Housing Woes - Joys

I spent the beginning of this week looking for a new home as my friend Shannon and I were planning on moving in together at the end of November. Then, night before last, Shannon called me and said she was going to continue living with her ex(?) boyfriend Keith. I'm not sure if she is considering him still in the boyfriend light or just in the roommate light but either way I'm glad this came up now and not after we had already moved. Fortunately, my landlord had not received my move out notice yet and so I was able to rescind it.
This, however, brings me to an interesting conundrum. I have wanted to move out of my apartment for several months for the following reasons:
The foundation settled over the summer and there are now cracks in the walls and around the floorboards.
The air conditioner is not a very efficient model and so it stays very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter.
The dishwasher is an older model and it is somehow broken because it gets clogged up with food particles and these food particles get moldy and smelly.
There are now roaches living in my apartment. The dirty, nasty European kind. They hang out mostly in the dishwasher.
And perhaps the strongest reason to move...I live in the Ghetto and sometimes I worry about my safety.

The reasons I have not been able to move before and why I won't be able to move now boil down to one simple thing:
I can't afford anything else.
Sure, I could get a dinky little efficiency in a nice neighborhood somewhere, but then I'd be unhappy to be in such a cramped space. I could move into a huge apartment complex in the Arboretum area, but then I'd be annoyed by my hundreds of neighbors, the commute, and the boring floorplan.
So, I've decided to stay put and instead invest a little time, effort, and money into making my current home better. I think its the healthiest solution available at this time.
Not sure what all I'm going to do yet, but I'm sure it will be fabulous.