The title character is a pugnacious biracial boy who lives in a decrepit apartment with his loving, impotent mother, who seems to be wasting away.

A sprawling, decrepit three-bedroom apartment, it is preserved much as she left it at her death.

José Luis Torrente is a lazy, rude, drunkard, sexist, racist, extreme-right-wing Madrid cop who lives in a decrepit apartment in a slum neighbourhood with his wheelchair bound father, whose disability checks are Torrente's only real income.

The photos show most of the boys bare-chested, standing before a wooden window of the decrepit apartment.

They rent a decrepit apartment and get married to the cheers of their friends.

While hundreds of thousands of tenants in New York City live in decrepit apartments in aging buildings, city buildings officials and housing experts maintain that most remain basically sound and are not in danger of collapsing.

And she'd pointed to her stereo and CD collection in the decrepit apartment in the Deutsche Haus by way of proving that no New World psycho was driving her permanently out of town.

For some, the difficulty begins with the first step from bed, as 12-year-olds pick their way through decrepit apartments, hallways littered with crack vials and buildings riddled with bullet holes.

With so many of its most troubled citizens in desperate need of shelter, city officials say there is little choice but to retain those decrepit and sometimes dangerous apartments and to try to make them liveable.

With pitched roofs, stucco walls and a garage, the two-family houses are an intentional contrast to the decrepit Soviet apartment blocks built 10 years ago when the collective farm was founded.