Worst living situations you've been in?

In light of the national accommodation crises you'd imagine there'll be a few grim accounts.

Got me thinking about this and when you're in the situation it can suck for sure but looking back once you're no longer subject to the BS, that's when the laughter comes out.

During my work placement in uni I was based in London and had a decent setup for the first 4 months but myself and my google executive housemate had a falling out and I had to find alternate residence for the final month there.

As you know most landlords like an extended commitment so for one month only the only place I could get was this communal residence on Hanger Lane in Ealing.

46 rooms, 6 bathrooms, 3 common areas. So many people packed so close together with particularly poor sound insulation.

I could hear men railing women upstairs and next to me on an almost constant basis and when I say it was audible I mean, ball-smackingly so.

This other time I shared a 1 bedroom flat with an Iraqi ex-military personnel.

He slept in the living room on a fold out bed and I took the bedroom with only a thin layer of plasterboard in between the two.

Poor SOB had PTSD so I regularly awoke to the sounds of his blood curdling cries and whimpering.

And then there was this time.....

I often wonder what the accommodation of those brazilian deliveroo drivers you see about Dublin must look like?

I currently live in this luxury apartment.

Truly beautiful that I was so fortunate to get (in one sense).

...........

But of all the fucked up living situations as whole that I've been in, weirdos, creeps, women getting railed, nothing has ever sucked more ass than this.

Cause why?

Architects, geniuses that they were, they positioned the high power water pump that supplies THE ENTIRE FACILITY, directly under my bedroom.

I didn't hear it during viewings cause the agent was busy yammering.

But on my first night here I almost went psychotic from this high pitch drone......

WHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!

I kid you not, the only change in sound is when the pitch varies as it revs up and down the gears, which is even more infuriating.

Ubbquittious

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118521373#Comment_118521373

I really doubt it would be as clean and tidy as that

Deeec

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118529821#Comment_118529821

Sugar rush I think this is about your 5th thread where you have posted about your problems with the water pump. We get it - we know all about your problems with the water pump. When I read your 1st post here I thought to myself - how long before Sugar rush mentions the damn water pump - you didn't dissappoint me Sugar Rush - you just couldnt resist mentioning it AGAIN 😆

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118529944#Comment_118529944

WHHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!

Gregor Samsa

I'm starting to feel sorry for the water pump.

magicbastarder

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118521373#Comment_118521373

an ex-colleague used a redundancy payment to buy a property not far from the city centre about five years ago; a mid terrace two storey, two bed red brick. the previous owner had 8 (adult) tenants living in it.

Dempo1

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118529970#Comment_118529970

I've finished feeling sorry for the water Pump 😁

Ubbquittious

Had loads of bad ones meself. One place wasn't too bad till the end when they gave away my room to a new subletting tenant a week before I was about to leave, and gave me a mattress on the floor instead. It was only for a few days so I didn't complain but it was rather cold at night, I felt a cough coming on one night and it was freezing so I said phuq this and turned on the heating. The following morning I woke up and I heard all this shouting of expletives by the lad I was living with.

Didn't understand what was going on, thought maybe the place was broken into or something was after going terribly wrong. Turned out he was p1ssed off cause I had the heating on. There was a girl living there as well who also wasn't best pleased about me switching on the heating & she made a song and a dance about it. In the end they got a meter reading for the gas and it was only like 20 quid I had to pay

-----

I lived with a fella in Bray for a very short spell. He spent every evening in this room of the house he never showed me, with a woman who I didn't know was also living there. The atmosphere was just really odd there so I did a runner.

-----

Lived with a bunch of Spanish lads in Dublin. This was a terrible idea on my part, I should never have gone in there since I don't speak Spanish. It wasn't terrible but after a month they started looking for a 700e deposit off me. I was very reluctant to give it because they explained someone spent the previous deposit to pay for their flight back home.

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For about 6 months I lived with a Polish lad who was grand and all but spent the whole evening watching Polish TV, cooking Polish food, smoking this god awful tobacco he imported from Poland. The place was a 1970s holiday cottage - maybe the size of 2 mobile homes at most. The bit behind the couch was absolutely covered with black mould and slime. It was also owned by the same people I worked for and they would let themselves in while I was at work to turn off the heating so the place would be grand and cold when I got home and they would give out to me for storing too much stuff in my tiny room.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118529877#Comment_118529877

Yeah plus no women and they're probably all in their underoo's.

ArnoldJRimmer

Lived in a flat within a house during the Celtic Tiger which was basically your typical terraced house in Dublin split up into 2 flats and 2 bedsits. Myself and one other lived on the first floor, but the people who lived in the top floor, which was a converted attic, had to walk through our flat to get to their own front door. However, they were considerate and friendly, mostly keeping to themselves, so we got used to it.

Heat was included in the rent, but was controlled by the landlord, who put it on an extremely stingy timer. But as the window frames were so rotten, I had to tape them over during the winter to keep the draft out. Then there was the damp, on our floor mainly due to a leak upstairs, which was very visible on the ceiling. When we pointed it out to the landlord his response was that 'They must not be using the shower curtain upstairs, I'll have a word with them.'

When the crash happened in 2008, decent accommodation became temporarily affordable in Dublin, so we moved out. I called back months later to see if there was any mail, and was met by the landlord. He told me that after we moved out, the people in the attic apartment held a New Years party, and due to the years of leaking, the extra weight caused their floor to collapse into what was our old apartment. Thankfully no one was hurt, but even after all of this, he was in the house trying to repair the structural damage himself rather than getting it fixed properly.

This was also after he tried to withhold our deposit as he tried to blame us for the damp on the first floor. He also tried to charge us because the grill pan we bought out of our own pocket after we moved in (the one he supplied was unusable) was filthy. We very firmly told him to and sh!te and got our deposit back.

By far and away the worst was during my first few months in London while working in a fairly fancy tech / media related sector on utterly crap pay - in hindsight it was absolutely abusively low pay. One of those employers that believed in paying in networking opportunities.

We had a two-bed apartment, which would have been fine if it was occupied as intended as a small family home. However, it had a couple in the master bedroom, two guys in single beds sharing the second bedroom (including me) and a slightly mad hairdresser who lived in a little room off the kitchen and picked enormous fights with everyone else in the flat, including one day deciding to throw all our food out, slamming doors, etc and she was also a complete racist.

I think I was paying £500 a month for this and basically never went home other than to sleep. I used to go to work early, shower there (there were good facilities) and only really ever ate at work and came home as late as I possibly could.

oh yeah, and we had one bathroom, which was decorated in pre-war chic. The electrical system looked like it might have been installed in the 50s or before. It didn’t even have circuit breakers and some of the sockets were the old giant round pin type. The washing machine seemed to be some kind of biological experiment and was so rotten it was probably about to evolve new life, so I had to do all my laundry in laundrettes. There was also no central heating.

On the plus side, it was a brisk walk to the heart of the Westend, which was the trade off.

Basically someone was getting over £2k a month for a draughty hovel with pre WWII infrastructure.

Strumms

On work experience in France… lived in a weird shared student type apartment accommodation situation, with what were at first a real good bunch of Irish, socially and every way…great fun times, they were from all over the country then a few more replaced the originals as they left of which I was the last of… a total turnaround, a bunch of inconsiderate thick rednecks arrived….

I was up at 7.25 for work but these gobshîtes spent hours at night / morning hanging out chatting in the communal kitchen, laughing like hyenas and skulling wine / dropping glasses, plates….stereo crazy loud, being a general nuisance…

they were dumped out on their arses when they were caught robbing food from the kitchen… the administration and security didn’t want to know about the noise complaints but when I and another lad complained about food going awol from our fridge, plates and cups too and threatened to call the police … stuff had gone missing from the caretakers lockup and they’d been under suspicion so the four were dispatched into the ether…

last few weeks were heaven there but for two months…absolute total knackbag vermin animals…from reasonably affluent backgrounds but knackbags none the less.

cj maxx

I was basically homeless in NYC. 20+ years ago. But the lads I lived with and landlord were sound. Still friends to this day. Same with my housemates in England.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118533621#Comment_118533621

Shared accommodation, always a roll of the dice like that.

Bi-polar.

Was in a place about 5 years ago + when I moved in, coolest bunch of people I've ever lived with.

Resident Dr, occupational therapist student, video game designer and a student carpenter but totally cool person.

End of term, they all moved out, we got a couple wanna-be alpha headstrong idiots from the f**kin' 5th brigade infantry or some shit.

Turned out one had a long history of violent assaults which ultimately got him discharged later.

Then some other creeped out redneck from Whoville but the cherry on top was what turned out to be a 22 year old heroin addict and alcoholist. He seemed like the coolest dude initially but then he started coming in at 4 am and raiding the fridge, eating up all the pre-prepared food and drinking up everything in sight, regardless of its alcohol %.

Landlord eventually kicked us all out.

No idea how it got so bad but it truly turned into a toxic dump.

Like yourself I went back later to collect some mail and it was right back to having totally cool tenants, cool dudes and a couple hot girls.

If anyone needs a translation of the above, I am fluent in American :)

Yo! Sugarrush. That's some raggedy ass bougie sheet right there, dawg 'bout being "a student carpenter but totally cool person."

Esel

Leave him alone, he's pumped.

BlackEdelweiss

In college I had to knock on my kitchen door each morning to let the mice know it was time to scurry back to the holes behind the cupboard.

enfield

We lived in a very small one roomed flat in Broadstone in the 1980's. Every night I had to pour salt on the floor at the door to stop the slugs coming in. When we moved the bed it was a mass of slug trails. It was only a fiver a week rent though and the dole at that time was £8 a week.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/118533943#Comment_118533943

Maybe a little;

But hell I got to start the day off right man!!!

.....

drogcam

Lived in Canada for a couple of years. In an old house which was basically split into 2 apartments, myself and 2 others had the ground floor and basement, a couple had the upstairs. One of the guys I lived with was an absolute nightmare. Constantly drunk and came in making noise during the week. Stole mine and the other guy's food regularly, always late paying his share of the wifi bill. Threw up on the toilet seat lid and didn't bother cleaning it. Called him out on this and he denied it. He was also caught going into the other guy's room while he was asleep looking to steal cigarettes, twice. Again denied both times he done it. Was close to kicking him out but he eventually left 2 weeks before lockdown started.

Now on to the upstairs couple. Constantly fighting. Woke me up several times with their shouting matches. They argued on the porch one night(which is beside my room) about the boyfriend not washing himself properly. At one stage I thought one of them assaulted the other but it turned out they were just throwing stuff at each other. Fun times