A Dilapidated and Filthy House
It pains me to write such a harsh review. I have sympathy for owners seeking supplementary income just to make ends meet in one of the most expensive housing markets in the world. The host, in my brief interactions with her, was reasonably polite and seemed genuinely interested in feedback on the usefulness of the details included in the Air BnB listing. It seemed like maybe she was a relatively new host.
This is a very large old three story house with many bedrooms; some of which are permanently occupied by renters (or owners?) and some of which are offered for Air BnB. The house has its charms but is overall very run down and has not been comprehensively renovated in many decades. A few attempts have been made at cheep cosmetic flourishes but the overall impression is a random pastiche of poorly executed, partial, surface level, shoddy fixes. But the worst part is the filth.
The furnishings, flooring, window coverings and linens in room 21, where I stayed, appear to be pretty new and are apparently clean but across the rest of the house’s three stories every surface has a layer of grime. In the bathroom the grouts and margins are grody, the carpets throughout are deeply worn and stained (despite the laughable “no shoes inside” policy), every painted surface in every room has the greasy discoloration of decades of human touch. The upper inside of the toilet bowl was brown. I believe, or at least I hope, that a perfunctory attempt was made to wash linens and wipe down some surfaces between visitors but the whole house from top to bottom is layered with a deep, aged, grime that cannot be dealt with by a simple Swiffer pass and some Fabreeze.
There are also safety concerns. The banister on the stairway at the top of the third floor is unsafely rickety. The toilet seats are not properly secured, threatening to buck you off when you lean forward to wipe. Many of the thresholds are mismatched and present a tripping hazard. The stairways in this very old house are extremely steep and narrow. The countertops in the shared kitchen, which I only passed through, were buried in piles of implements, cookware, and canned foods. The bedrooms have paper-thin lightweight doors and though they “lock” they do not feel really secure.
I have learned my lesson - price point matters and if you think you’re gonna score an overnight in Oakland for under $100, think again. You’ll end up in a roach motel.