What is the worst apartment you ever lived in?

[AngryAmish]

I lived in "Bob's Friendly Apartments' in DeKalb, Illinois. Rent was negligible but there were often large dogs running through the halls, the halls always smelled of pot and bugs and mice were our friends. There was a pair of ladies underpants on the stairs that did not move for three months.

Upside? The apartment was kinda big. But what a hellhole.

[Ouabache]

1. A garden apartment in the 'Debonair Apartments'

windows at eye level with kids constantly peering in. A woman in the apartment above consistently flushed tampons that lodged in the drain pipe at my kitchen baseboard, flooding the kitchen and sometimes the dining area with water from the three apartments above. But that only happened every month or so until I moved. ;-)

[Jokerman]

18. What city?

Sounds oddly familiar. I think I've been there.

[Rabrrrrrr]

2. I had two apartments in Dominican neighborhoods. Those were, by far,

the worst apartments ever. The second one, the apartment itself was kind of nice, but the constant fucking noise - oy!!

I couldn't take it any more, and had to move.

[Celeborn Skywalker]

8. Yeah,

Hispanic and Mediterranean cultures (Greek, Italian,Spanish,etc.) tend to be louder in general than Northern European cultures. I'm used to it but I see how it could irritate others who aren't.

[Err]

3. The one I'm living in right now.

It's too freakin' small. Four people living in a two person apartment. :wtf:

I think the college needs to build another apartment building.

[Clintmax]

14. Same here, Err.

This place is too small for us and plus it's cheap. Cheap carpet, cheap cabinets, cheap everything. Lots of trash live around us too. x(

[fudge stripe cookays]

4. The shithole I lived in when I first moved to Dallas.

3701 Cedar Plaza.

Only about 500 sqaure feet, but it had a washer/dryer in it, and I needed that because I was going to be working full time and going to school full time.

There was a slummy complex right across the street, and I was scared to go outside the gate.

The landlord was a complete bitch, and on the weekend that my refrigerator gave out, and my groceries were in the process of melting all over my kitchen, she wouldn't talk to me on the phone because "they had guests over."

I didn't have a pot to put sugar in, and had just bought $100 something worth of groceries. But it was $375 a month.

I stayed there a year because I couldn't afford to move. I got out as soon as I could.

Wanda, if you're reading this, FUCK YOU.

[BigMcLargehuge]

5. Hillside Estates here in Derry, NH

privately owned "Garden Style" condos (i.e. two bedroom flats). It was nicer when we moved in, but after a year the nice lady downstairs left and gave her apartment to her granddaughter who turned it into an indoor shooting gallery. She died a few months later from a heroin overdose. Then, the kid that rented it next smashed up his motorcycle and he and his wife turned to coke dealing.

I pounded the shit out of him and a bunch of his junkie friends in the laundry room one night.

When we moved out, the landlord refused to return our security deposit and I had to sue.

[Broken_Hero]

6. Pioneer Hotel...

which sat atop the Pioneer Bar...it was a very small room, about 8 foot long, and five foot wide...enough room for a bed, one dresser...and a sink. I paid 330 dollars a month for that shitty room. Which, by the way, was right over the pool tables of the bar below...

[doc03]

7. The worst and only apartment I ever lived in

was Fillmore Gardens in Arlington VA. Lived on the top (3rd) floor. This was in 1966 so there was no AC and I couldn't afford a window unit, the heat and humidity in the summer was unbearable. We would get a few weeks break in the fall then we would freeze since they didn't start the boiler until November 1st no matter how cold it would get then it was like hell again until April 1st when they would shut the boiler off. At least in the winter you could open the windows up and get some air. We had to tiptoe around the apartment in stocking feet or the asshole downstairs would pound on the ceiling.

[NMMNG]

9. My first one

It was a two-bedroom, basement level skankhole. Turd-brown shag carpeting, electric panel heaters that cost an arm and a leg to run, huge spiders year round (and it was hard to see them because of the dark carpeting), miniscule kitchen and dining area that was little more than a corner between the living room and hall. One bedroom was average size but the other was barely bigger than a closet. In fact, the walk-in closet I have now is bigger than that bedroom was.

[Robeson]

10. I rented the upstairs "apartment", room actually, in a home in Memphis...

...when working on my graduate degree at Memphis State. Throughout the night, squirrels would enter my room from somewhere and run around , and in the mornings, I often-times had birds flying around in my room - entering from somewhere - to greet me. Total dump.

[jmm]

11. That would have to be the one where we sued the landlord

The trouble started when the ceiling was leaking. The landlord refused to do anything until it got so bad that water was pouring down every ceiling light, light switch, electric outlet, mold was growing on the walls and we finally had the board of health condemn the building. While talking to some fire fighters and guys from the board of health waiting for the landlord to show up and put us in a hotel like he was legally obligated to do at this point we found out that we were actually in one of the better buildings owned by our landlord. When we sued him he immediately filed for bankruptcy. One of the bills he claimed he couldn't pay was $100 to the teenage boy next door who had shoveled his driveway the previous winter. There was even an article in the Boston Globe about him after my mom contacted them sending details of the case and pictures of our place. The judge ordered him to give us free rent and utilities for 18 months. The next time we saw him in the paper was a few years later when he was running for a local office. Surprise, surprise, he was a republican.

[UncleSepp]

12. Attic apartment in Ziegelhausen

I rented this lovely abode with a roommate who was over six feet tall. Unfortunately, the sloped ceiling in the place was under six feet tall in all but the very middle of the apartment. At the sides of the kitchen, the ceiling was less than five feet high. Our friend down the block said he needed a steel helmet to walk around the house in.

The walls had been papered over badly with some textured wallpaper that hadn't been pushed into the corners, which weren't square. This resulted in the wallpaper tearing. The "carpet" on the floor was more like flocking, and the fuzz would actually rub off of it in spots.

Quite often, the water would come out of the shower a muddy orange color from the rust. At least it was hot.

The water in the radiators, on the other hand, often wasn't hot or wasn't there. As it turned out, there was a boiler leak. One Christmas, my roommate had to fix the house boiler himself. It had gone out early in the holiday. The hausmeister said it wasn't his job, the house manager said it was the owner's job, and the owner said that it was unreasonable to expect anyone to come out on a holiday, and to make an appointment after New Year's. My roommate went down to fix the silly thing himself, as he had worked on ships' boilers before. Of course, the whole building was scandalized that he would work on it, not being a Fachmann and all. The busted boiler and lack of heat wouldn't have even been that terrible, if it wasn't for the hole in the wall above the radiator through which one could actually see daylight.

The hausmeister didn't really ever fix anything. He did, however, deliver the mail. Drunk. At two in the morning. He would also get in arguments with another one of the housemates, who was partially deaf. This resulted in some of the loudest shouting matches i have ever heard. Once, it resulted in the hausmeister being held out the window by the deaf fellow, while screaming "Call the police, he's going to kill me!" I called the police, who said "Oh, you live in that house? Don't worry about it. This is payday, the welfare checks just arrived. They've been doing this for years. Call if he actually falls out of the window."

Among the other neighbors was a woman who introduced herself to us as being from Texas. Five times. She was as German as a bratwurst, of course. Next to her lived a Turkish guy who claimed to be Spanish. These two didn't get along, of course - maybe Texans don't like Spanish people - because the "Texan" woman would wash laundry in the middle of the night and put her shoes in the spin dryer. The "Spanish" guy solved the problem by washing a load with sand instead of detergent. The machine was broken for two years.

We didn't have a refrigerator in this apartment for quite some time, so we had sausages hanging from the ceiling and butter in the sink until it cooled off and we could store the food outside the window. That was kind of quaint. We also didn't have furniture, and slept on stacks of laundry for weeks. We did have a wardrobe closet, though - we built it ourselves with a hand drill and some lumber from the Bauhaus (German Home Depot). It went well with our edgy bookshelf, made out of bricks with wood we found in the attic storage. It was a little smelly, though. Apparently, at one time, there had been bats in the attic.

The real icing on the cake for this place is when the haus manager tried to make us pay our security problem for damage to the roof tiles. After all that - the roof tiles? Yes, Herr Hausverwaltungsdude, we were in fact out there jumping up and down on the roof. We just do those kinds of things.

Boy, I miss that place!

[ET Awful]

13. The place I lived in Bakersfield, CA was by far the worst.

At night you could hear the cockroaches talk to each other. It became especially troubling when I could understand what they were saying.

Anyway, since then, all of my apartments have been okay (I've had some BAD roommates, but the apartments have been okay).

[emmajane67]

15. Well, it was half of a 4 flat building...

but the other side had burnt down (our side was saved by the brick wall in between). The two flats had been joined together into one big 6 bedroom house. The place used to be a morgue, the stairs down to where the bodies used to be kept was boarded over. We lived across the road from a big river and had a large post slot so in the winter the water rats would come in and keep warm. 25 people had llived there in about 3 years without the lease being changed. I think the other word for it is a squat, except that we paid rent. The place came with a half dozen 'regulars' who showed up and expected cups of tea.
I was 18 at the time and loved it, not so sure I would now.

[UncleSepp]

17. You win!

That's just too funny.

[Beware the Beast Man]

16. The one Cathyclysmic was living in when I moved in with her.

She had a one-room efficiency in Chesterland (an area not known for apartment living). Her landlord was a real ass. He would come into the apartment when we weren't home and would threaten to evict her if she left even one dish in the sink. She lived her first month there without a fridge, and when the ancient electric stove gave out on us, it took him months to replace it (he initially refused to replace it until his wife scolded him). He charged an additional $15 "maintenance fee" to our rent (Somehow, I don't believe that is legal), there were huge leaks in the ceiling, and the bathroom was freezing. He was so uptight about the cost of gas that he would shut off the heat during the day. What a dump. Needless to say, we never did get our security deposit back.

[Jokerman]

19. "Colonial Crest"

I swear the water pipes were buried about six inches from the surface. Every time the temperature dropped below 25, they would freeze.

[momophile]

20. the "penalty box"...

that's what my sister and I called our first apartment. Not the worst imaginable, especially compared to some on this thread, but I swear the people upstairs used their apt as a bowling alley. Plus, the property manager was creepy...

[Bunny]

21. I lived in an apartment once where the entire kitchen was contained

in a closet in the living/dining room. You opened up the closet doors, and there was a teeny tiny sink, range, and refrigerator, and two small cupboards for the food! It was sorta cute, actually, and since I lived there by myself it wasn't a big deal (I was finishing up my last semester in college). But it was sure odd - I've never seen anything like it since!

[grace0418]

22. My last apartment in Champaign Illinois. My senior year at U of I.

It was a garden apartment with brown shag carpeting, paneling, rust-colored appliances and hideous stained furniture (college apartments were often furnished). When we signed the lease in April or May, we thought it would be kinda fun in a kitchy way. But by the time we moved in August, the placed had been closed up for months and was covered in mold. Nothing got the smell out of the carpet. I'm sure it was a complete health hazard but we were stupid college students and didn't think anything could be done. What a piece of crap that place was.

[Jamastiene]

23. Seaview or something like that in North Myrtle Beach.

A shower in that place left you feeling as if you had been slimed by a slug or a snail all over. Could not make ice with tap water. The bottom half of the ice cube was salt and some black specks of some sort. Made any drink taste horrendous, even water. It was like drinking salt water. I heard that would drive you mad or make you sick and well, I tried it not on purpose once. I didn't like it. I hated that place. My friend Ted and I would play our electric guitars not plugged into any amp, just straight up playing with no amplification and the landlord would bang the ceiling every time we tried to play, day or night.

The place costed too damn much and one night, the bugs were carrying a loaf of bread across the kitchen floor. It was on the table when we last saw it. I could almost hear them. "Bob, you got your corner pretty good?" "Yep, Horace, I got my end. How about you Speedy?" "Yep, I got the middle left side. How about you Stinky?" And on and on, I could just hear the bugs as they worked together to try to steal the bread. They had a system worked out. I tried taking the bread back but one held on for dear life and tried to fight back and the others scattered. I could only manage to stomp on one, and he laughed at me and said "You mean that's all you got, toots? Hahahahhaha." I could have sworn he was giving me several middle fingers as he went under the stove. We were too poor to buy another loaf of bread much less roach motels. Not that roach motels would have accomodated those monsters from the bowels of hell.

[LiberalEsto]

24. Hmmm, which one had the most cockroaches?

The one where we killed them with a hammer while we talked on the phone, or the one where they had nightly beach parties in the kitchen sink?

Or would it be the lower-level apartment where rainwater seeped into the heating vents and made horrible sploosh-sploosh noises for days, while we shivered from lack of heat?

Or the vile converted chicken coop on a chicken farm, particularly after a flash flood killed many of the chickens and they were rotting in big piles in the July sun, under my very nose?
Not to mention the kitchen faucet that flew up on a jet of gushing water one day, which the farmer/landlord/asshole refused to fix. He claimed I was responsible for maintenance.
When the stench of heaps of rotting chickens became too much to endure, I called the health department, which promptly condemed the place and ordered him to let me live there rent-free till I found another place. They forced the cheapskate to hire a truck to cart off the dead chickens.

[u4ic]

25. Can't decide

between the top level add on that only had a tar roof, no insulation, and the one that had a silverfish problem.

The lack of insulation caused the summers to be hell...it was usually about 3-5 degrees hotter than the outside temperature (since we had a heat wave that summer, was that fun...hovered around 34C/93F), but the winters were worse...the windows would ice up so that I couldn't see out the whole time, I had to have the oven on and the door open to warm part of the place up...I also had an electric fan heater that I had to take to the two bedrooms to warm them up. I had to wear heavy socks to bed, and needed 2 comforters. It never got above 17C/62F in that place...where it's not unusual for the winters to get down to -30.

The other had bug problems. Silverfish...gack, they were climbing up the friggin bathroom walls, I used to kill about 5-6 every day, and those were the ones I DID catch...one time, I had baked bread, left it on the kitchen counter to cool, and when I went to put it away...guess what lovelies crawled out :puke: ...then there were the kitchen bugs (the ones that love wheat) that had taken up residence before we had moved in, not to mention the ant problem in the summer...