History Main / HorribleHousing

** The Nosferatu haven. A gift from Primogen Gary Golden to Nosferatu players, it's hidden in the sewers of downtown Los Angeles, and most of it consists of bare concrete except for the bits covered by collected decorations. As dank as it is, this is actually an ''improvement'' over the first haven, given that it's much more spacious and better protected.

* ''Film/TheBluesBrothers'': Elwood lives in a ramshackle Chicago flophouse right next to the subway line. The train, in his own words, goes by "so often you won't even notice it."

[[folder:Anime and Manga]]

* ''Film/SpiderMan2'' and ''Film/SpiderMan3'': Peter's apartment is one of these. It's small, ugly and the door sticks. Presumably this is because he went with the cheapest option, being stuck in PerpetualPoverty (not that it stops [[CrankyLandlord Mr. Ditkovich]] from taking what little money he can get).

* ''VideoGame/CityBuildingSeries'': All early housing is like this; cramped, ugly (to the point of preventing nearby housing from evolving), unsanitary (as residents scavenge for food and water) and crime-ridden (especially if there's no police presence). It's in the player's best interest to make sure as much housing as possible has access to amenities (food, water, health, religion, and entertainment), since this gives more workers the same amount of space, reduces crime, and pays more in taxes.
** In ''{{VideoGame/Pharaoh}}'', some housing will be horrible by necessity if you want to keep industries staffed (buildings are staffed when a recruiter walks by a house). It's easier to maintain one large block of high-end housing to provide the workforce and huts to provide access to labor than to provide services to people living in the IndustrialGhetto (unrest is determined by the percentage of people living in squalor compared to those in estates and residences, as huts only hold five people this ensures the poverty-stricken population remains low).

* In ''VideoGame/ThePark,'' Lorraine's house is a dingy, filthy, dilapidated-looking wreck with only three rooms and a decidedly uninviting decor. Lorraine can barely afford to keep the lights on at the best of times, and recalls spending a lot of time reading to Callum whenever the power got shut off; for good measure, it's not uncommon for the kitchen to be littered with [[DrowningMySorrows empty liquor bottles]]. [[spoiler: It's also Lorraine's BlackBugRoom: [[ThingsThatGoBumpInTheNight the Bogeyman]] traps her here as part of her ongoing MindRape, decorating the place with blood, mocking letters, burning dolls, and hanged corpses.]] Of course, [[VideoGame/TheSecretWorld following the events of the game]], Lorraine's housing situation becomes even more depressing: [[spoiler: she most commonly sleeps in war zones, [[GhostCity ghost cities]] and ruins; the one time she's seen renting a nice hotel room, [[DrivenToSuicide it's to commit suicide]].]]

[[folder:Visual Novels]]
* Kathy from ''VisualNovel/DaughterForDessert'' describes her studio apartment as “crappy,” but it’s mostly an informed attribute since we don’t really get to see its condition. All we really know about it is that it’s small.

[[folder:Webcomics]]
* ''Webcomic/AwfulHospital'': Lady [[FallenPrincess Celia]], ''Bandit Princess!'', tries to [[https://bogleech.com/awfulhospital/264.html pretend]] that her ramshackle shack in the woods is "some wretched vagrant's filthy hovel". Fern isn't fooled but lets the lie pass.
* ''Webcomic/ShotAndChaser'': Olly's housing isn't ideal, showing wear and tear, outright damage and the small bare-bones place is also a mess because Olly is struggling with depression and the recent loss of the use of one arm.
[[/folder]]

* ''WesternAnimation/GravityFalls'': In "Gideon Rises", Soos is revealed to live with his grandmother in a small and broken down house in the middle of town. The kitchen cabinets are damaged, the wallpaper is torn up in places and his grandma can barely afford to support them, hence why Soos works at the Shack.
* ''WesternAnimation/{{Downtown}}'': Alex's first apartment on his own is a real shithole, and they even talk about how he had to jump at the opportunity to get it without checking it out first because of how difficult it is to find affordable housing in New York. Jen's apartment isnt much better, and she still has to have a roommate. The less said about Goats apartment, the better.

* ''[[Creator/ChoiceOfGames Choice of the Deathless]]'': The cheapest housing option for the player character is a rickety shoebox of an apartment above a bar in the very worst part of town. Which leads to a SugarWiki/{{Funny Moment|s}} when [[TheBeautifulElite Wakefield]] first shows up for a visit.

* ''Fanfic/InTheBleakMidwinter'': Tom offers Ignis the use of the Gaunts' shack, which the Riddle family has inherited. Ignis is overwhelmed by the generosity of letting him have the former home of such an ancient and pure family -- until they go together to inspect it. Upon seeing the dirt, rot, fungus, discarded bones, structural weakness, and general squalor of the place, Tom apologises to Ignis for ever offering it, and brings it down with a well-placed shove to a supporting beam, stating his intention to raze it and build a replacement.

This trope is the antithesis to BigFancyHouse, which is a house that is spacious, clean, well-furnished, and usually inhabited by the rich; works may utilize both [[SlobsVsSnobs to contrast its inhabitants]]. Also contrast PotteryBarnPoor, where a [[InformedPoverty supposedly poor]] family has a nice dwelling by normal standards, and FriendsRentControl, for when an apartment is much nicer than its inhabitants should be able to afford.

* The Mankanshoku family of ''Anime/KillLaKill'', as well as their houseguest protagonist Ryuko, live in a squalid, one-bedroom apartment in a section of town that would have to undergo massive renovation to be considered rundown because their eldest daughter Mako is a "No-Star" student at Honnouji Academy. They're shown to be very happy there and, in an episode where they experience upward mobility due to Mako climbing the ranks of the school's hierarchy, they become much more distant and snobbish as their housing situation improves.
* ''Anime/NeonGenesisEvangelion'': Rei Ayanami's [[CloningBlues dark origins]] and [[ConditionedToAcceptHorror cold attitude]] are highlighted by the squalid one-room apartment she lives in.
* In ''Manga/{{Uzumaki}}'', Kirie and her family have their home destroyed by a storm, and are forced to move into one of the cheapest houses in the town; one of the ancient terraced houses that have no furniture or room separation, where two other poor families were shown living earlier in the story. [[spoiler:When the spirals start to destroy the town, ''everyone'' is forced to move into these terraced houses, as they're the only ones that haven't fallen apart. Kirie and her family are kicked out of what used to be their house by the people who sought shelter there.]] By that point, things were so dire that [[TooDesperateToBePicky nobody cared how crappy the houses actually were.]]

* In Barbara Wersba's ''The Dream Watcher'' Mrs. Woodfin lives in a dilapidated house with broken-down furniture and a fireplace full of milk cartons. The ceiling is caving in and the floorboards are rotten.

* The Mankanshoku family of ''Anime/KillLaKill'', as well as their houseguest protagonist Ryuko, live in a squalid, one-bedroom apartment in a section of town that would have to undergo massive renovation to be considered rundown because their eldest daughter Mako is a "No-Star" student at Honnouji Academy. Played with in that they're shown to be very happy there and, in an episode where they experience upward mobility due to Mako climbing the ranks of the school's hierarchy, they become much more distant and snobbish as their housing situation improves.

* ''Series/SaturdayNightLive'': Motivational speaker Matt Foley lives in a van down by the river.

Horrible Housing refers to a living space that is basically a hovel: cramped, messy, possibly pest-infested, and usually in the bad part of town. It may be poorly-maintained government housing or owned by a CrankyLandlord that refuses to spend on maintenance and repairs. This indicates that the inhabitants are poor and cannot afford to move somewhere better, or are suffering through a bad turn of events. The characters likely will complain about their living conditions and hope for greener pastures, especially if there are wealthier characters in the work or if they used to live somewhere nicer themselves. However, sometimes characters will [[SlummingIt choose to live]] in bad conditions for various reasons, such as the "charm" and the surrounding community, or they may be TooDesperateToBePicky about shelter. TrashyTrailerHome is a subtrope, which treats the wheeled sort as the worst place imaginable to live.

* ''Manga/ShonanJunaiGumi'': After Eikichi turns her apartment into TrashOfTheTitans and then drops the son of the tenants' association out the window on a bungee cord, his mom kicks him and Ryuji out, getting them a bug-infested apartment in a seedy part of town. There's no lock, there's a disgusting shared toilet, the floor is rotting through, and the walls have mushrooms growing in them.

* ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'': The homes of the Outer Party members and the Proles are all filthy, dilapidated, and in a very poor state of repair. In particular, the Victory Mansion apartment block where Winston lives is in a constant state of breakdown: the lifts are always out of order, repairs around the apartments are strictly DIY, and the only thing that works are [[BigBrotherIsWatchingYou the omnipresent telescreens used to spy on the residents]]. Not that the Inner Party residences are much of an improvement...

* ''Fanfic/TatteredCapesUnderAShatteredMoon'': Since Collin and Dragon don't have any money besides what they got from selling their diamonds, they have to stay in a small, musty apartment right next to a train line.