I lived for almost a year in an illegal SRO in Brooklyn after getting dumped by my partner and kicked out (I was a raging alcoholic, cheating, definitely deserved it). I was in a first floor room sharing a kitchen (the only shared space) with three other people, one of whom was the guy in the middle bedroom of this former railroad apt, his room was windowless and in the middle, and he had three cats that lived in there and all over the kitchen. It was revolting how dirty everything was since he smoked bongs at the kitchen table and ashed everywhere, and overfed the cats with so much wet food they’d never even finish half. So what happened to the rest? He’d wash it down the drain with just water, no soap, no dissolving the wet food. If you know plumbing you know what comes next…
One day I was home alone in the late afternoon while everyone else was out at work, and I walked into the kitchen to see the sink filling rapidly from the drain with murky, sudsy grey water. Within ten seconds it was a literal geyser shooting out of the drain. That’s right, he created a fat plug in the building’s waste removal pipe to the sewer. Our third floor neighbors, a family with small kids, gave them a bubble bath before dinner and pulled the plug, and that day was the one that the plug finally jammed. Meaning that a three-story column of dirty bath water bounced off the plug and found the closest relief valve- my sink. Now, some of you might say “but that’s what a backflow preventer is for” and you’d be right, but we sure didn’t have any of those. Three inches of cat food and bubble bath water everywhere…I moved out two months later and kept my rent from the day that happened onward. Was easier because my landlord had a pill problem and his family took over the building management without warning so I just kept refusing to pay them my cash rent since I had made the rental agreement with him, and he just disappeared without a word so why would I owe them?