The building that bro brings me to is completely dilapidated -- moreso than just a couple weeks of neglect could account for. A thick carpet of moss spreads across the building's face on the side adjacent to an ally, where a stream of runoff water, filthy to the point of blackness, flows down from a shattered rain gutter.

The front-facing side of the building is in better shape, clear of moss and with cleaner brickwork. It occurs to me that the super probably kept it that way to attract potential renters, maintaining a respectable facade while allowing the parts of the building that the public didn't see to rot away.

We approach a wooden door. It was white, once, but the paint is rapidly losing a battle with mold. It doesn't look very sturdy -- and it isn't, caving in with a single kick. The blow cleanly removes the top hinge from the wall, but the lower one just twists, and the door falls in on itself, tilting back at an odd angle. As bro steps past the threshold, his weight snaps the lower hinge away from the frame, flattening it against the ground.

Once inside, I glance around the grungy front lobby. If this building even had a janitor on staff, he certainly never spent much time here. A toppled vending machine lies to the left of a reception counter whose top has been stripped away, leaving behind only the plywood underside. In the center of the lobby is a couch missing its seat cushions. Dead ferns line the walls. There's dirt and grime everywhere. I see a roach scuttle by and flatten itself into a crack in the wall.

I nod in the direction of what looks like a stairwell, and Bro follows me over. As we walk up the stairs to the first level of units, the civil engineer in me can't help but piece together the building's history on the basis of its architecture.

This apartment building was once a nest of offices, haphazardly converted into a space for human occupation. By the looks of it, the original structure dates to the mid-80s. That makes sense -- this was once a business that got foreclosed upon during the recession, then snatched up by a slumlord looking to make easy money. 30 years on, and not a single part of it has been upgraded or renovated in any way.

Most of the inside walls are paper-thin and were obviously erected after the building was converted into apartments. In several places, huge swaths of plaster have flaked away, revealing the rotted-out lathboard underneath.

The mazelike, asymmetrical placement of rooms also attests to how slipshod the conversion was. From the size and layout of the floorspace, I struggle to understand the logic behind where the load-bearing walls are placed, and then I realize that the load-bearing walls aren't there. They were torn down during the conversion. It's a miracle that this building didn't collapse under its own weight decades ago.

When some forward thinking land manager acquired this building, he must have carefully weighed the costs of renovation against the income he'd earn from each resident. Yet more signs of this brutal utilitarianism show through in the peeling cream-colored latex paint that coats practically every visible surface -- including the labyrinth of rusted-out pipework, doubtlessly left exposed after the conversion, that crisscrosses the ceiling.

The building is, in short, even more of a dump than the exterior let on - the perfect place for a student trapped in a work-study program, or a wage slave just barely scraping by. The tenants here lived in horrifying poverty and squalor. I'm not expecting to find very much in the way of supplies.