The exterior of the building is getting painted; well, the trim and ledges are, at least — black, to match The Governor and The Ace hotels nearby. Someone's floor is getting redone, too, the noisy part of which I'm hoping will be finished sometime today. Maintenance is a haphazard process here, and also a very slipshod one. Considering the fact that this building is over a hundred years old and started off as a "gentleman's hotel", much will be left to be desired in its present incarnation as low-income subsidized housing. Not that I expected much when I moved in, and indeed in some ways it exceeded my expectations; I've lived in MUCH worse! Still, it would be nice if the bathrooms and sinks had water pressure (or hot water for that matter!), the elevator be made compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the frosted windows with chicken-wire in them the poor residents in half of the rooms have to peer out of were replaced with something less reminiscent of One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest.
This place is a bloody dump, is what it is. It's better than living on the streets, but only marginally so at best and with it comes its own unique problems to replace those left behind in the doorways and beneath the bridges. Before I moved in here I lived beneath an overpass just outside of downtown, and it was a actually decent spot that I kept nice and clean; my main concern was mosquitoes during summer and mildew during fall and winter. No cockroaches or fruit flies or bed bugs; rats and raccoons would have been an issue if I hadn't had the sense at the time to eschew bringing food to my camp … I still chuckle whenever I recall the night the guy living under the other side of the overpass menaced a raccoon with his machete while the little critter ignored him and kept rooting through his backpack. I didn't have to worry about neighbors smearing molten American cheese all over kitchen counters or feces all over the seats of the toilets, though I must admit it's nice to be able to cook and not to have to crap in a plastic bag. Even the cars driving by kept me up nights only slightly more than nocturnal passers-by do here as they cackle and yodel and scream beneath my window.
I should be grateful, but all I can think about is lead poisoning, asthma, being buried alive in an earthquake, how the kitchen and bathrooms get so revolting I periodically have to go to another floor to potty, or I give up on baking an enchilada casserole in the oven on my floor and settle for microwaving a bowl of ramen or chili instead … and the fact that we're getting some ridiculous cosmetic face-lift out in front while inside a score of less costly maintenance items can be done to make this place less East Berlin and more suitable for even undesirable humans to live in.
