I’ve made a couple of disgusting posts with no explanation because they were funny, but I gotta come clean with this one - I live like a bit of a pig, yes, but I also work as a maintenance man for a local housing authority, and regularly encounter some fairly rank situations. Some of them are due to regular poor housekeeping, some mental illness, and some because of addiction. All of them are interesting, I think.

I have a couple others that I think I can share without breaking any laws.

It should be noted that the worst of these date from just after COVID-19; there was an eviction moratorium, and people literally stopped caring about housekeeping notices and warnings. The typical apartment looks NOTHING like this nowadays.

    • null@piefed.nullspace.lolEnglish
      24·
      1 month ago

      Humans are surpringly adaptable and thus susceptible to maladaptive behaviours too. With the right mix of mental illness and self-medication, humans can normalize in some seriously messed up environments.

    • Junkers_Klunker@feddit.dk
      11·
      1 month ago

      For me it was poor mental health and self medicating with alcohol and various drugs. Pretty hard to clean the apartment when you can’t even get yourself to shower.

      • OldManBOMBIN@lemmy.worldOP
        9·
        1 month ago

        I’ve had my rough patches as well. Depression -> addiction -> tunnel vision. Took a couple of close calls, but we made it. High-fives in the chat

    • OldManBOMBIN@lemmy.worldOP
      4·
      1 month ago

      I know a guy that literally lives under a bridge. Gets offered jobs all the time, but would rather walk around picking up cans to recycle for cash, and then he goes back to his catwalk.

      • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
        7·
        1 month ago

        A while back I saw a local post about a guy with donkeys walking through town. There’s picture and a URL on the packs of one of his donkeys, I look it up, and he apparently just walks from southern to central California and back each year with his donkeys every spring and fall, and has been doing it for over a decade. He sleeps outside and eats mostly lentils and rice. It takes all sorts. Honestly, living under a bridge or outside with donkeys sounds preferable to the pictures posted by OP.