I've been renting a one-bedroom apartment for the past six months. Things were fine, but now my upstairs neighbor seems to have gone off the deep end and it's now affecting my apartment.
The neighbor, an older man who I've never seen, was described by the superintendent to me as a "crazy old man" who never leaves his apartment or answers his door. Starting last a month a huge leak has been coming from his apartment and leaking through my ceiling...right over my bed. What's even scarier is that the leak is spreading and is now right over two electrical outlets (which I've now covered), and the ceiling is now even buckling in that area.
The super has tried to get into this man's apartment to fix the leak, but the man refuses to answer the door, even though he's home 24/7. I've knocked on his door loudly a bunch of times thinking, he's hard of hearing, but he's never answered. Meanwhile this leak is growing larger and larger; it's almost three feet in diameter right now and I have dump a bucket of water each day.
At this point my super insists there's nothing he can do; if the man won't answer his door, the leak cannot be fixed, and the super doesn't want to keep trying. I talked to a couple of other neighbors who say they've never seen guy and don't know anything about him.
Do I have recourse here? Or is this just one of those NYC quirks I have to get used to? (I should probably mention that I'm beginning to think it's true this man is not well, mentally. He wakes up around 5AM and spends literally the entire day sliding his furniture from one side of his apartment to the other and throwing and slamming objects against the floor and walls pretty much all day and all night)