A lot of the buildings around here have been condemned, many due to design flaws rather than maintenance issues. Lack of adequate fire escape seems to be a common trend. We have way more apartment buildings than people to fill them, so any given street in our "sea of apartments" will have 2-3 condemned buildings.
The two just down the road from me are actually being renovated now, and the monster 18-unit one I've had my eyes on (biggest residential building in my small town) has been purchased, I have no idea what they plan to do with it.
When I lived in this building, my entire apartment, except for one outlet, was on a single fuse. All of the original wiring was knob&tube, but someone had redone the interior and spliced NM to it in the ceilings to drop to the receptacles. In order to achieve section 8 approval, outlets needed to be grounded, or at least pass testing with one of those three-LED plug-in testers, which someone discovered they could achieve by tying ground to neutral...
... well, whoever did the drops in my kitchen got hot and neutral reversed, so my microwave oven was "grounded" to hot... Imagine my surprise when I slid it across the counter to clean under it and it contacted the kitchen sink...