7 ms·

> Things start off fine, but then mold starts growing in the bathroom, and a recurring leak springs up in the living room, and then roaches start appearing in t

• bartvk 4mo ago
  My first thought. I also encountered this problem and learned to clean the kitchen every night, never leave anything edible on countertop and floot, and store everything in good food containers.
• itake 4mo ago
  > roaches in the kitchen roaches need to come from somewhere. Even if your apartment is spotless, someone else in the building might not be...
  • W3zzy 4mo ago
    But is it the landlord's issue?
    • ElProlactin 4mo ago
      Most leases have clauses stating something to the effect that tenants are responsible for keeping their units reasonably clean and sanitary. If tenants start complaining about roaches, a good landlord will do a bit of investigation and remind tenants of the importance of cleanliness, proper disposal of trash, etc.
      • a_t48 4mo ago
        At least in Oakland, it's the landlord's responsibility to manage pest control. It needs to be done at a building level, or else the roaches will just get shuffled around.
        • ElProlactin 4mo ago
          Yeah a good landlord will do pest control but cockroaches are...cockroaches. If you do pest control but have tenants who are leaving food waste out, not disposing of trash properly, etc. it will be a game of whack-a-mole. As far as communities are concerned, the best places to live are the places where landlords/management and residents/tenants both do their parts to keep things clean and habitable. Teamwork makes the dream work.
          • a_t48 4mo ago
            Definitely, it needs both sides.
      • inigyou 4mo ago
        a "good" landlord will lecture the tenant without solving the problem and a "bad" landlord will double the rent
        • ElProlactin 4mo ago
          > ...a "good" landlord will lecture the tenant without solving the problem Huh? When it comes to pests, it takes effort on both sides, especially in environments that are prone to pests. A landlord can pay for regular pest control services but if there are tenants who don't store and dispose of waste properly, it can reduce their efficacy.
    • fg137 4mo ago
      Good luck with that. I have seen landlords that flat out deny there is a roach issue.
      • W3zzy 4mo ago
        I meant that in our country vermin is a tennants issue, not the owner's. Only when the state of the building (large holes) facilitates the ingres of insects or rodents you could mobilise tge landlord.
  • cryptonym 4mo ago
    If you see more and more of them in your kitchen, you most likely are not cleaning it properly after every meal. Sure, if your kitchen was on the moon, you wouldn't have a bug issue. That would still be dirty.
    • close04 4mo ago
      I had neighbors with filthy apartments who thought the solution is routine spraying. Every time, the roaches would take shelter in mine through unknown passages.
      • cryptonym 4mo ago
        In the post, every time they move, they happen to have neighbors that brings roaches and they must move out again after 2 years...
    • victorbjorklund 4mo ago
      More than what? If my neighbour has 2000 roaches in his apartment. Then it would not be strange 10 walks into mine. And if they do they of course gonna hang out were they find the most amount of food (even if you clean odds are there is going to be more residue etc in kitchen vs bedroom)
  • fg137 4mo ago
    Can confirm. Used to live in an apartment where I did everything I could to keep the place clean. Cockroaches kept coming back. The solution? Moving to a different place. Never seen a roach ever again. Even moving to a different apartment inside the building didn't help. Hint: it's the neighbors.
• cam_l 4mo ago
  Fwiw, most mould is caused by buildings. Poor ventilation, leaks, no waterproofing, substandard building materials. Yes, you can avoid mould in older buildings by carefully airing out rooms and keeping things dry and away from walls. But not if the previous three tenants had a mould issue and the landlord just painted over it.
  • InsideOutSanta 4mo ago
    It's definitely true that not all apartments are equally prone to mold, but individual behavior also has a huge effect on mold. If you know that you're living in a place that's susceptible to mold, you have to take that into account when deciding how to furnish your place and how to manage humidity.
    • phantom784 4mo ago
      Even if you're renting, it's worth keeping an eye on the humidity and setting up dehumidifiers if it's consistently getting high.
  • W3zzy 4mo ago
    Yes, but no. We have historic, sometimes even mediaeval buildings. They weren't built with the current energy efficiency in mind. Leaving the bathroom door open after showering. Not putting furniture flus against the wall are simple measures you could take that don't need structural adaptations. I know there are plentiful of technical options but some common sense goes a long way.
    • stefan_ 4mo ago
      It infuriates me to no end that we are expected to put up with building design and technology from 1900 as a consequence of the obsession with "property values must go up" (notwithstanding the property) and a healthy helping of "regulations are only ever added to, everything old is forever grandfathered". Like, central ventilation is not magical unobtainable technology. Simple heat recovery even vastly improves heating costs in a way insulation never can.
• pibaker 4mo ago
  Of course you should take care of your home, but to be fair, the moisture that caused the mold could have come from a leak elsewhere. The roaches could have found a way into your home from that crackhead neighbor's place through cracks and seams somewhere in the construction.
  • wiether 4mo ago
    Author seems to imply that the issues are the landlord's fault though, since their theory is that it's on purpose to be able to raise rent on the next guy. They also imply that is always happen. > I've noticed this myself with every apartment I've ever lived in. Sure, you can have a mold issue in the bathroom because of poor ventilation. Happened to me in a flat. But if it happens every time, the renter can probably be the culprit. Same for the cockroaches. You can be victim of a neighbor’s lack of care. But if it happens in every flat, maybe you're the problem. I'm all-in for blaming landlord's of taking money from renters and not putting any money back on helping keeping the flat in a livable state. But some of the issue the author is pointing out, and the fact that they happen in every flat, make me think that maybe part of the blame is on them.
• esperent 4mo ago
  I've unfortunately lived in too many houses where mold becomes a problem. It's never my fault, it's always been because the house is old/doesn't have proper damp proofing/cheap paint was used, or no damp proofing applied on exterior walls. I clean it, of course, so I'm not literally living in a house with moldy walls, and I keep the house as dry and ventilated as possible. But in certain climates it's nearly inevitable to get mold during winter or the humid season unless the house is very well built and modern. The worst, and again very common, is when the paint is so cheap it can't be cleaned easily - when you use anything that can actually clean the mold (soapy water + a bit of vinegar is my preference, but baking soda, very weak bleach solution, or commercial mold cleaners) it also destroys the paint.
  • HPsquared 4mo ago
    There is specific kitchen / bathroom paint that is smoother and has some anti-mold ingredients. Makes a huge difference to use the correct paint in a damp environment. Condensation itself is a function of the air conditions (temperature and relative humidity ie dew point) and surface temperatures. All surfaces should be comfortably above the dew point to prevent mold. You can use a hygrometer to measure the air, and an infrared thermometer to measure surface temperatures.
    • esperent 4mo ago
      Absolutely but one thing about living in rented accommodation - you rarely get to choose the paint. I agree that a dehumidifier helps but you basically need one in every room. Where I live you can easily take out 10 liters a day from every room during the humid season (which is the maximum capacity of the machine I rented).
      • account42 4mo ago
        Might be different but repainting your apartment is expected from renters here to the point that contracts often state you need to do it every X years and before moving out.
• antfarm 4mo ago
  I had the same thought after reading the first few sentences. Bathrooms and kitchens especially have to be cleaned regularly, and not just superficially. Otherwise, what the author describes happens.
• sn 4mo ago
  There's a relatively easy technological solution to mold: buy a dehumidifier. We bought two after moving to Ireland. Both have drainage hoses. One has a pump and empties into the kitchen sink, the other has no pump and the drainage hose empties into the shower. No more mold problems.
  • collabs 4mo ago
    Thank you for sharing. Do your dehumidifiers run all the time? Do they have some kind of auto on / auto off feature? Do you run them on some schedule? As necessary? I am thinking it would be very easy for me to forget unless it is a set it and forget it kind of thing.
    • operation_moose 4mo ago
      Another "recently Irish" here - Ours has been on constantly for nearly a year. Any decent one has humidity set points - we set ours for 55%. It's a bang-bang controller with a 5% range - it'll run until humidity drops to 52%, then turn off until it rises to 57%. During the winter our single one struggles to get much below 60%, we might add a second next year. An unexpected benefit (for us, as its not something we're used to) is its virtually "free", as we don't have to run the electric clothes dryer anymore (nearly €4/load). We just hang the clothes on a rack by the dehumidifier and it dries them out in a few hours. My wife is starting to prefer it as its not destroying clothes nearly as quickly.
      • jurgenburgen 4mo ago
        > An unexpected benefit (for us, as its not something we're used to) is its virtually "free", as we don't have to run the electric clothes dryer anymore (nearly €4/load). We just hang the clothes on a rack by the dehumidifier and it dries them out fairly quickly. It’s not free as the dehumidifier has to do more work. If you have a modern heat-pump clothes dryer you might be using more electricity by abusing your humidifier like this.
        • 4mo ago
• lwhi 4mo ago
  You need to tell the landlord. I think a lot of people are worried about informing the landlord (especially after two years) as market rates will have risen, and getting stuff fixed might prompt a rise on their own apartment.
  • fg137 4mo ago
    Lots of landlords don't care. They don't live in those apartments themselves. The best bet is to move. Don't ask how I know.
  • Slow_Hand 4mo ago
    This has been my experience as well. Many owners want to know about issues before they fester. I'm fortunate to have an attentive property manager and a landlord who is interested in doing the preventative maintenance to keep the units from degrading. I inherited a mold and moisture problem under the kitchen sink when I moved in, one that I neglected for a while. As soon as I told my landlord they sent a crew out to tear down the wall, fix the plumbing, and rebuild it in a more robust manner. I don't even have a particularly nice apartment. My apartment just turned 100 years old, but it's maintained well enough. I've been here seven years now. I keep my house clean, don't leave food out, and still see the occasional cockroach in the kitchen. Probably once every 1-2 months. Fine.
• whywhywhywhy 4mo ago
  Yeah I thought this was gonna be about landlords hiking the price beyond market value after 2 years. But honestly both those issues are just the apartment is deep cleaned before you move in and this person doesn't know how to or just doesn't clean their bathroom properly, not cleaning bathroom fan filter and leaves food waste out in the kitchen. Probably would have a better experience if they hired a cleaner.
• lucastamoios 4mo ago
  Yeah, I think that is the case: the 2 years may be a reflection on the level of care they give. We built a house and after 2 years it started to need more maintenance, it is normal. I fixed it and every now and then I need to do more. Just regular adult life.
  • rubenvanwyk 4mo ago
    Agreed, when I was reading this I thought "but this is normal adult life?"
    • saulpw 4mo ago
      Renters are not generally able or willing to do basic home maintenance, so
• adhoc_slime 4mo ago
  Roaches are notoriously hard to get rid for a reason. If you don't call an exterminator with the proper poison almost any effort you make will be moot. I can tell you from firsthand experience that roaches will move with you. My partner's old apartment had roaches and even though we took great care to clean and separate everything, keep all of her kitchen stuff in tubs and slowly sort through it they still managed to come to the new apartment. The author lacks self-reflection if they truely thing each brand new place suddenly gets roaches.
  • astura 4mo ago
    My parents used to be landlords. For years they always bought used appliances for the apartments to save money until a used stove came with a surprise roach infestation. New appliances only after that.
  • throwawayffffas 4mo ago
    I lived in an old but thoroughly maintained building, every 6 months and at the beginning of summer, there was a thorough extermination routine applied through out the whole building, you could see a ring of dead roaches around the building the next day, 2 to 4 weeks later you would start spotting them in the apartment again. They leave and die and new ones move in. In old buildings they are just a fact of life, keep your home clean and crumb free and they will prefer your neighbors.
    • qup 4mo ago
      I have a business where it's important we don't have roaches. So we spray more often. It costs me $83 per three months. I haven't seen a roach in sixteen years.
    • JackFr 4mo ago
      My building is 15 stories, built in 1916. I’m on the 2nd floor. Every apartment can sign up for the monthly exterminator when he comes to do common areas. Are there roaches? You bet. Not a ton but you’ll see one or two a few times a month.
  • 4mo ago
• ChrisMarshallNY 4mo ago
  > roaches in the kitchen definitely are I used to live in a nice apartment in downtown Baltimore. It was a first-story rowhouse in Charles Village (a nice area, back in the 1980s). It had roaches. Every building, for miles around, had them. I used to put out lines of borax, and the little bastards took out straws, and snorted them. I guess maybe new buildings, get a grace period, but roaches are impressive little beasties.
  • yardie 4mo ago
    Roaches in a clean, maintained apartment means there is a problem elsewhere in the building. We had a small infestation. And no matter how many times we called the exterminator they kept coming back. Found out one of our neighbors was a hoarder. He passed away, they deep cleaned the apartment, and the roach problem stopped right away. Roaches still need to feed and breed. Once you take that away no more roaches.
    • ChrisMarshallNY 4mo ago
      I guess it depends on where you live. Baltimore is a tough town. The roaches have a reputation to maintain.
      • tartoran 4mo ago
        Do you actually believe roaches in Baltimore have evolved in a different way or is it the locale?
        • ChrisMarshallNY 4mo ago
          It’s a joke. Nevermind.
        • redwood 4mo ago
          The point is in a high density urban environment it's the neighborhood not just your specific building and in some places it's not realistic to imagine the entire neighborhood to be thoroughly clean. New York City is certainly a good case in point with the city's massive amount of garbage placed on the sidewalk once a week
• teekert 4mo ago
  Same here. Especially that 2 year window... That was about when mold took over my bathroom. Then I wiped it all with Chlorine based cleaner, installed a duct with fan which works for up to 2 hours after detecting motion, made a grill in the door and there has been little to no mold since (in year 4 now). But there may also be an element of insufficient building codes? Mold comes with poor (and inhomogeneous) heating, insufficient ventilation, bad moisture shielding (hot moist air should never enter and cool down in a building's structure), cold-bridges (not sure what the English term is for parts of a house significantly colder that other so moisture settles there). Ventilation holes should be well defined, and not via cracks that also let creatures in... Etc. So it may not be all OP's fault. But it sure sounds like it.
• hypendev 4mo ago
  > but the mold in the bathroom and roaches in the kitchen definitely are. I would not agree. Having lived in low budget apartments for quite a while as a student, a lot of these things are "a norm" and not really the renters fault, but the owners. Examples: I moved into an apartment that was "subterranean" level, meaning not fully basement but also not ground floor. When we were looking at it, it seemed fine, everything great, but bathroom had the tiniest vent window ever. I asked about the mold, and the owner was like "oh no, no need to worry about that, the ventilation is quite good actually even tho the window is tiny, we made sure of that" - and at the moment, it seemed so, the air was dry and there was no "humid" feeling about the room. Well, well - the bathroom was humid as hell and would stay that way after the first shower, even with all the vents open and ventilation turned on. Even worse, the humidity in the rooms was so high that the paint on the wall stayed fresh for quite a long time, painting a few of my shirts that touched the wall. When summer came, the rooms became a hotspot for mosquitoes, and the owner would be like "ah just close the windows" - but that kept the humidity and heat in, making life unbearable and causing mold to erupt (also, because a lot of it was just painted over!! just painted over mold, like what the fuck?) Another one had homeless people which started living around the building, leaving food and booze all over the place. To make it worse, large trash bins were outside our building, which lead to roaches coming in from the bins and from the balconies, under which the aforementioned people "lived". We couldn't do nothing about it, except ensure that there is minimal reason for them to come to us, lay traps around and ensure we have anti-bug powders around the perimeter. I talked to some of the neighbors that lived there for years and they said it happens nearly every summer. The bed in the apartment started falling apart at some point, and going to fix it I noticed the bed _was fixed_ already, even tho it was said to be new - and it was fixed badly. The same owner charged me 2k for a "designer couch" that "we ruined", even tho before us moving in the couch was welded and nailed together, as it was obviously broken before, and the owner did not want to admit it even when shown the photo evidence. Once I moved out, I saw what happened to the apartment on the next listing - the owner just painted over the kitchen cabinets, painted the bed, put a new mattress on it and said "all furniture is new". So a lot of things might sound like they're the authors fault, but having met one too many "bad actors" in the renting game, I'm quite sure that some of these things might be the owners responsibility.
• serial_dev 4mo ago
  It could be the author's fault, but IMO more likely the apartment's, the landlord's, and/or the neighborhood's fault. With mold, I guess the people living there have some influence, they might never open the window, they might shower 50 minutes, etc... but there are some places where no matter how careful you are, mold will show up. And even if a perfect tenant with the perfect process for preventing mold might be able to keep it away, you can't be expected to meet those standards. Some buildings are just more prone to mold than others. Same with cockroaches... Sure maybe OP never cleans up in the kitchen and leaves chinese take out in the sink for a month. It can also be that their neighbor is extremely messy, or one window is next to the trash, or that the pipes have something nasty in them that never got cleaned out, so no matter how clean your room is, the roaches still get in somehow.
• whalabi 4mo ago
  The article seems mostly about noticing a fun coincidence backed by anecdotal evidence, except I’m currently going through the same thing, so I’m lending the theory more weight. (The elevators were always fine; now, two years later, they’re constantly out, and the garage door is busted for the first time.) My thought was that it could plausibly be that renting goes in cycles: the building is desperate for renters, so they fix everything, advertise, and so on. Then, once they’re full, the company cuts costs by reducing maintenance. Then they lose renters, and the cycle continues. However, I then thought about my last two buildings, which were cheaper, and things were just broken right from the start, so… who knows.
  • jmaw 4mo ago
    I can see the greater complex-wide cycle argument for complex wide amenities, leasing office support, and maintenance request response/resolution times. Everyone moves out, so the above issues become a higher priority until units are backfilled. Since units are filled, the above issues become less important (to the owners at least, not the renters). Then renters receive this worse service, start moving out in waves, and the cycle continues. The mold, and in-unit plumbing, and insect issues seem more like routine maintenance types of things to me. But compounded slightly by longer maintenance request response/resolution times.
• bluebxrry 4mo ago
  > The recurring leak might not be the author's fault, but the... roaches in the kitchen definitely are "Definitely"? A unit can look clean after treatment while still being mid-cycle. Rent it during that window and the roaches come back through no fault of the tenant. It wouldn't even be that crazy to postulate the life-cycle of a roach could track the 2-Year Apartment Rule (minus any residual effects of the extermination). I don’t know how you get a moral judgement out of this article. That's misdirected blame. It pressures tenants into staying quiet or spraying their own units for a building-level problem. edit: From this article on the American Cockroach https://www.canr.msu.edu/resources/american-cockroach https://www.canr.msu.edu/resources/american-cockroach > Development to adult averages about 15 months, varying between 9-1/2 to 20 months. > Buildings with multiple dwellings usually require the treatment of each unit. This pretty much contradicts blaming the tenant and the roach development aligns with the 2-Year Apartment Rule. It says apartments usually require each unit to be treated. That means no single tenant can do that. That makes it a building-level infestation by definition.
  • tasuki 4mo ago
    > "Definitely"? A unit can look clean after treatment while still being mid-cycle. Rent it during that window and the roaches come back through no fault of the tenant. "A unit" can, sure. But, "every apartment I've ever lived in"... come on! From TFA: > I've noticed this myself with every apartment I've ever lived in. Things start off fine, but then mold starts growing in the bathroom, and a recurring leak springs up in the living room, and then roaches start appearing in the kitchen. If this doesn't set off all the alarm bells, I don't know what does.
    • bluebxrry 4mo ago
      I'd extend some good faith to someone reporting a potential community health problem. And roaches in a kitchen isn't a smoking gun. Roach bait is food. Poisoned food, but food. You put it in the kitchen on purpose. Next to the food. That is how it works.