Stories About the Absolute Worst Apartments People Have Ever Lived in

A whole lot of us in the UK have lived in less-than-pristine conditions, so says a report released today by charity Shelter and just about any conversation you've had with your friends about dodgy properties and chancer landlords.

This particular report found that 43 percent of about 2,000 people polled around the UK, and 73 percent of those polled in London, reported living in conditions that didn't meet Shelter's Living Home Standard, where the main criteria were affordability, the neighbourhood, stability, living conditions and space.

In honour of the report's truly heartening findings we got a load of writers to recount their experiences of living in the worst places they ever lived.

I lived in a four-storey terraced house in east London, back when the only shops on my road were internet cafes and Chinese medicine clinics that sold "man power" herbal supplements. My five friends and I thought we'd scored an amazing deal: we even had a back garden, though it was about the size of a small filing cabinet and only accessible through the basement. Then the shower broke down – no problem, we had a luxurious bathtub! Then the bathtub faucets stopped working and I had to fill the bath by ferrying hot water from the sink in a clapped-out Ikea jug. One of my housemates met the former occupants of the house in a pub and they told us that our landlord was almost definitely involved in a criminal racket. One day we discovered that someone had carved our landlord's name into our front door. Was it a warning? Either way, as we moved out a year later we didn't even blink when we saw a large mouse run across the floor.

The house has now been redeveloped into flats, and my friend's bedroom in the front has been turned into a gourmet Italian espresso bar.

— Zing Tsjeng

The worst place I lived was in southeast London – the first room I rented after moving here from Bristol to start an internship with VICE. There was a single – I have to assume – massive rat that used to scuttle in the space between the walls right above my head as I lay trying to sleep. I also had to intervene during violent arguments between the couple who shared the room next to mine a couple of times a month. I couldn't afford the rent, there was a shopping trolley in the garden and two weeks after moving in my bedroom door fell in on me when I opened it one morning. That said, it was all worth it for the memories and the friends I have made working at this incredible company. Don't forget, guys – the light at the end of the tunnel is not an illusion … the tunnel is.

— Angus Harrison

When I first moved out of my parents' house I lived in this two-bedroom flat in Clapton. After a few months some music students moved into the flat above. At first it seemed like it was going to be fine, but it quickly transpired that they were in a band that liked to practice at all hours of the night. There were a lot of banjos involved and they would often cover Mumford and Sons, or worse, cover other songs in the style of Mumford and Sons. Safe to say, we didn't renew our tenancy.

— Sam Wolfson

I moved into a large student house with five friends in the second year of university. It was grimy in that privately-let-student-house way, and the "garden" was a two-square metre patch of concrete surrounded by high brick walls – the aesthetic of a small prison exercise yard. A couple of months in we realised that the structural integrity of the house was unsound. The shower plumbing hadn't been properly connected so was slowly filling the space above my ground floor flatmate's ceiling with water, until it burst all over his room. He had to sleep in the living room while the elusive handyman fixed it after a month. When we were informed we could finally shower again I got in while my housemates were eating breakfast. After a couple of minutes they all started running up the stairs and screaming at me through the door, when it transpired that the guy had covered up the hole in the ceiling but had forgotten to reconnect the pipes which had caused the original problem. So I was just taking my morning shower directly onto my housemate's bed.

— Morgan Harries

Mice just need to slow down. The only reason they make us jump so much is down to their speed, which stuns you and makes you momentarily forget that – objectively – they're cute. When I lived in a four-bedroom house above a fried chicken shop I'd spend most evenings twitching and involuntarily shrieking after seeing a mouse cross whatever room I was in. Living so close to food meant they dashed around all the time, and that the smell of crispy, salted chicken skin would cling to my clothes. When I caught a mouse trying to climb into the pot of chicken stew I'd made I started to plan my exit. Two of my housemates were lovely, though. The mice were just too quick.

— Tshepo Mokoena

More housing stuff on VICE:

London Rental Opportunity of the Week: A Bed in a Kitchen in Euston!

Government Money to Tackle Rogue Landlords Is Being Used to Arrest Tenants

Why Garden Sheds Are Actually the Perfect Homes