Inside the dark underbelly of US rentals with tenants in one city forced to wade through sewage and mold in 'every home'

A POPULAR YouTuber has dedicated his platform to unveiling some of the most appalling low-income rental properties in his home state.

Sydney Willburn, 50, started making YouTube videos about life in the Phoenix, Arizona, area roughly five years ago.

The focus for his channel Big Super Living In Arizona eventually shifted to home tours, and then low-income rentals specifically.

"There are more people interested in affordable living than people that are interested in luxury living," Willburn told The U.S. Sun.

But across the region, many of these affordable apartment complexes are in a state of disrepair.

Residents regularly show Willburn everything from broken security gates to bug infestations and chronic leaks.

One of the most memorable units the YouTuber toured was an apartment that allegedly filled up with raw sewage on a regular basis.

The unit in Glendale, immediately west of Phoenix, was occupied by an elderly lady named Deborah, who paid 30 percent of her fixed income in rent each month.

"She’s probably got a good 4-inch water line of raw sewage," Willburn said.

"It comes up from the tub and up from the toilet and it’ll flow out," Deborah told the YouTuber in his video uploaded in February.

"Then it’s everywhere in my house."

She claims this had happened roughly 15 times in the three years she'd been living there.

The landlord would send a vacuum to remove the excrement and other unprocessed sewage, but Deborah claimed he didn't provide any aid when it came to sanitizing the apartment or her belongings.

She's been encouraged to move, but doesn't want to leave her neighbors behind.

"The reason I stay here is there’s quite a few people I really like," Deborah said.

Her case may be particularly bad, but Willburn said there's another health hazard that's nearly universal in rentals across the region.

"Mold is the norm," he said, despite of the arid climate.

"If I walk into any (older) home there’s going to be mold."

That was one of several problems a Section 8 tenant named Junie may have been dealing with after the roof above her bedroom reportedly caved in during a rainstorm.

She said maintenance workers also ripped out large sections of the bedroom's walls, then left Junie without much more recourse than a few thin sheets of protective plastic.

By the time Willburn visited her for the video uploaded last September, Junie claimed she had been living with the damages for 41 days.

In that time, a host of different bugs had invaded the apartment.

"This is pretty miserable for me to live in," she said.

"This is making my mental health issues much worse."

Junie had to move nearly all her furniture and belongings into the unit's living room so they wouldn't get wet.

But she still had to walk through the bedroom to use her bathroom in the sweltering desert heat, even though there was no longer air conditioning in that part of the apartment.

Junie claimed the building's management stopped working with her after she reported the situation to municipal housing officials, who she said also weren't helpful.

"I’m being told to calm down and be patient," she said.

Willburn said this is a common issue in Arizona.

"The landlord is always right," when it comes to the courts, he said.

"If they say anything about you, that’s something that could stick on your record forever.

"It could make it extremely difficult for them to get their next place."

Willburn started making videos about low-income rentals during the pandemic when rents in Phoenix began rising dramatically.

"Out here rents have doubled," he said.

This was due in part to an influx of migrants from more expensive metro areas who were looking for a bargain on housing costs.

"For us, it’s a bad thing," Willburn said.

"It was never that (expensive) out here in the desert."

But the YouTuber, who moved to Arizona from Wisconsin in 1999 and raised his two kids there, said metro Phoenix is still relatively affordable.

"Even though our rents have doubled out here, it’s still less than the rest of that nation," he said.

There are certainly cheaper places to live than Phoenix, like the Deep South or the rural Midwest, Willburn said, but most of them lack urban amenities provided by a major metro area.