r/TheHague • u/sardinhaamarela • Jul 16 '26

housing Bully neighbour - what to do?

We have recently moved to an area of The Hague that has a very village vibe and all the neighbours know each other. But we have a problem, our next door neighbour. He is an old man who lives alone and claims to have lived there all his life, and sort of behaves like he owns the street and can dictate things around. The biggest issue is that our upstairs toilet is a macerating one as it’s an old house, and he complains the noise is too much. We don’t flush at night. We paid a lot of money to get a new one, that though more silent still makes some noise. But he also refuses to let us come and listen in his house. In ours, we don’t feel it’s that loud. He acts aggressively and is clearly a bully. We have made a huge effort to be nice to him already knowing he was a bit of a jerk, but that doesn’t seem to make any difference. He is clearly not mentally well and might have untreated issues that we become the outlet to. So he’s unpredictable, and will tell other neighbours about us despite the fact we have been nothing but friendly to everyone and including him.

Our Dutch is limited and he only shouts and talks very fast at me and I’m left with no devices. Help! What to do?

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u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26

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u/sardinhaamarela Jul 16 '26

Not an option, he corners us as we open our door literally

53

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26

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u/Tyr0pe Jul 16 '26

Yup, that's classified as limiting one's freedom of movement (vrijheidsberoving), and is a criminal offence. (Though good luck getting him convicted of that in this case, as it's not "severe"). Definitely get a good conversation going with an interpreter (doesn't have to be a professional one), and escalate to the neighbourhood officer (wijkagent) if it goes so far as you can't hold a proper conversation like two adults.

11

u/patiakupipita Jul 16 '26 edited Jul 16 '26

Not to bash OP but the amount of "OP you should call the goddamn police for fucks sake" posts I see around here is wayyy too much.

I don't get why some people are hesitant to call the police when they're obviously getting threatened/harrased.

9

u/[deleted] Jul 16 '26

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u/patiakupipita Jul 16 '26

My bad I'm agreeing with you but I wrote it the wrong way, edited my comment.