I'm not leaving this apartment

A ten‑year first‑person chronicle of living in a gritty, slowly emptying apartment building and a declaration of refusal to be displaced. The narrator tracks small, tactile details - waking in the same bed built by his father for the 3,600th time, rats on the fire escape, low ceilings, sirens and highway tremors, and crises like an e‑bike battery fire in 2018 and a landlord later arrested - while noting how rent climbed from a neighbor’s $375 youth to his current monthly $2,085.36. He recounts winters shoveling sidewalks with the super, a vacate order slapped on his door after inspectors found structural damage, funerals, and the loss of neighbors until six of ten units stand empty.

The piece builds to a clear, specific claim: after paying $225,501.37 in rent over a decade and watching 16 residents depart, he will not leave despite management’s demolition notice and a real‑estate listing promising delivery mostly vacant. The details - dates, dollar amounts, dwindling neighbor names, and scenes of police, neglect and community erosion - serve as evidence for a resistance rooted in history, attachment, and refusal to be made invisible by redevelopment.