I lived in a 300sqft apartment in a bad neighborhood. eight women were raped in my parking lot over the span of a year.

along the baseboard of the entire apartment was cat litter from the previous tenant.

the kitchen was painted flat black. the cabinets, the floor, the ceiling, the sink, the counter tops, the walls, the stove. everything. there was a window but it did nothing.

there was one door in the whole apartment, the front door. no door on the bathroom, no door on the bedroom, hell there wasn’t even a wall for the bedroom.

the bathroom was 5’ 8" tall. I know this because I’m over 6’ tall.

the HVAC system never had a filter in it. I know this because to cool my 300sqft it cost me $700 one month and I thought, “no fucking way!” I pulled the side of the blower off and looked up into the a-coil. it was so matted with hair, fur, dust, dirt, it looked like cardboard. it took me four hours and two bottles of bleach spray to clean it with a toilet brush in 100°+ weather.

so to recap on what I did

• cleaned the litter up
• steamed the carpets twice (probably for the first time ever)
• freshly painted the kitchen
• refurbished the kitchen cabinets, stove, and sink and made them look brand new
• cleaned the HVAC system
• installed new insulation in the bathroom so it wasn’t 13° in the winter and trimmed it up
• installed plug plates because half of them were missing
• replaced some of the plugs because they were so worn out they stopped working

now, some of you might say, “you’re an idiot because you did all that free work!” and normally you’d be right, but this landlord never answered their phone unless you missed rent.

when I left that fat fuck tried to keep my deposit because I didn’t have proof that the carpets were cleaned. Told him they were cleaned, personally by myself with my own equipment. then said there was trash left behind, then explained the furniture left behind was there I moved in. bastard kept half still.

worst apartment I’ve ever had. I was burned so bad the next place I took pictures of EVERYTHING before a box was moved in. that’s a story for another time though.

A nice two bedroom, well-priced, with my partner and my friend. It was clean, maintenance was prompt, they had a great mail system.

It caught fire twice, then again after we moved out. aaaaaaaaaaa

I rented a house with a bathtub that drained directly into the crawlspace… We also had a groundhog crawl up from the crawlspace into our walls where our hot water tank was. (Yes, the landlord put the hot water tank IN the wall. You had to deconstruct part of the house to get to it.)

An unfinished garage with no plumbing for 1200 a month because it was the cheapest place within driving distance to work. I kept a gym membership for necessities and carefully planned my meals for 3 years

I finally left when a bee hive formed in the walls and the landlady refused to do anything about it

When I was little we used to live in this flat which was awful. constant noise from people upstairs and arround us, and water leakage issues

Top floor Studio apartment in a major city in an old building.

• The units didn’t have individual thermostats so we were stuck with what the building set, but heat rises.
• it was sweltering in the winter but when I opened the window, everything got coated in sticky black tar from the oil burning furnace
• it was sweltering in the summer but electrical was inadequate for even the smallest window air conditioner
• maintenance arbitrarily entered my apartment and smoked, leaving cigarette butts in the toilet.
• when my lease was ending, sales would just walk right in with new prospective tenants with no notice and not even knocking, regardless of the law

Micro studio in a major city.

It was right next to a squeaky wood staircase and a main door that slams based on the weather. Loud metal gates that also slam. Every single upstairs neighbor thinking their floor isn’t thin wood. Every upstairs neighbor letting their cabinets bang closed, making “thudthudthudthud” echo through my room while they toss pots and pans in the same cabinets carelessly. Shared kitchen that’s an automatically closing door with a heavy spring and up the stairs. Can’t use the window sometimes in the summer due to a neighbors grill blowing smoke into the room at random, while they go against city code by using said grill half a foot away from the structure. Had to seal a massive hole under the cabinets and along trim of the cabinets due to a neighbor in the other side of the complex blowing their weed smoke into the structure and right into my room. Before sealing the place yourself: you better believe you’re getting a few carpet beetles that are gonna fuck up your clothes. Tiny sink that you can barely clean a damn thing in, and no sink in the bathroom so you have to shave over the same fucking sink where you wash food and clean things, or just over the toilet because someone decided that’s where a bathroom mirror/cabinet should be. The plumbing from upper units going straight down until right behind my bathroom, so flushes from above get loud as fuck. A goddamn sliding door to the bathroom too? What kind of braindead sack of shit suggests putting a sliding door to a bathroom that goes RIGHT OVER A FUCKING WALL OUTLET. Want an outlet in the bathroom to charge your shaver? Fuck you, use the 2.5 square feet of counter space where you meal prep or dry dishes. Poor room design making me use a twin mattress that was stuck between two walls. Pre-installed shelving half-usable because it was blocked by pre-installed shelving. Bathroom fan that was on 24/7 by design, constantly pulling in air from the stinky stairwell. Junkies roaming fucking everywhere as soon as you leave the property. Constantly fucked up laundry machines since people are fucking stupid, or them leaving their shit in one of the 4 machines for several hours while all of the others are fucking full. Oh, and no, there are no laundromats because properly values have been completely fucked by shitty fucking investment companies that build cramped and overpriced apartment complexes. Want a front office? Fuck you. Want a reasonable building manager? Nah, he’s a worthless sack of shit that sees your growing anger at living in a shithole as being “problematic.” Quiet hours? Fuck em. Your neighbors are most likely fucking troglodytes that don’t give a SINGLE FUCK.

All of this goddamn bullshit in the joy of 150 goddamn square feet. I can’t believe I held out 5 years losing my mind there, through all the fucking sleepless nights. Hope the place gets hit with a fucking meteor.

Yeah, in my early twenties, and we called it the shit house due to our eventual exposure to copious amounts of human feces. Not exaggerating. Ahead is a long, shitty story with a landlord so cartoonishly evil that I might not believe it if it didn’t happen to me.

It was great when my ex and I moved in - a cute, if small, two bedroom daylight basement, and the landlord was a really friendly guy. No warning signs at all. The landlord paid us well to do repairs and improvements and we felt like we really lucked out. A few months in, we came home to find the place reeked of sewage and there was a puddle of water in the laundry room, backed up from the floor drain. We called the landlord who sent out a plumber. The plumber snaked the line and got it to drain. Yay! We mop up, get paid for it by the landlord, and life continues.

A month or so later, we come home to find the whole place flooded. We had several inches of sewer water in most of the apartment. We had been gone for a few days and apparently the neighbors did all the laundry. We call the landlord who apologizes profusely, says he’ll replace any damaged items, and said he’ll get a plumber out. We stay at a friend’s place for the night.

The next morning, the water is still there. We call the landlord to ask WTF is going on. He testily explains it was late on a Saturday when we called, that he’s not going to pay night and weekend fees, and the plumber will be there the next day, on Monday. We reiterate that there’s literally standing shit water and that we can’t live in the house. He relents and agrees to send them same day. The plumber snakes the line again, while griping how he told the landlord YEARS AGO this would keep happening unless he replaces a double 90° juncture some idiot did when DIYing the main line.

We call the landlord, tell him what we learned, and ask why he didn’t fix the issue if it has been known for years. Shockingly, he goes absolutely ballistic on us, aggressively going on about how the maintenance of his property is none of our business, that it was inappropriate to ask the plumber anything and that he’d be firing him for talking with us, and that he liked us as tenants but that was changing. We explain the place needs to be professionally cleaned, having been steeped in sewage for days. He refuses, telling us to clean it ourselves.

What. The. Fuck.

We realize we’re now in a hostile situation with a mentally unstable landlord. We had eight months left on the lease and we were both up to our ears in schoolwork. My ex refused to move because she is a moronic pushover, so we stop doing any work for the landlord and refuse to communicate with him except in writing or email, for which he mocks us in every email “for having our feelings hurt”. We eventually get him to send in his handyman who does a wholly insufficient job cleaning the floor. He keeps saying he’ll reimburse us for damaged furniture but keeps making excuses for why he needs another week after week after week. I want to talk to a lawyer but my idiot ex still wants to do nothing until at least the semester ends. She claims she can’t handle the stress.

We talk to the upstairs neighbors and find out this is a common occurrence and why the last tenants left. We learn they’ve been fighting him for months because the door to their oven will just fall open unless they prop something against it. They have two small children and it’s a huge hazard. They send him a demand letter and he evicts them. We drive away new tenants for a month by posting about it online and simply letting prospective tenants know what had happened when we see them. Eventually a new family moves in after the landlord slashes the rent.

A bit later, we go out of town for a week and come back to 6+ inches of water in the entire place. There’s literally a few pieces of shit and toilet paper floating in the kitchen. We inform the landlord, who says a plumber will be out the next day. We demand same day, he says they’ll see us tomorrow. Unbeknownst to my idiot ex, I talk with a lawyer that day who says the best they can do is a letter demanding they remediate immediately and cancel our lease (we lived in a conservative state with landlord friendly laws and basically no renter protections). I accept, letter is sent and delivered the next day.

The landlord mocks me by email for contacting a lawyer, but agrees to let us out of the lease. We soon find a new place and begin moving, but have to pay a double deposit because my ex had bad credit and we wouldn’t let the property manager contact our current landlord. We calculate prorated rent on the shit house and send it in. He fires back a blistering email about how he agreed to let us leave early but we still had the pay for the entire month. I talk to the lawyer who tells me the landlord has no standing. I tell the landlord to go pound sand. He responds threatening to sue us and goes on in great length about how he knows we don’t have much money and he’ll destroy us with legal fees “when he wins and we have to pay for his team of lawyers”. Dipshit ex folds again and just pays without asking me first. We give up on getting him to reimburse us for furniture - I want to sue for all of this but ex says she needs to put her education first and can’t handle it.

Epilogue: ex and I soon break up when she demands we immediately have an open relationship or she’s leaving. It later comes to light she had been fucking a mutual friend for awhile. I still keep tabs on shit landlord - he’s a slumlord in a different shitty conservative state. I’ve been married for ten years and my partner would destroy someone like that landlord. Big upgrade.

I lived in a relatively nice apartment that had a problem with the front door closing. I once found a baby mouse in my bag of chips, caught another one by hand because its tail was peaking out from under my shelf, and ended up catching about 15 in total (one actually got in my mouse’s cage).

If I count everywhere in the world… When I was growing up, me and my parents ended up renting some absolutely atrocious apartments that were close to where I went to school. The worst one was my middle school apartment… it was a tiny 1-bedroom for the three of us, don’t think it had a real kitchen, AC barely works (actually I couldn’t recall if it even had an AC), toilet clogged every other day, and once in summer the hot water broke down for an extended time and I had to take showers at the swimming pool I visit… To be fair, my parents grew up when China was a 3rd world country, so I guess the 3rd world country haven’t left them at that time

If I only count in the US… It was not that bad per se, but I lived in a shady 500 sqft tiny house next to the one bar in my college town for two years. It definitely felt quite shady and wasn’t exactly quiet at night. I’ve also had issues with the AC/heating and the metal pipe bursting once in winter. This place also gave me a peculiar core memory in college… I used to have a bucket by the front door to wash my car; once my school’s football team had a big victory, and the next morning the bucket was just gone

Also honorable mentions to my AirBnB adventures when I was younger… which includes once when I saw my landlord being put under house arrest as I was returning to the bnb, once when I think I shared a place with a drug dealer, and once I managed to get myself homeless in NYC at 3am in the morning because the host didn’t give me the room code & I couldn’t get in the building

My first apartment.

• Door had residue of a police seal stuck on it
• Door frame was broken, as the door was kicked in by the police due to the previous tenant (I later had the pleasure of meeting the guy. Was a friendly guy. No idea what he did to have the police kick in the door)
• Measuring devices on the radiators were broken (for years, aparently), so heating bill was completely dependent on the floor area. Which is fun, as I had neighbors who just had the heating on full blast throughout the winter
• No wall in the building had a 90° angle. Very annoying to place furniture
• You know how you normally nail floor skirting boards down, or at least use some fixture? Well, the previous tenant used caulking silicone to glue them down. Very fun to remove.
• The living room had wooden laminate flooring. But instead of normal insulation and dampaning underneath, they just… put it on top of the existing carpet that was already there. Which was partially moldy. And completely glued in. That was very much not fun to remove (it involved drills with a wire brush attachment to grind off the glue residue. In 35C summer heat)
• I never got a key to the basement, where the trash containers were. Always had to be lucky for the door to be left open or ask a neighbor
• speaking of neighbors:
• One guy, two floors above me, looked like the stereotypical “short, fat guy with a wifebeater shirt”. Was friendly if he liked you. But if you made too much noise outside on the street (which was a pedestrian shopping street) at night, he’d go down with a baseball bat. Also was weirdly obsessed with having a professional soda fountain in his kitchen and wanted to sell me one as well (like those things you see in fasat food restaurants). And he had a couple sphinx cats. All in all a 9/10 GTA character
• later a new neighbor moved in next door. Never really met him, besides him asking me for a lighter one night. He did get picked up by the cops one day, because he walked through a shopping center wearing just boxer shorts and being high as a kite. One day he got kicked out. Because he decided it was too cold, tore out some of the wooden floor panels and lit them on fire on the (now concrete) floor

I lasted 6 months. Until I found another apartment in that city. Which also had its problems, but nowhere near as the first apartment.

Technically the one I’m currently in since it’s the first one I’ve ever lived.

The people upstairs, twice, went and installed a bidet ( we’re not really allowed to do our own plumbing for a reason and they proved why ) and it caused a giant ceiling bubble the second time in the bathroom. The apartment directly below us has been empty for a long time with nobody working on fixing the gutted place for a while, but IIRC when they were having some company working on it, they accidentally caused our dishwasher to start to flood. So for a long time we had the floor being worked on. The dishwasher thing might have been caused by some other water/plumbing issues somewhere else that caused it, I don’t remember.

My brother, being the idiot he is, decided at one point to take a couch from near the dumpster and now I have firsthand experience with bedbugs. We have dealt with a minor mice problem. It was probably a homeless person, but my dad had a bike stolen from the balcony. There were two times where some idiot tenants started fires and one of the sets of apartments is still being fixed from the damage.

Other than that, I can’t complain too much because I don’t really have that many problems here and it’s definitely 1000x better than where I could be right now. It’s definitely not as bad as I make it out to be, based on what I’ve said has happened.

Brooklyn, lived above a crack dealer who loved to test car stereos all night long, every day with Dad rock. Wednesday at 4am? Yup! Saturday at 8am? You bet your fucking ass.

He also had a giant black lab who he let pee freely anywhere, including inside the stairwell. One day that dog ran away.

I lived too close to a hospital. Apparently, the road I lived next to was the road that all fire, EMS, and police used. Tons of sirens at all hours of the night and day. I toured the place on a quiet day, so it never occurred to me about the noise. That was a bit of a suffer fest.

One funny thing about that place, someone always swore consistently on the street between 17:00-20:00 each evening. It was always someone new, but it was like clockwork. Guests wouldn’t believe it at first, but it became a thing, lol. Sometimes it was someone on a skateboard eating shit in the protected bike lane, other times it was a pissed off pedestrian, someone having an argument, someone having fun, or someone clearly off their medication. No apartment has had that before or since.

Third year in University - when we moved in, it hadn’t been cleaned from the previous tenants, my parents were kind enough to come and help us clean and it took the five of us (during covid too so we were trying to social distance as much as we could) 3 days to get it into a livable state.

That was only the start though, over the course of those days cleaning, we started noticing these weird bugs everywhere. Yup. Massive silverfish infestation. Huge ones, small ones, every room, coming in through the floor, the walls, the ceiling, behind furnature, anywhere there was a gap, they’d slither out of. We had to spray insecticide all over the place which gave me bad headaches if there wasn’t enough ventilation.

Sometimes still, out of the corner of my eye, I’ll think I see one and kind of panic for a fraction of a second, I’m not sure if I’ll ever get over that.