38M, moving from Nebraska to Vancouver after a truly absurd and horrible few years. Looking for neighborhood/property management advice + some unpacking help
I’m 38, soon to be 39, and I’ve had enough of Nebraska.
Without writing an entire autobiography, I’ve had some spectacularly bad luck with housing and life in general. Fifteen years ago, someone burned down my apartment building. In 2024, I was the victim of a bad car accident after someone went through a stop sign, leaving me with a pretty serious spine injury. My back was herniated badly enough that a disc was compressing the roots of my sciatic nerve. At its worst I couldn’t walk, and I’ve now had two surgeries.
I had the first surgery in May 2025. Two weeks later, at about 1 AM, my apartment ceiling collapsed on me and flooded the place. I reherniated my back afterward.
Almost exactly a year later, while still dealing with all of that, I found a bed bug in my apartment. Then I found dozens/hundreds. It turned out there was a major infestation that was eventually traced to a hoarder below me. I had my second back surgery shortly afterward, and my property manager decided not to renew my lease after I’d made “too many” maintenance requests.
So…yeah. I’m ready to go somewhere else.
A month or two ago, the lawsuit from the car accident finally settled. The at-fault driver was underinsured, but after everything was said and done I netted a little over six figures. Not fuck you money, but enough to start a new chapter in my life. I’ve lived in Nebraska my entire life and have always hated it. Right now it’s 91° and the humidity makes being outside miserable in the 110s. Then we get approximately 10 days of autumn before it’s -14° windchill, and we barely even get good snow anymore. There’s also not much for me to do here because seemingly everything either closes at 11 PM or revolves around bars.
I’ve spent the last 6–9 months researching where I want to go when all of this is finally over, and after considering a ton of places, I keep coming back to Vancouver.
I’m currently packing everything that survived all of this while recovering at my parents’ place, and I’m reaching the point where I need to start seriously contacting rentals. After getting very unlucky with property management twice in a row, though, I’d really appreciate some local knowledge.
Which property management companies/large landlords in Vancouver would you absolutely avoid? Conversely, are there any you’d actually recommend? And what areas of Vancouver do you think would fit me?
A little about me:
I’m a single 38 year old guy, 39 soon. I’m currently unemployed — my last job let me go after I needed too much time away for medical appointments — but I have about 15 years of professional IT/tech experience, so I’m not terrified about finding another job. I have pretty bad anxiety/panic attacks, ADHD, and I’m on the spectrum. I have an ESA, my 12.5-year-old black Lab/Golden Retriever, Indiana, whom I’ve had since he was six weeks old. I love this dog more than I can adequately explain. If I start having a panic attack, he’ll literally come sit on me until I calm down.
And, apparently, I now have a cat.
About three weeks ago Indiana and I were walking around a lake when I heard a kitten crying near a 60 mph highway. Long story short, he’d apparently been abandoned, and when I found him he jumped into a 20–30 foot-wide drainage ditch and swam across it to get to me. So I guess that’s how you acquire a cat. He’s about 8–9 weeks old now and is ridiculously sweet.
Personality wise, I’m a huge Indiana Jones, Star Wars, movie/film-in-general nerd and love all things ASOIAF. I used to game quite a bit before my back injury made sitting and playing difficult, and I’m hoping to get back into it. I love nature and walking, although I’m not looking to climb Mount Everest every weekend. Indiana and I normally walk a mile or two a day, and having nice places nearby where we can do that would be a huge plus.
I’m not looking for a huge nightlife scene, but I’d like to live somewhere where things actually exist and I don’t feel like the entire city shuts down at night. Being reasonably close to Portland seems like a major benefit for that.
One other question: is this subreddit (or somewhere else locally) a decent place to find someone for paid help getting settled after I arrive?
I’m not looking for movers. I’ll have movers for the actual furniture/heavy stuff. What I’ll need is basically another set of hands for unpacking and getting the apartment functional — unpacking and shelving a very large movie collection, putting away dishes, assembling/organizing some things, helping me put a TV on its stand or possibly mount it, etc.
It’s the repetitive bending, twisting, reaching and lifting that my back really doesn’t tolerate after surgery. None of this is particularly difficult work; doing it all myself would just take me six months.
I’d absolutely pay someone fairly for their time. Honest pay for honest work.
Sorry this got long, but I’d really appreciate any advice from people who actually live there — particularly about neighborhoods, property management companies/landlords, and where to find reliable paid help once I arrive.