As housing costs keep going up, we can see that many people are getting increasingly desperate with what they’re willing to accept in an apartment.
Although New York City and Los Angeles have long been infamous for forcing people to pay between $1,500 and $2,5000 per month for places that are either akin to closets or outright unsafe , it’s a problem that’s affecting more of the nation as time goes on.
And while this has made a lot of renters vigilant about inspecting the apartments they’re about to move into, one can only be so careful when they’re coming to their new digs from out of town.
That’s what one woman discovered the hard way after the nice appearance of her apartment and the apparent kindness of the firm watching over it turned out to be a façade for a noxious reality.
Be advised that the video featured in this article contains explicit language
On May 1, a woman named Megara uploaded a video to TikTok warning people not to tolerate “corporate indifference.”
She expanded upon that thought in a follow-up video and it was informed by a recent experience that saw her move to a new city with a lower cost of living about a month and a half ago.
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Before she did, she reported having friendly experiences with the property management company who ran the apartment she would be moving to. And since they offered a virtual tour of the place, she didn’t see any reason to suspect anything was amiss.
But as she would soon learn, this kind of preview doesn’t exactly prepare you for what a place smells like.
And that discovery would soon lead her to ask someone at the management office, “Why does my apartment smell like a wet dog that just fornicated with another wet dog?”
And while she was told that the carpet had recently been professionally cleaned and that the smell would go away when the water evaporates, she found that it only got worse.
Amusingly, she was also told to light a scented candle but since it was clear to her that the smell had likely permeated in that carpet for years by the time she moved in, not even an elaborate candle-lit shrine to Mr. Clean would be able to mask it.
This then led her to email the management company about the increasingly rancid carpet, which to this date has elicited no response.
Faced with this lack of help, Megara took matters into her own hands in all of the ways we can see here (some obviously being more facetious than others) but once again, only found that the smell had become worse.
As she put it, “The past three days, my nostrils and my lungs and my throat have been burning.”
If that seems like an extreme bodily reaction, she eventually realized that she was smelling ammonia vapors from the pet urine that’s seeped into the carpet for who knows how long.
And that’s a particular problem for Megara because she happens to be severely allergic to animal urine.
Considering that the management company appears no more willing to take action than before, she’s going to make a report to the city because the carpet does not meet its minimum standards for habitable sanitation.
If the matter remains unresolved over the course of the next month, she’s planning to file a lawsuit.
And it’s looking like that may be her only remaining option.