Forest Hills Apartments, Wilmington NC Roach Infestation Story Continued

This is a continuation of the beginning story of how I moved into a roach-infested apartment at Forest Hills.

I would like to dedicate this post to what it was like to spend a month living in a roach-infested apartment. In summary, if you missed the first post, we had been lied to several times about the state of this apartment and lived 200 miles away, so we fell into a classic bait-and-switch and signed this lease without looking at the apartment since we loved the demo apartment and liked the property manager -- this all changed of course.

Let me paint a mental picture for you. You just moved to Wilmington, NC with your wife and two cats, one of which has a compromised immune system. You've paid about $3,000 in rent, deposits, a moving truck rental, and now endless cleaning supplies because you've moved into a slum house full of filth and cockroaches. I should note you also have a work-from-home job, so you'll be spending all your time working in your new home. Guess what? Your apartment is completely infested with roaches and the rental management company cannot and will not do a thing about it other than spraying pesticides that clearly are not solving the problem. This was our lives. So, what was it really like to live with the infestation?

The first time we ever experienced cockroaches in our lives

Cockroaches are definitely more active at night, but each morning I would still awake and walk into the kitchen (cockroach ground-zero) to find roaches scattered about. We would dry up the sink at night, but up until we began doing that I would find them in our kitchen sink soaking up the water. I would find them in various places such as the cabinets (which were never professionally sanitized even upon request and explanation of the infestation), the appliances, the floor, and even in between the pantry door cracks. Anyway, after weeks of this, we adjusted. I would simply kill them. I had become desensitized to the filth. It was a part of my life now. I awake, I go downstairs, and I would kill. We had a whiteboard on the refrigerator to keep track of how many we killed 

Roach roll call. Notice how they came in waves

If you look at the whiteboard, you will notice we quickly learned how to identify the various types of roaches we were seeing. I should note we were also seeing fleas and silverfish. Anyway, back to a typical day in the life of a guy living in a roach-infested apartment.

After clearing the kitchen of the previous night's roaches, I would notice them on the walls of the bottom floor. The roaches were pretty much isolated to the bottom floor of the townhouse apartment. We spent almost all of our time upstairs to avoid them, and since the kitchen is on the bottom floor and also the central roach hub we did not keep food in the apartment. What little food we would keep there we kept in the refrigerator. Since we could not and did not feel safe keeping food in the apartment, we had to go out to get food each day. It was too filthy to cook anything in the apartment. There was always a strong stench that never went away, even with literal days of scrubbing the grime away. I know the matte walls were filthy as well since I could see visible staining on them. How do you scrub a matte wall? I guess the answer is you don't and the filth just stays. Side note, we actually asked for some help with the walls because they had some type of oil on them. These guys actually splashed a bit of glossy paint on the target spot with the stain. So, now the wall is 90% matte and 10% glossy. Ah, another example of the landlord special.

We had also purchased a new couch but delayed its delivery due to the infestation. We knew we would be moving out because of all of the housing violations, so it was just a matter of time. We did this to prevent roaches from moving into our couch. We would bring our food back home and enjoy it in two camping chairs for 4 weeks. 

I would then begin my day in one of the upstairs bedrooms. I am a work-from-home software engineer, so I would be upstairs the entire day to avoid any stray roaches. I always had this fear in the back of my mind that these roaches will sneak into my custom hand-built PC, but luckily, I took a peek inside before bringing it into our clean new apartment when we did move.  

I found it quite challenging to get any real work done here. Programming is very mentally taxing and being able to concentrate in this disgusting environment was very hard to do.

Throughout the day like I usually do, I would take short breaks to hang out with our cats and my wife. This was a pretty hard thing to do at this moment in time because there was clearly an animal that previously lived with the old residents. I know this because we would catch fleas in our bed and see them on the carpet. We have never had fleas in the entire 5 years we have had our cats in any of the previous homes we have lived in. Not a single time. Well, it turns out the cat with a compromised immune system had a form of dermatitis and is severely reactive to flea bites. Now, this poor guy is ripping his fur out because of this Hellhole we have moved into and were forced to live in.

Poor kitty with flea bites

Awesome, right? Now, this little guy is still traumatized from a recent full mouth extraction due to his illness that caused his compromised immune system, but he is also being tortured by these fleas. We had to deal with that, incurring even more cost from his treatment (but I should say he quickly recovered once we moved out and is very happy and affectionate now).

Usually, by the end of my workday, it was time to settle in for some more fast food since we could not cook and did not want to keep paying for meals out. If we did not want frozen food, that is. After each meal, we would take the trash straight to the compacter, which coincidentally was maybe 50 feet from our apartment. This compacter served the entire community. Residents often would leave entire bags of trash or straight-up food on the ground outside. I had seen roaches walking around the dirt there as well as coyotes at night digging through bags. I also want to note this is where we spent our Thanksgiving holiday as well 😀.

A nice slice of pizza outside the compacter

At nighttime, all Hell breaks lose. The roaches come out to play. We would begin our nights by showering in the filthy moldy shower. The tile wall was a poor choice since mold seemed to stick nicely to it. We of course scrubbed it, but it's just not possible to remove all the filth and old DNA from the previous tenants. We never felt clean even after a shower. We would spend our nights upstairs just like our days. Upon visiting the downstairs at night you would always catch a couple cockroaches on the walls in or outside the kitchen. There would always be at least one scurrying about the floor. When you approach they always try to hide. It always felt great to catch a pregnant one, the ones with egg sacs. We also laid down some sticky traps to help. I know these are used to identify the problem, but it was just nice to have some help from them to catch the one we would miss. Below is a video of one with an egg sac, which if not stopped, can hatch 16+ babies.

It was almost impossible to not have to kill them when we would visit the kitchen or downstairs at night. Pray to God you did not leave any trace of food out either. One time I killed one and was too lazy and left its corpse on the ground. I suppose I was just fed up and would return later. I returned the following hour and it was gone. Was it consumed by a fellow comrade? Did it survive the squishing? We will never know. This would repeat the following day. It was quite a strain to sleep and hurt our marriage. It was also hard to work in this environment as well. Our lives were deeply impacted by our month-long stay at Forest Hills. I am just glad we made it out. I could tell I was getting physically sick being exposed to all the bacteria and filth. I do not think our long-term health was impacted, but our short-term health definitely was.

That is pretty much how every single day for us went while we were there until we got to leave. Every day was an emotional and physical struggle that made us feel mentally and physically ill. I had two panic attacks trying to cope with our situation as well. We never got any of our money back other than the deposits, totaling a few hundred dollars. This place is likely rented out to the next person because of the national housing crisis. Landlords and property management companies do not need to care for their structures or their tenants because someone else will always be struggling to find a place to live and will be accepting of these illegal and poor living conditions. This complex will always be a ~60-year-old piece of garbage that needs proper inspections and then prompt condemnations. If an inspector looked behind the walls I think they would run for the hills from the level of pure disgust. 

Believe it or not, my wife I and have PTSD from this experience. Each time I see a spot of anything on the wall I immediately take it for a roach. Anytime we see anything even resembling a roach, we think it's a roach... and this is after weeks of being free of Forest Hills. We have reached out to Monarch Investments (those that own Forest Hills) and they have completely no intention of making any of this situation right. In fact, their CEO so boldly proclaims how profitable the housing crisis is for them.

Of course, this story is to be continued.