third St. for more than 35 years. She is an active member of the citywide coalition Stand for Tenant Safety, a group working on issues concerning construction as tenant harassment. She is a longtime volunteer — as a board member and adviser — of Lower East Side Coalition for Housing Development, Inc., a local nonprofit affordable-housing agency that has developed and preserved more than 300 units of low-income affordable housing in the East Village.

6 Comments

  1. Nancy Quinones Nancy Quinones March 21, 2021

    My neighbors are excessive with noise even before the pandemic they rent the backyard and put up a movie screen with loud surround sound.They drink and get drunk and talk extremely loud without regard for the rest . They also have 3 children bouncing basketballs 🏀 for hours and not to mention they even let them bounce it on the backyard back door to the basement just to be annoying. This goes on all summer long for hours during weekdays and weekends but the landlord says he can’t do anything even though I have supplied him with videos.It’s crazy how they get so many rights just for renting with the backyard. This has been very stressful.

  2. JackDog JackDog August 29, 2020

    Is this the same Anne Hayes who was the late Councilmember Antonio Pagan’s right-hand moll?
    Pagan sold out the neighborhood and lit a fire under gentrification. Certainly that office may have been rewarded for its tender attentions to landlords and developers.

    Be careful what you wish for.

  3. Vince Marrapodi Vince Marrapodi August 29, 2020

    Between the concert-like atmosphere late into the night in Washington Square Park and the outdoor street cafes along Waverly Place and University Place, it’s like fiesta time meets Central Part outdoor theater! And WE who live here are a captive audience! Help us, please!

  4. Christian Christian August 28, 2020

    Thank you Anne Hayes for this information. I am currently sitting in my apartment on Fourth St. and First Ave. watching a superspreader party with an actual brass band at midnight on the outside deck of a party apartment that shares our backyard. I wish landlords would be discouraged from building these apartments in the first place. It is obviously intended for N.Y.U. students to pack in like sardines and party. It is very disheartening to see the East Village disintegrate.

  5. Holly Critchlow Holly Critchlow August 28, 2020

    Thank you neighbor for putting into words what many of us in this neighborhood, and especially on this block next to 50-58 East 3rd St) are experiencing. I’m glad to know I’m not alone in my suffering and look forward to bringing attention to this by all the means necessary!

  6. Dolores Atherley Dolores Atherley August 27, 2020

    The East Village has always been a Mardi Gras over the weekend nights. This article captures the current situation during lockdown. It’s very informative on ways to combat the offenders and full of resources on how to do it. How refreshing to see neighbors uniting and accomplishing their ends. Action instead of habitual complaining. Nice job, Anne Hayes.

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