In the early 90's we lived in a 130 yr. old victorian building in "Old" downtown. The downstairs was a store front (antiques) and up a very steep staircase was our apartment in the back and a studio in front.
It had alot of character, brick walls, nearly floor to ceiling deep set windows and original moldings on the doors. That was all it had going for it. Because the building was all brick it was a sanctuary for centipedes that came in droves from the gaping hole under the sink from water leaks. Not fun trying to fall asleep and then feel one of those suckers run along your arm.
The landlord was completely lazy. The outside door at the bottom of the stairs just had a hole where a deadbolt used to be. In winter, snow would blow in and build a nice little drift that sometimes made it hard to get out. The wall opposite the door housed our bathroom plumbing, so yeah, multiple times a winter we'd wake up to frozen pipes. On top of that, our furnace was in a closet off of our small shared landing and it pumped most of our heat out there instead of the apartment.
This started out as built-in entertainment but it quickly got old. Our neighbor in the studio had basically an old converted closet as his bedroom that shared a thin wall with our livingroom. He always had lady freinds over and if not, he was a great fan of making love to himself. The constant rhythmic squeeking of his bed springs eventually became like nails on a chalkboard. Thank God he worked on Alaskan fishing boats so we'd get peace for months at a stretch.
On last thing was that we had no fire escape. If we had needed to get out, the best chance would've been to jump/fall to the little roof over the basement stairwell.
Weird, I just had a major sense of deja vu, I swear I've written about that place before. Eh, to lazy to check.