“The Apartment Is Inside of a Pool”: Woman Looks for New Home, Finds One in Repurposed YMCA Pool

A woman named Lyd (@vidswlyds) uploaded a viral TikTok discussing her apartment search in Cincinnati, when she happened upon a renovated YMCA pool room that was turned into an apartment that's available for rent.

And whoever renovated it didn't do much to change the fact that the area used to, indeed, house a pool.

She highlighted this strange find that a lot of TikTokers seemed to either really love, or really hate, in a viral TikTok that's accrued over 1.9 million views on the popular social media platform.

"So I'm looking for a new apartment and I come across this. First it looks normal and then it looks a little bit weird," she says as she pans across the 3D home touring option on the web page displaying the apartment she's talking about in her video.

Initially, the apartment looks like a normal living situation you'd find on any home listing site. However, when Lyd begins searching further, it's evident that the space is actually an old swimming pool that's been drained. "...And then you read 'Shallow' right here," she says, showing the side of what looks like a pool wall.

"This apartment is inside of a pool," she states. This used to be an old YMCA and they literally renovated it and you could live in a pool," she states, showing off all of the different fixtures that have been applied to the area to turn the pool house into a pool home.

There's railings that you'd see in an apartment. There's a loft area. There's a kitchen — it's actually a pretty big area and a unique layout that's been fully renovated — it's not hard to imagine that there would be some people who'd want to live in this type of situation (I know I would).

Lyd touches upon the potentially divisive nature of this apartment-scouring discovery she made when attempting to nail down her next home.

"I can't decide if that's the coolest thing ever or if it's really weird. But I personally think like you have people over and they're like you live in a pool?" she said.

(From this writer's perspective, playing devil's advocate in favor of renting the poolpartment here — if the first negative you can think of when you start talking about a place is what other people are going to think then it sounds like you sincerely like the place. Not much of a negative if you ask me.)

"Why is that kind of cool? This is the entrance area there's like the guest bath over there and then you go up these stairs and this is the loft area and then you have your master bath, it's actually really nice," she says as she goes deeper and deeper into the pool apartment area.

She goes on to list the pros of the area: "There's a lot of space, there's a lot of closets, like, plenty of storage. It's a big apartment. But it's in a pool. Like what?" she asks again as she continues to explore the repurposed YMCA pool.

Honestly, from a construction perspective, there are other pros to think of — we're talking about what is more than likely an old-school YMCA building that's probably been built to double as a bomb shelter, so you know it's rock-solid.

And then there's the fact that most pools are built out of reinforced concrete, which means that you're not going to have to worry about any creaks while you're walking on the floor, or hearing many sounds from neighbors.

Heck, that entire pool area could be used as a skateboarding area if you wanted, a full-on gym and weight lifting room, or just a massively expansive living/dining room area. The ceilings are tall enough you could put a basketball hoop up and probably lay some hardwood boards down and turn the whole thing into a court.

Honestly, the possibilities are endless with this kind of space, and there was at least one TikToker who responded to her video who thought so too, like this person who penned: "Sunken living room and extra chilling space around the pool. Could be a dope setup."

Another replied: "Ngl I’m very tempted, I would have to tour it to see how it feels, I think the acoustics would be terrible."

While someone else said: "That’s actually dope as hell."

However, there were others who found the entire idea to be very, very creepy. One TikTok user wrote: "This has really sinister vibes, I can’t put my finger on it."

Another wrote: "Pretty cool, but there’s no way it doesn’t smell like a pool."

Someone else said: "I think it would be cooler if they did a better job on the renovation."

Lyd added that there were other apartment units inside of the YMCA that were clearly repurposed, like this one-bedroom apartment that was clearly built on a basketball court:

It turns out the building she's referring to are located in The Williams in Cincinnati, Ohio, which proudly shows off the fact that the location is the site of a historic community YMCA.

It's still got the old-school hallway and cages over the scoreboards. According to the website, all of the units are one-bedroom spots.