this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2025
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I struggle with this because I hate apartments. Theyre inherently depressing.
As long as we can have apartments and I can still have my house and land, its fine.
But a lot of times it seems like they want all of us to live in 1 bedroom ny style apartments like sardines and eat bugs, and i think thats where the backlash comes in.
I guess if youre homeless any apartment is a good one. But a lot of them would get destroyed from mentally ill people. So then what, build concrete cell block apartments ? Im really not sure.
Lol what. How are apartments inherently depressing? Several of my friends have very nice apartments with natural light, grassy spaces, and close proximity to parks and essentials.
Personally I find isolated single family homes a little depressing, but that's not an inherent property of them.
I'm the oddball who prefers living in an apartment. It has some nice features that are difficult to find in a stand-alone house, difficult to replicate, or simply don't scale down well.
So they are living in those 'luxury' apartments. So many of those low income apartments are not very nice at all.
I don't think most of my friends are living in luxury apartments. Though there are many shitty apartments, shittiness is not an innate attribute of apartments.
Luxury is a point of view. A millionaire's view of just getting by isn't the same as someone living on $35,000 a year with 2 kids. And you are right shittiness isn't an innate attribute of apartments. But it sure is pretty common in many areas.
Because they're tiny and you cant make any noise in them (usually not allowed, and if it was id feel bad for annoying others)
Thats probably my biggest issue. I cant understand liking such small spaces and having people surrounding me watching and listening to everything i do, even if its passively. Plus, id be the one to get awful neighbors that I dread being near.
Not every apartment is tiny. I don't have the measurements for mine but it feels comfortable with two desks, a couch, a coffee table, and some bookcases. Plus there's the bedroom with a queen size bed, bookcases, another desk, and dresser. The kitchen is admittedly a little small. This isn't a fancy apartment, and its priced pretty average for the city. I'm pretty sure all the units in this building are about the same.
I very rarely hear my neighbors. I play music through speakers and (I've asked) they never hear me.
Also no one sees me, so far as I know. For contrast, where my parents live out in the suburbs, neighbors are always creeping on each other and gossiping.
Now, admittedly, there are many apartments that are tiny, or have shit sound proofing, or whatever. But, again, that is not an inherent property of apartments. Many houses have problems, too.
Counterintuitively, denser living spaces make you less seen. Not that you're invisible, but that you don't register. If I went for a walk out in the suburbs, people would look and see me. They'd be like "Who's that weirdo walking?" or "Did you see that weird guy with the metal band on his t-shirt?" Someplace denser, I blend in with everyone else and don't get a second thought. Not even a first thought, most of the time.
Somewhat paradoxically, the soundproofing in big buildings tends to be much better than in smaller buildings. The concrete and steel and thick storm resistant windows and fire doors between unit and hallway required by the building code for tall buildings have so much weight that things like footsteps, moving furniture, and other sources of noise just don't carry between units.
Also can't make many changes, limits to what can be installed in general etc etc. How is owning literally nothing about your home NOT depressing
I chose all the furniture and decorations. How often are you remodeling your home? What kind of remodeling are you doing? Like, more than moving the contents around? That's just not a thing I have a desire to do. (This isn't sarcastic. I'm being sincere.)
I don't even mean just large remodels, a lot of times in most Apartments the appliances are whatever you get and you can't put your own in. Many apartments have rules and limitations on what can or can't be hung on the walls personally I'm a huge fan of shelves on the walls a couple L brackets and some stainless steel string make for a very aesthetically pleasing and very useful shelf space most Apartments don't enjoy you doing that.
Electricity bill getting really high and you wish you could have a heat pump dryer instead of the cheap ass piece of s*** they put in? Well that's just too damn bad etc. Want to modify your balcony? Put up special netting or something? Some places will let you some places tell you don't even think about it. And don't you dare leave stuff sitting on the balcony we can't have that it has to look nice
There are plenty of rules and limitations on apartments that go well beyond just Mass renovations
a lot of those are more limitations of renting more than limitations of an apartment. if you own your place, you can put things on the wall, paint, and change appliances. also, you can definetely make a lot of changes in the space even when renting an apartment, even hang things on the wall, but you might need to cover the holes when leaving.
and there are HOA that would also limit what you can do with your property and put on your yard as well, so, while it is shitty, even owning a house doesn't mean that you get the freedom to do what you want.
living in an apartment is definetely not for everyone, but it has advantanges (and disadvantages) over living in a house.
Ah, I see. This apartment doesn't have any rules (that I'm aware of) about what you can put on the walls, but I don't have anything more than some picture frames up.
I'm also lucky that heat and hot water are included - a friend of mine had electric heating and it was really expensive.
Anyway, point taken that there are some limitations. I guess I'm lucky enough that I've never run into them, personally. Thanks.
A lot of apartments dont even let you paint the walls. And often living in one is an aspect of leaving it nice "for the next person" which is an annoying feeling.
If you wanna nail up a nice cedar wall, good luck.
Although I do not personally feel that apartments are inherently depressing, perhaps someone who was more worried about exactly what decisions they are allowed to make about their living space might. They may be considering the lack of agency one experiences in some regards as a renter, which could make them feel as though every apartment type situation was inherently depressing.
Yeah, could be. I said elsewhere in this thread that I think they're conflating renting with apartments. They said that buying an apartment is a "scam", and I didn't follow up with "but people rent houses, too."
I could see why eternal renting is depressing, but that's not the same as living in an apartment.
Cool, where can I get an apartment like that? I have one roommate, and combined we have a budget of $1k for rent and bills.
Well, I don't know. Where do you live? Where do you want to live? There are sites like zillow that let you search, but there's other listings and word of mouth. A combined budget of $1k for rent and bills isn't going to go very far most places.
You said these nice apartments were available, but I can't find any, so I'm asking you.
Where do your friends live, and what do they pay for housing? How can I be like them?
I live in new york city. I don't get the impression you're engaging in good faith, though.
I keep being told that better is available, but am frustrated that there are never any details on how I can obtain it.
Well, you haven't provided any details yourself so that seems fair.
I'm in a small town, my roommate owns a 750sqft 2br house with a small garden. This year, the mortgage was $800/month, but property taxes went up so next year we'll need to rebudget for $975.
He drives a forklift, and I'm a machine operator that's been out of work since I've started getting presyncope that makes it dangerous.
I would like to live closer to employment, since I don't feel safe driving any more and the bus runs once every other hour between 9-5, but housing in the nearest midsize city is still more than twice as much, and I'd have to give up my fruit trees.
I don't think you'd find a 2 bedroom for $1k in NYC (though you'd likely save by not needing a car, so factor that into budgets). I see some on the map (Zillow, which I don't know if it's the best) for Philly, which I'm told is nice, but I've never lived there long term. I don't know if they're any good. You'd have to search yourself.
Yeah, I can't find a 2br for $1k anywhere outside Flyover Country, and any savings from not driving is largely offset by the cost of not having a garden, unless I wanted to eat lower quality produce.
What do you do for work, and how did you get there?
I know nothing about philly and can't vouch for zillow, but a zero effort search found a bunch of hits: https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_rent/?searchQueryState=%7B%22isMapVisible%22%3Atrue%2C%22mapBounds%22%3A%7B%22west%22%3A-75.19186800188812%2C%22east%22%3A-75.13255899615082%2C%22south%22%3A39.954194027975525%2C%22north%22%3A39.997933180083415%7D%2C%22filterState%22%3A%7B%22fr%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Atrue%7D%2C%22fsba%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22fsbo%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22nc%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22cmsn%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22auc%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22fore%22%3A%7B%22value%22%3Afalse%7D%2C%22beds%22%3A%7B%22min%22%3A2%7D%2C%22mp%22%3A%7B%22max%22%3A1000%7D%7D%2C%22isListVisible%22%3Atrue%2C%22mapZoom%22%3A14%7D
How are you searching?
I don't really know anything about gardening, sorry. Some places have backyards, and there are community gardens in some cities. Cars are really expensive, though. Insurance alone is probably like $50/month. Probably more.
Now? Software development. When I moved here, customer service (answering the phone, livechat, etc). Though I'm a cheapskate and still basically live like I'm making $45k. I eat a lot of rice and beans.
I was lucky that my second CS job was at a place that trained people an promoted internally, so I was able to move up in my career. They hired whole "classes" of CS people to onboard at once, and almost my whole cohort went on to do like marketing, management, software development, and other higher paying stuff. A couple of my friends have done the same, but it seems like AI is eating a lot of those jobs.
I'm filtering anything smaller than my current place, single story because presyncope. I don't want to take a header down the stairs because I had an episode, same as not wanting to drive, I just get dizzy af and my limbs don't follow direction well. If this turns out to be treatable, I can look for multi-story apartments, which does open up the listings a little, but you do have to look out for scam listings.
Try $100 lol. It's a hybrid, with an hour total commute, so lets say $150 for gas. I don't know anything about public transit or employment in Philly, so I can't say for sure that we could get rid of the car.
Yeah, I need to do worker retraining, but I don't know what's a good choice. I was a caregiver, but that has shit hours and even shittier pay, and not being able to take a vacation from dementia clients trying to punch you made me burn out hard. Then I went into running embroidery machines, but I kept losing my balance and it's just not safe.
Edit: hit send before done lol
What kind of single family house can you afford with that in comparison?
Well, prices keep going up, so that's a good question. Rent last year it was $700, this year it was $800, next year it'll be $975. I got lucky and found somebody with a mortgage who needed a roommate, but I've been struggling with my health and I lost my job earlier this year because of it, so the budgeting has become impossible.
I keep hearing that there's nice places I could move to, but they all turn out to need more bootstraps than god gave me.
Sorry, my question was rethorical. My point was that single family housing is more expensive than flats
I'm not talking about detached housing vs flats, I'm talking about staying where I'm at vs moving.
Depends. Having a house in the middle of nowhere is reasonable, having a house in a population center is wasted space. You could fit a two mother in law units onto the land my home sits on and not negatively impact my life even a little bit.
Agreed