What's the worst place you've ever lived?

#7

Looking back, I’ve been very fortunate. The worst I got was a flat so small that the bedroom was really just the bed, the living room had no space for anything except a sofa and a tv, and huge spiders came to mate on the windowsill each September – but it was the first place I really felt “mine”, the first flat I did not have to share, and I was almost sad when I left it.

The worst memories are of a previous flat, which I shared with a soon-to-be-ex girlfriend; the flat itself was fine (in its '70s UK working-class block sort of way, well maintained and with lovely neighbours, a retired heavily-tattooed sailor and wife), but the last few months there were pretty excruciating, as you might imagine – even more so when the guy in the flat below started banging a girl pretty much every other night, with her being a right screamer.

#8

$2600 for a two-bedroom! That’s a studio here, and not the movie kind.

#9

This is a killer. I’m with Mindysan on trying to split a place, because that would save a ton on food. I hope things improve for you soon.

:game_die: Would You LIKE to Play a Game? :video_game:
#10

Channeling François Bonivard via Lord Byron:

At last men came to set me free;
I ask’d not why, and reck’d not where,
It was at length the same to me,
Fetter’d or fetterless to be,
I learn’d to love despair.
And thus when they appear’d at last;
And all my bonds aside were cast,
These heavy walls to me had grown
A hermitage—and all my own!
And half I felt as they were come
To tear me from a second home:
With spiders I had friendship made,
And watch’d them in their sullen trade,
Had seen the mice by moonlight play,
And why should I feel less than they?
We were all inmates of one place
And I, the monarch of each race,
Had power to kill—yet, strange to tell!
In quiet we had learn’d to dwell—
My very chains and I grew friends,
So much a long communion tends
To make us what we are:—even I
Regain’d my freedom with a sigh.

#11
#12

Man… I have been fortunate. No idea what you should do. I wish I could help but I have no income right now. How much longer do you figure you’re gonna need to save money? Is there a friend you can crash with for long enough?

I really hope things work out for you. This sucks.

:game_die: Would You LIKE to Play a Game? :video_game:
#13

Studios in Pasadena go for around $2000, on average, according to the same news report.

I’m reminded of the studio in Hollywood I inhabited in 1992 for $380/mo. That size mortgage payment (including property taxes and a 4% APR) would serve a mortgage worth maybe $60K, which might buy you 1/3 of a mobile home in Riverside County. The way things are now, it was looking to me like the housing bubble was hitting renters even harder than it was homeowners.

I don’t know where you live, but I’m glad as hell I don’t have to rent a $2600 studio. I work in television and have no debt outside of my mortgage, but $2600 for a studio apartment is too rich for me.

#14

Oh! But my worst place to live was a shared house which my roommate’s boyfriend’s mom’s boyfriend was renovating. It was all drywall inside and my room had a curtain over it. It was pretty much all uphill from there.

But seriously, @L_Mariachi, good luck! Housing in major cities in America are literally all shit right now. Something needs to change, yesterday.

#15

Shitty, cheap-ass hotels suck balls. I did a stint in flophouses and the worst had to be waking up in bed because of the cockroach running across my chest (under the sheets). It wasn’t the first or the last, but that particular moment I recall my apathy getting along so well with my drunkenness that I simply laid there and let the thing run wherever it was heading.

At the very least, that was the point where it finally registered that something had to change in the situation. And I realized fully, then, how remarkably easy it is to slip into homelessness and all the nasty things that entails.

Some of those flophouses allowed access to a shitty microwave located somewhere near the lobby, so if you can find that level of cookery there are plenty of quick pasta meals that should keep you from the pricier foods with a modicum of taste/nutrition.

Good luck in getting out of that situation…btw, you in the Northeast?

#16

Hey, at least they had the good sense to use blue cheese instead of ranch dressing. Fuck ranch.

#17

No, SF. This hotel has zero amenities but I’m termed out next Friday. If they let you stay >30 days apparently you gain all sorts of tenant rights and can be a pain in the ass to evict. Some of the other places I’ve stayed have minifridges in the room and microwaves in a communal area (and civilized bathrooms! and maid service!) but those are at minimum $120/night. Nice enough inside, but the neighborhood is thick with crackheads and junkies and other people who have very loud vocal problems with each other or thin air. It’s not scary (to me,) but it’s not exactly tranquil.

:game_die: Would You LIKE to Play a Game? :video_game:
#18

Worst place I’ve lived seems to be relative.

I’ve had decent lodgings and horrible roommates, decent roommates and horrible lodgings, and horrible roommates/lodgings at the same time.

Usually, the horribleness centered around college age students with poor life skills. Past roommates included –
The botany major who would leave the sliding glass door open so her cat could wander in and out, but couldn’t seem to figure out why the electricity bill was so high.
The arts major who was really into college indie/rock and would invite bands to crash over on my couches or floor after shows. The last straw was when I walked into the kitchen one morning to find a roadie shooting heroin.
The guy I rented a room from who seemed very controlling and passive-agressive. I truly think he was terrorizing my cats when I was not at home.
The alcoholic who blacked out every time he drank, would come home and play Independence Day every night because he couldn’t make it all the way through, piled empty beer cans in the oven because he couldn’t find the trash can behind the pantry door, and vomited on my brand-new guest mattress, turning it over instead of cleaning it up. I found it because of houseflies. He lasted 10 days.

It probably goes without saying I don’t believe in the “benefits” of having roommates anymore.

#19

That was him being considerate! Wouldn’t you rather have him nodding off at the breakfast nook instead of inside the locked bathroom?

#20

Well, I was a steady marijuana smoker during college, so one might think me a hypocrite…but I never toked up in someone else’s home unless I was invited to do so.

#21

Actually, it’s too bad you’re not based in San Diego. I’ve found there are many people doing the live in Tijuana/work in SD thing.

#22

One of my worst apartments was also my best… because so much happened. At the apartment and in my life. I can look back now 20 years later and tell funny stories about it all.

Like the time my neighbors crazy glued my door shut. Or the constant roaches. Or the crazy lady who kept stealing my cat. Or when my super redid my bathroom he did pretty pink tiles because he thought Id like that. And i got out of an unhealthy relationship and at 23 went to college for the first time.

I hope this period of flux does not last long for you and you’ll be able to look back and laugh. Also maybe get a small rice cooker? I had a budget of 50 a month for food back then and a rice cooker was the only way that worked.

#23

I’ve been both lucky and informed enough to know I’m lucky. My time volunteering in homeless shelters taught me a lot. The closest I’ve ever come to living in a terrible place was when I shared a dorm room with an insomniac who made his own ring mail from bed springs.

Your situation also brought to mind this poem.

LATE RISING by Jaques Prevert

Terrible
is the soft sound of a hardboiled egg
cracking on a zinc counter
and terrible is that sound
when it moves in the memory
of a man who is hungry
Terrible also is the head of a man
the head of a man hungry
when he looks at six o’clock in the morning
in a smart shop window and sees
a head the color of dust
But it is not his head he sees
in the window of 'Chez Potin’
he doesn’t give a damn
for the head of a man
he doesn’t think at all
he dreams
imagining another head
calf’s-head for instance
with vinegar sauce
head of anything edible
and slowly he moves his jaws
slowly slowly
grinds his teeth for the world
stands him on his head
without giving him any comeback
so he counts on his fingers one two three
one two three
that makes three days he has been empty
and it’s stupid to go on saying It can’t
go on It can’t go on because
it does
Three days
three nights
without eating
and behind those windows
paté de fois gras wine preserves
dead fish protected by their boxes
boxes in turn protected by windows
these in turn watched by the police
police protected in turn by fear
How many guards for six sardines . . .
Then he comes to the lunch counter
coffee-with-cream buttered toast
and he begins to flounder
and in the middle of his head
blizzard of words
muddle of words
sardines fed
hardboiled eggs coffee-with-cream
coffee black rum food
coffee-with-cream
coffee-with-cream
coffee crime black blood
A respectable man in his own neighborhood
had his throat cut in broad daylight
the dastardly assassin stole from him
two bits that is to say
exactly the price of a black coffee
two slices of buttered toast
an a nickel left to tip the waiter
Terrible
is the soft sound of a hardboiled egg
cracking on a zinc counter
and terrible is that sound when it moves
in the memory
of a man who is hungry.

#24

Well, shit, thanks, now I feel bad for complaining. I’m not hungry, I’m just paying too much for that fuckin egg.

and why is it hardboiled, I like my eggs seven minutes and forty-eight seconds at sea level god damn it

#25

Would you be OK with looking at places in Oakland? You’d have to commute into the city, but rents are still relatively more affordable there.

#26

I have to second the rice cooker idea. Cook as much “pure” food as possible, and stay away from the ramen and Hamburger Helper bullshit.

You can even steam eggs, instead of hard-boiling!