I’ve had some pretty bad experiences living in mid size apartment buildings. Everything from a drugged out neighbor causing a fire, to bed bugs coming through the wall from a slob next door, to someone nearly stealing my car until I shouted at them from four floors up, to landlords who wouldn’t fix leaks for weeks/months after I left a voicemail on their high priority line, to dreadful indoor temperatures because the thermostat controls are overridden by time-of-year policies and heating/cooling is disabled.

All this in Boston, at nearly $2,000 per month for a single bedroom, in the mid 2010s.

Conceptually, I’m on board with apartment buildings. I would like to think that the future looks more like Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood than the one that I lived in. But the people who evangelize high rise buildings must be either paying for a ritzy place or never actually lived in one.