It’s like living in a version of h3ll. You have to put up with all the brain dead people you live around who act like animals. There’s always an issue with how loud they are. This ridiculous braindead woman walks like an elephant everytime she passes by my apartment door. She literally could walk downstairs, but no she has to hold a grudge and stomp forever. Just because I used to bang the floor because I had thought it was her doing it when it was the previous evil demons from below doing that. So I use to stomp the floor extremely loud and that carried into her thinking I was doing it to her so now she literally can’t learn how to forgive and forget. She has to go around like an elephant every time passing by me and then she has to make it known that she’s awake by stomping in her place. Honestly apartments should be for people who are criminals it’s like living in h3ll. The previous demons who lived under before were evil. They would not forgive and forget. Even walking past the the Indian lady she literally as a “grown” woman turned to give me an evil look and her husband would always mess with me. These are two grown adults messing with a child at the time. Then they were so evil I’m sure they were messing with a family member’s car of mine by popping the tire almost every week. I’m traumatized from how evil those previous demons were to the point where anyone moves in and I will go crazy. Then we have a demon next door who acts stupid now. Now hes bothering me. I don’t understand if i am just in the bathroom and I turn on the blow dryer he has to turn on the bath tub everytime I turn on the blow dryer in there. What is the point of stupidity bro? He is weird too, he used to go in and out of his apartment 900 times and then he used to turn the water faucet off every two seconds. This place is literal h3ll and there are roaches and spiders everywhere. There used to be mold on the walls then there’s sewage showing up in the sink. The people over here are ghetto in the smallest apartments seems to have nothing but the sinners of life prostitutes, drug dealers, and any other bad thing you can think of. I heard they give out section aid. Is that why the people in this particular building so ghetto? These apartments are in California South Gate or lynwood and they are the worst apartments on the planet. I’d rather be living in a car than living here.
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OP-how did you wind up living in such a terrible place?
Sounds like a snake pit.
Being trapped – or even just feeling trapped – in the place where you live is a misery.
I hope things improve or that you can find your way out of that Stygian place.
I strongly prefer living where I do not share walls/ceiling/floor with any neighbors. In my limited experience, the tolerability of apartment/townhome living improves along with increased rent and restrictions. Sorry if this sounds classist - there can certainly be loud, inconsiderate wealthy people. But I suspect (and my experience supports) that cheaper multiunit housing has an increased percentage of - um - riff raff. And, the pricier units are more likely to have better insulation.
For a while my wife lived in a very nice high rise. I could envision living someplace like that when I’m no longer able to maintain/navigate a house.
I lived in an apartment for 4 years, roughly 35 years ago. shudder Now I can’t imagine living in a house with neighbors I can see/can see me.
I’ve lived in dorm/apartments in college. And a duplex/apartment afterwards. Never again. I wouldn’t even take a nice condo. No way.
I need my space. I’m now on 2 acres with no neighbors that I can see from my home.
I now work from home too. People ask if I get lonely, that’s a totally alien concept to me. It’s me and the dogs during the day, and also my wife in the evening. There are only a few best friends that I see a number of times a year. That’s plenty. My Wife and I do a nice vacation about once a year, so travel is cool. But otherwise I’d be perfectly happy to not leave my property.
Part of the reason I have difficulty hanging out with people, especially in restaurants or other noisy venues, is my hearing. The background noise makes it impossible to understand anything. I’ve got good hearing aids, but they have probably improved over the years. I asked a year ago, and was told I have the best already. :sigh: I would be more amendable to groups of people if I could hear.
Damn tinnitus.
I was given notice by my landlady because she wanted to offer my space to immigrating relatives, and this happened around the same time that the woman I was involved with was trying to rent out a room in her suburban house and not having the best of luck with it. So I did the obvious thing and moved in with her and began contributing in corresponding measure to the upkeep and utils in lieu of paying rent.
I know what you mean about the noisy neighbors banging, especially overhead, and loud music, but I never had any ongoing quarrels with apartment neighbors in the course of approx 13 years. I did once have a flatmate who didn’t bother telling me we were in the process of being evicted until I found a court summons under the door. And I had some resentment about FedEx and UPS leaving packages with random apartment neighbors when I wasn’t in — they’d cheerfully keep packages for me but not bother telling me one had arrived, so when the tracking info said they’d been delivered I had to knock on doors up and down the hall and ask around.
Now, in suburbia, I get awakened every goddam morning by a a military-scale invasion of lawn service people weilding the noisiest leaf blowers in all of creation. They run the damn things all day long, every day. There’s also a kid (“kid” meaning he’s probably 23, because I’m 64 and hence 23 year olds have become kids) directly across the street who cranks his loud boomy car and leaves it idling, and/or puts in loud autotuned crap music amplified by big speakers. We’ve been cited six or seven times by the Lawn Police (village code enforcement people) for failure to trim and rake and otherwise maintain our yard to the informal specifications of our hostile suburban neighbors, because since everyone uses a lawn service the expectation is that your yard will look like the trees are made of plastic and cut into weird spiral or ball shapes, that no branch or twig sticks out beyond the geometric border thereof, that your grass is bright green from fertilizer and nonstop watering, is short like a golf course from daily mowing, and contains nary a single dandelion or grub or stand of milkweed as a consequence of Roundup and chemical pesticides and Monsanto products.
I miss apartment living. I miss being in the city. I hate the smell of fresh cut grass, it makes me gag. I don’t get along with suburbanites. Your mileage, of course, may vary considerably.
It’s been many years since I lived in an apartment, but I absolutely don’t miss it.
My wife and I lived in a small apartment building when we first got married. We were on the top (third) floor, and we only shared one wall with a neighboring apartment – they were great neighbors, and very considerate.
But, the apartment directly beneath us was a revolving door of noise.
- The first tenant there was a young woman, whose boyfriend would regularly come over, and get into loud fights with her in the wee hours. We had to call the police several times, because our neighbor was screaming, and clearly in fear of being beaten by him.
- She moved out, and was replaced by a middle-aged woman with a teenaged daughter. The mom’s bedroom was right below ours, and she would fall asleep every night to the television in her room blaring.
- Then, she moved out, and was replaced by a gay couple. One of the two aspired to become a Broadway singer, and would regularly practice his singing, late in the evening. He was not only loud, but he was also flat. We would ask him to practice earlier in the day, and that would help for a few weeks, but invariably, we’d wind up with midnight singing again.
I’m grateful that apartment living is way back in my rear view mirror, but that’s mostly because of sleazy landlords as opposed to slimy fellow tenants.
The key is to live out in the hinterlands where there are no “village ordinances”, HOAs or similar intrusions, so you can do as you please, within ill-defined limits.
It should be noted that whatever crap people slather on their perfect suburban lawns, it’s not Roundup, which is an indiscriminate herbicide that kills off grass as well as weeds. Oftentimes, articles about Roundup will include stock photos of people in protective gear spraying crops or orchards, which by definition cannot be sprayed with herbicides.*
*another favorite use of stock photos is to accompany articles about GMOs, where the photo shows a gloved hand holding a giant syringe containing ominous-looking red or green fluid, which is being injected into an apple. It doesn’t work that way.
I lived in apartments when I was younger. Didn’t like it.
I then bought a stand-alone house in the suburbs on a quiet street, on a 1/4 acre lot. I liked it at first, but the other homes were still too close for my liking.
For the last twenty years I have lived in a log house in the middle of 15 wooded acres in rural Ohio. No neighbors. Finally.
I just moved from a condo I own to an apartment I rent.
I’ll echo @Dinsdale’s comment. Most of what the OP is quite legitimately griping about is really a matter of class / income.
If the OP moved to a crappy single-family house in the same Southgate or Lynwood he’d still have the same sorts of folks as neighbors. Yes, there’d be a few feet of space between his walls and theirs. But there’d also be room for their cars, music, dogs, and kids to run amok outside all day & night.
Those of you who express a distaste for apt living - what do you plan on doing when you become old and feeble?
Me - I could imagine staying in my house as long as possible, paying for yard maintenance/maid service. Or maybe move into a smaller, ranch. But at some point - especially if my wife dies first, I could imagine moving to a single level apartment/condo, where I have no maintenance cares, and can have all of my food, etc delivered. (When I’m no longer able to handle that physically and/or mentally, I expect to pull the plug.)
Once you have no choice, you have no choice. Preferences or “distate” don’t really factor in. However, if you’re fortunate enough, you can get a lot of help around the house. My father was able to stay in his home until he died with 24 hour caregivers. I imagine I’ll do the same if feasible.
Oh is it time again for the next “my upstairs neighbors are spying on me” thread? Like this?
OP: Have you considered you might be the victim of gang stalking?
Turn down my hearing aids at night. 
Best possible outcome for me would be dying in my sleep before reaching the old/feeble stage. The difficulty involves slowly approaching that point without mentally changing what is acceptable.
I never lived in a high-rise apartment building, but I did once live in a 3-unit building and then a basement apartment in a suburban house while my wife and I looked for a house. In those situations the biggest issue I ever had was with street parking. When you have a whole section of the neighborhood that’s all multi-unit buildings, and there are like 4-8 cars per building, parking becomes a daily battle, and I had a big-ass car at the time, too. Having a large private parking area was an important criteria when we were house-shopping.
It might be interesting to hear the other sides of the story from the people in the OP.
I lived in apartments most of my adult life. There were often noisy neighbors and similar aggravations. But there is something to be said for having your evenings and weekends free and not having to worry about mowing the lawn, or fixing things when they break.
Now I live in a house in the country. I love it. But I can’t walk out my door and hop on the subway and go somewhere interesting, cause there isn’t anywhere interesting to go.
I was browsing for apartments in Las Vegas for future reference, and I noticed that one could get a single family house for less than a 1 bedroom that wasn’t a hellhole [really? You call a converted garage a 1 bedroom? They didn’t even change out the garage door for a wall, though I suppose it would make moving in really easy!] I think the minimum for a decent 1 bedroom was running $1200, and a 2 bedroom house ran $1300, so when we do the interim move to vegas while building our house, we will rent a house not an apartment. I can deal with mrAru having to mow the lawn and schlep the trash to the curb.
I have lived in a high rise [Chesapeak House, Virginia Beach, a standard low rise [3 story] apartment building [Whitney Ridge, Fairport NY] a duplex in a military/white slum [13th Bay St, Norfolk Va] and several different single family dwellings. And yes any shared housing situation or even single family dwelling can be hell depending on the neighbors. Unless you literally live out on 50 acres in the countryside with no neighbor for a quarter mile in any direction, you will have neighbors.