The Apartment Dweller's Honest Guide to Noisy Neighbors

Last month my girlfriend and I signed the lease on our third D.C. apartment in eight months. We knew we'd be paying more money for less space and smaller kitchen appliances, that we'd be farther away from our favorite restaurants and grocery store, and that we'd no longer have a washer and dryer in our unit. In place of those things, we'd have something better: a lease with a "quiet enjoyment" provision, and a landlord and condo board serious about enforcing it.

Our new place was quiet enough for the first three nights. Then, on day four, I heard it for the first time: Barking, coming from above, loud and vigorous. The upstairs neighbor has a dog? I felt the muscles in my neck contract. My girlfriend wandered in from another room, her face contorted with anxiety. "This can't be happening," she said.