Across the hall and one door down, there was a convicted arsonist but he was alright. The biggest problem I had was the bed bugs. Nobody seemed to care about that except me. I guess if you smoke ‘P’ every day, you’re scratching and itching all the time, and would probably think it was normal to have itchy skin. So the bed bugs were fully grown. Nobody asked to have their room sprayed, I had to complain constantly until the useless landlord finally got tired of hearing about bed bugs every day (landlord isn’t on site, and may have lived in another city). As I left, they were spraying some of the rooms to reduce the bed bug population.
I was bitten in the night by very small ones and it’s bloody concerning that they were in my bedding. Around the time I left, there were large bed bugs crawling across my floor, from the room above or below me. I’m lucky that they didn’t move on my belongings and contaminate my next rental! Once they make themselves at home it’s impossible to 100% remove them, unless you can heat an entire building complex to around 55 Celsius. Which means lost profit for the landlords of course, lol. They can get into any gap, so your PC, laptop and phone have to be thrown away if it’s contaminated with bed bug eggs.
Once I walked down the hallway and a guy came out of a door ahead of me, from the left side of the hall. He looked to his right and saw me, then he walked left, the same way I was going. This guy reeked like P.
Some of these tenants had been to prison before, because a couple of them were obsessed with rules. I went to the lounge one evening to see what channels they had. When I picked up the remote and changed the channel, some guys near the entrance way told me that I couldn’t do that. I didn’t realise they were watching because they were off to the side, not really in the room. They waited for me to touch the remote and then they spoke. Maybe they’re not allowed food in the lounge, except for on the table near the entry hall where they sat? Anyway, these guys seemed to take the rules rather seriously than what I’d normally expect. They must have learned this in prison with the lockup times etc.
One time I got a newsletter from the lodge in which they said that a tenant had died. I later found out he had hanged himself in the cupboard. Some tenants were so poor that they washed their clothes in the communal kitchen sinks.
This place is 15 Sioux Avenue, Wigram, Christchurch and it shouldn’t exist.
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Bed bugs are the absolute worst, glad you got out of there.
While there are a lot more of them, these sorts of places aren’t new.
In 1973 my job moved me from Timaru to Christchurch, and I had two weeks before I could move into the flat I’d rented. I took a room at a down-at-heel central city establishment which had been one of the city’s leading hotels in the thirties and forties.
The police were through every night, often with dogs. The staff advised me to keep to my room between 10:00am and 1:00pm, because things could get fairly fraught. The prostitutes and gay clientele were OK, but the pimps and crims were nasty. I was pleased when my fortnight came to an end.
Huh. They have reasonably positive reviews on Google Maps. Interesting.
That’s why you should know things first hand and not trust reviews. How many times have I seen reviews for restaurants, made by customers who have an entitled attitude, who can’t accept that some businesses struggle to get staff when everyone is sick. Knowing via word-of-mouth is superior. I’m impressed by how reviews can be really good or really bad, but not reflect actual experience.
True, Google reviews can be gamed easily enough.
So I’ve recently learned that a substantial population don’t react to being bitten by bed bugs. This could explain why some of the residents didn’t mind/know about the bed bug infestation.
BRUH. Any light sleeper would wake up when a fully grown bed bug crawls all over them. The guy across the hall from me said that he hated it when bed bugs crawled up his nose while he was asleep. People are just really stupid when they’re in poverty, they just can’t stand up for themselves. Nobody in NZ does anything about mosquito either. You can buy netting for your windows but almost nobody does this because fly screens look bad.
An ex of mine lived in a place like this too, Pickled Parrot Lodge on Coromandel St in Newtown, Wellington. Mingy little rooms and people in quiet desperation. Strippers, prostitutes, meth addicts, parolees, LGBT+, and abused kids rejected or runaways from their families, forced to try to be adults.
The place is still around. Don’t know how it’s run these days, but if you bundle all these people together by necessity without providing on-site social, mental and physical support services, you’re asking for suffering if not disaster. There should be a medical room, with doctors, psychologists, social workers on a scheduled rotation. There should be a security guard and common-area cameras. There should be SPRINKLERS, it’s ultrahigh-density housing, current-level safety shit is a MUST. But that’s not what’s in the regulations, because the landlord lobby is STRONG.
:(
The strangest part of that is, I was under the impression sex workers weren’t short on cash. Guess not.
Very similar experience here, except it was a shitty old house in Welly with 6 tenants. After tolerating the bed bugs for a while, I somehow managed to convince the landlord to bug bomb the place - and it took three runs to completely get rid of em. I kinda had PTSD after that, I’d always imagine seeing some bugs or feel like they were on my bed, or even get phantom itching. Took a while to get over it.
Then this one time a massive and bloody fight took place (I presume they were from two rival gangs) and the cops had to be called, who arrested them and we never saw them again.
Also the addict in our place would steal random things - including eating ice cream from someone else’s tub, or drinking someone else’s millk. The oddest thing though (at the time for me) was when light bulbs went missing, and I had no idea what the connection was until one of my other flatmates enlightened me. After gathering some evidence, we complained to the landlord - who then mentioned the addict wasn’t even paying the rent, and he said that he couldn’t just kick him out for some legal reasons (he had to give him 30 days notice, IIRC).
Luckily by that time, my financial situation improved and I decided to pack my stuff and disappeared from the place overnight, whilst everyone was still asleep. Felt like I was breaking out of prison lol. But because I had to give a notice, I paid double rent for a while - but it was worth it. Moved to a flash apartment in town - a one bedroom flat all for myself - and had the best sleep I’ve had in a long time.
