Pros/Cons of living alone and in an apartment building

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I live on my own in an apartment building that is subsidized housing (lower income).

Pros:

-I make my own schedule. I wake and go to sleep when I choose. I answer to no one.
-I am not burdened with any of the emotions, behaviours or needs of someone else (inside my unit)
-What I do control I take advantage of. I take great care of my apartment unit and keep it very clean. I take pride in this.
-I live close to all of the amenities I need. I can walk everywhere and don't need a vehicle
or even to use public transit (though I occasionally do)
-I pay a discounted rent proportionate to what one would pay for this same unit at a market rate. As a result I can save
money each month and have a feeling that I can build myself financially to a certain extent.


Cons:

-Being alone nearly 24/7 is unhealthy if it is prolonged. I have called the crisis help line at times because I have hardly anyone to talk with. I have a friend who I see perhaps once every other month or so, but there is not a lot of emotional depth to our relationship. Another friend who lives in another country. Haven't seen them since 2007.

-No one to bounce ideas off of and share some of my concerns/emotions about things in my life.
- I said I am not burdened with any of the emotions, behaviours or needs of someone else as a benefit. Well, this is true when I'm inside my unit. Yet as a result of living in a building with perhaps 100 residents
(my estimate, there are 9 floors with 8 units each), I am forced to deal with their behaviours whether I like them or not.

A few examples which are very, very annoying to me and motivate me to want to move out of this place:

-I don't have statistics, but I can tell that the majority living here are 40+. I just turned 40. (not the age my profile indicates).
I've lived in this building since I was 35. I've spent the latter part of my 30s in relative isolation. There is hardly anyone in the building around my age who I would socialize with. Basically, it's older people.

A number of the residents here have a moderate to serious disability, either physical, mental or both. Many are smokers.
A few examples:

1. On my floor I have 7 neighbours. One is obviously mentally ill. You don't notice it at first, but over time you identify patterns in their behaviour. They engage in petty behaviour that irritates myself and others, though it isn't directed at myself.

About a week ago there was shouting in the hallway between 2 people on my floor. At an odd hour. This isn't common, but it does happen every now and then. Another resident called the police. The cops showed up to do a wellness check.
I just do not want to be around any of this drama.

2. Smokers. Smokers are often lazy IMO and their nicotine addiction is a burden on everyone else. Some lazy smokers will smoke in the stairwell because they are too lazy to go outside and puff cancer into their bodies. Then the fire alarm goes off and the fire department comes. It's happened twice in the last month. One of the times it was at 2 or 3 in the morning.
Your sleep is interrupted by the fire alarm because someone has no respect for anyone else and breaks the rules by smoking.

3. Lazy residents leave their personal garbage and unwanted household items in the lobby. Happens again and again. Never changes. I notify the building management and tell them to investigate the CCTV cameras in the lobby to catch the perpetrator. Well, my complaints are futile. Management doesn't give a damn about investigating the footage. The reality is that people would stop leaving their trash for others to clean up if they were fined each time. If they got a $50 or $100+ fine because they were caught, you can bet your a** they would change their behavior. Yet there are no consequences so nothint ever changes.

(This in particular motivates me to really want to move out of this building because I despise untidy, careless people)


4. Geographical location. It has advantages because it is close to amenities. Yet it is also close to the inner city and you see some unpleasant social problems in the neighbourhood. A lot of graffitti, garbage, vandalism, broken liquor bottles, open drug use. It's common. It's not a terrible part of town, but it isn't exactly the Hamptons or Belair.

5. We've also had break ins to the building, though they seem to have lessened in the last year or two. Security is lax. It is still far too easy to access the building if you are an unwelcome entrant. I've documented at least a dozen break ins. I'm fortunate no one has ever broken into my unit but other residents haven't been as fortunate.

I lived in apartments for several years.

The two things that I hated most were:

1) Noisy neighbors -- In one apartment building, a family in one nearby apartment got into really loud arguments every other week or so. The police were often called on them.

In a four plex I lived in for a couple of years, the neighbors to the side (some college students) got a dog and that dog was really noisy. It had severe separation anxiety when they went to class and would frequently tear the blinds down in an effort to get out. One time the dog also broke the crapper and flooded their apartment. Fortunately, it didn't get into my apartment.

Also in the same four plex, the girl who lived around me went to the cowboy bars and brought home a different guy every night. Her bedroom was right above mine and she was really noisy. Fortunately, she moved out at the end of the year and the new girl who moved in was very quiet.

2) The management -- I often had pretty good management to deal with, but in two apartments they were really miserable.

Also worth mentioning:

In the last apartment I lived in, the apartment had some plumbing problems and the water would go out at least once a week for a couple of hours. About a week before I left, I was talking to the guy who lived in the corner unit a few doors down from me and it turned out that he had the lowest apartment on the floor. Whenever the sewer would get blocked, his apartment would flood. Those frequent water outages turned out to be the apartment complex turning the water off while plunging out the sewer lines.

I've generally had much better in houses, but one house I moved into was in a really quiet family neighborhood. Then some seniors in college moved into the house to one side with the intention of having loud parties every weekend. That would have been okay in an area that was mostly all students, but not in a neighborhood of retirees and people who needed to go to work as early as 5 am.

I was a little apprehensive when they moved in, but they assured me that they were quiet. So what happens? The first weekend after school started, they had a party that started up when the bars closed. It was quiet at midnight, but it started getting noisy before 1 am. Also, there were cars lined up and down both sides of the street. The street was narrow enough that if there had been an emergency, I'm not sure that a fire truck or an ambulance would have much of a chance of getting through.

Fortunately, I'm not bashful about calling the police to complain. It turned out that after about four calls, they became the neighbors they promised to be.

They also got a dog, but the dog was really nice. They spent time with him for about a week or two and then put him in the back yard and just fed him daily. I'd often go into the back yard in the daytime and reach over the fence to pet the dog. It was really starved for attention.

Another house I lived in when I was a grad student in math was behind the busiest bar in town. It was nearly impossible to go to sleep before about 3 am on Thursday nights, Friday nights, and Saturday nights because of all the people walking right past my bedroom window.

The funny thing was that I never asked to rent the house. I took over for a friend of mine when he went home for the summer. So I paid the rent each month for the summer as well as the electric, gas, and telephone bills. He loved it because when he got back, everything was already connected. Back then, it would take about two weeks to get a telephone connected in the fall and you would rarely have the same number from one year to the next. So he not only didn't have to go through all that, he also had the same number that year, too.

Speaking of break-ins, the only locks that house had were like the one in the picture below and on the inside of the door:



It had a front porch and a back porch. The front porch had doors from the bedroom and the living room. The back porch had doors from the kitchen and the dining room. If you were in the house, you could lock all four doors, but when you left, you had to leave one door unlocked. So it was common to not even lock the doors at all.

I own my own home in a nice neighborhood.

It is expensive but I can easily afford it.

It is a lot of work. I've fixed or replaced lots of stuff.
Furnace, oil tank, roof, driveway, kitchen stove, refrigerator, faucets....

I have a very large flower garden that keeps me busy.

Whenever I encounter an issue where I live I think about more money and a brand new lifestyle.

I have intellectual property that I expect to sell which will afford me the lifestyle I desire.

I too expect to own a property which I can afford easily.