I received the keys to my apartment last year, on the last day of July, so my room mate and I have been occupying this space for nearly a year. In that time our garbage removal service has been halted three times, our gas service has been in danger of being halted three times, our electric service to common areas has been in danger of being halted once and our mailman has asked several of us to call our Landlord to complain about the snow piled up on our sidewalks.

I foolishly believed that after the death of the woman in Apartment 5 that things would improve, because a 'maintenance' man had moved in with his wife. Sadly though he proved to be incapable of doing anything more than smoking his cigarettes in the common areas and dragging in snow and dirt all over the place.

Please note, that my room mate and I have done the majority of repairs and restoration projects in our apartment-but we have also had help from my father, my boyfriend and a friend from work. I save the receipts of anything we need and deduct it from the rent, especially after we installed new tiles in the bathroom after ripping out the carpet that was piss stained and full of cigarette burns.

There was once when the snow fall from the night before hadn't been cleared from the parking lot and we found some shovels and did our absolute best to clear a path for our vehicles, and no one else's, and it took us over an hour to clear a small path before the 'maintenance' guy could finally be reached to come out and snowblow the rest of the driveway.