There's a few buildings in my neighborhood that caught my eye immediately after we moved to Izmir and that I continue to wonder about each time I pass them. It's not because the architecture is awesome or they're historic -- it's really for quite another reason actually. I'll let you see for yourself:
Nope, that is not a fluke of the camera or my bad photography skills. That building you see there, the one on the left, really does lean just like that! It's absolutely astounding to me that people actually live in that building.
It makes me wonder if they can get renters' or homeowners' insurance for their belongings. I'm willing to bet they can't. I wonder if, once a tenant vacates the property, it's hard to get someone else to move in? Who would want to live in a building like that?
Do they have to prop up the dining room table so that soup doesn't spill over into their lap when they sit down to eat? How do you bake a cake in a house like that? Do you have to keep rotating the cake in the oven so that one side isn't higher than another?
A friend told me once that he had a friend who lived there, and at parties, he would roll an apple all the way from one end of the house to the other with nary a push.
That's another leaning house, just steps away from the first one. I'm not sure what causes this to happen. Lack of a foundation, perhaps? What would make any contractor say, yes, let's just skip this whole cement base, shall we? We'll save a few lira that way.
What would it take to fix a house like that? How much money would you need to prop up a building that's leaning over?
