You just don’t get it , “basic “? Install a bathroom while the $250/ tenant is still living there. This apartment was probably in 1940 shit condition because it’s from 1940!!! if not 1920 !!!! The wiring was 60+ years old , no closets , the kitchen cabinets are wood falling apart. The apartment is completely painted with lead paint.
Lucky the whole house wasn’t burnt down in the 1960s and 1970s. Or worse , the city could of foreclosed on it and they would of been running it until it caved in the 1980s and then demolished it and sold to a politically connected developer.