The building looms with a total of thirteen floors, but only the first three offer any semblance of livability. It was bought in its battered, dilapidated state, ravaged by the aftermath of five major hurricanes. The damage was catastrophic, and to restore it fully would have drained millions. The new owners, however, took the cheapest route possible—investing only enough to bring the structure up to the most basic code standards. The result is a building that, while standing, has little of its former grace. The once-spacious and elegant rooms have been ruthlessly carved down to mere shadows of what they once were.
The bathrooms, once luxurious sanctuaries, have been gutted. The once opulent bathtubs are gone, replaced with cold, functional showers, and the on-suite laundry is a distant memory. What's left of the bathrooms has been torn apart and reassembled as part of a cramped, galley-style kitchen that stretches uncomfortably across what was once a grand living space.
The bedroom and the open living room still maintain a modest sense of space, though they feel claustrophobic compared to their former selves. From the living room’s windows, you can still catch a view of the beach, but it's not the postcard-perfect paradise one might hope for. Instead, the view is often punctuated by the chaos of the streets below—fights erupting in the sand, shady transactions unfolding in plain sight, overdoses, sirens wailing too late, and a constant stream of ambulances and flashing lights. The beach, once a place of peace, now tells a darker story.
Each of the building's floors houses ten apartments, with narrow, grimy hallways that lead to creaky stairs. The elevator, a relic of the past, hasn’t worked since the second hurricane, its rusted shell a testament to years of neglect. The stairs are in worse shape, their boards warped and uneven, creaking underfoot as if protesting every step. Some of them even feel dangerously unstable, as though they might buckle with the wrong weight pressing down. The glass on the exterior of the building is a patchwork of spiderweb cracks, delicate yet threatening, like a brittle shell waiting to break. At any moment, it wouldn’t take much for a desperate junkie or unruly thug to shatter the glass with a reckless shove. The building stands, barely holding itself together, a hollow reminder of better days.
While the rent might be cheap, the price you pay in other ways is anything but. The once-charming waterfront town has fallen on hard times. With funding long gone, it’s devolved into a gritty, crime-riddled area, overrun with prostitution, drug dealers, pimps, gangsters, and the like. The rapid rise in crime keeps the police stretched thin, creating a perfect opportunity for the more… audacious residents to run wild. This leads to all sorts of chaotic events—fights breaking out in the streets, shady deals being struck in dark corners, overdoses, and the kind of loud, colorful shouting matches between neighbors that could fill a reality show. But hey, at least the view of the water is still nice!
