I am stunned, sick and stewing from the emotional & olfactory shock of experiencing the absolute crud and stench of a recently diseased neighbor's apartment down the hall from my 3rd floor apartment 306 in the Polish National Alliance building at 1627 Eastern Avenue in Baltimore City. My neighbor in 302, named Bruce, died a few weeks ago. Unfortunately, he and his apartment have always stunk from his urine. He went out every morning to buy food, and you will see in the video why - his kitchen is far too filthy for preparing food. Bruce had no contact with relatives or friends. He was a pleasant fellow, whom other neighbors and I liked.
He had no running water for three years.
Our rental agent hired three men with a pickup truck to clean Bruce's mess out. Those guys were suffering on the job and did not even have masks on or other protective wear that the horrific task required - legally. It is a horribly contaminated situation, which seriously endangered the health of those men and anyone at their homes who may have come in contact with their resulting contaminated clothing. It should have been a professional hazmat outfit. Those three men dragged a bunch of large, heavy gage black plastic bags out front and piled them up high. Neighbors were amazed at the amount of crap that came out of Bruce's efficiency apartment. No one can figure how it all fit in there.
As those men carried stuff out and down the elevator, they spread contaminating debris on the floors, which two women neighbors kept coming out and cleaning up. One lady said something about bed bugs, and there was mouse feces, along with bird excretions from Bruce having an open window with a small table by it where he fed pigeons and maybe other birds. I saw the table in the trash pile covered with bird poop.
Several years ago, before I moved in, Bruce had the hallway so steadily stunk from having 15 cats crapping and peeing everywhere in there that he was forced to get rid of cats. The apartment has never been cleaned in the decade or so he lived there. The hallway has stunk so sickeningly that I never allow anyone I know to come here, which keeps me from family and friends plus any attractive woman I might meet here in Fells Point.
Bruce's next-door neighbor said she once was walking her garbage down the hall to where the trash cans are in the entrance to our laundry room as Bruce exited his place and when she stopped to exchange brief pleasantries she saw a, "Tornado of flies swirling in the kitchen."
Many of those flies now have moved in on me, and I am steadily killing them. I never had to have a fly swatter till now, and in 10 days the sticky fly strips I've hung are covered in various flies. Bruce's place suffers massive mold problems, which may be migrating all through the building. The mice definitely moved out through the entire 100-year-old school building turned into apartments.
That neighbor told me she had asked the rental agent, Jean, why she allowed Bruce to live there that way, and the reply allegedly was, "Because he pays his rent."
I cannot understand how city inspectors never knew, and Bruce I do believe had federaly funded help with his rent. The apartment rentals here are owned by some corporation that probably has many investors, and you will see in the video how they are being cheated out of owning valuable 'stock' in this place. It is doubtful that most people involved in that ownership are OK with how it is here.
It's a law-breaking shame that Bruce was permitted to live in & destroy that apartment while making life here at 1627 Eastern Ave. lousy.
To me, these miserable memories are probably going to be in my sleep as bad dreams of the living nightmare I'm in.
The video is practicably a horror show, from which I and other residents need to get out of but cannot afford to.
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