Holy moly, that sounds like a very unpleasant basement to have to deal with.
“Whelp, time to do laundry. The fun part is when the creepy mutant spider cricket launches itself at my face, yay!”
Clearly I was very lucky. I highly doubt the tenants ever used the place either. It just belonged to the crickets.
Fortunately, the laundry was in the kitchen, so we just used it for storage for things we didn’t use much, like Christmas decorations.
They are one of few bugs that freak me out. Too many times did I have them jumping from all directions…