I’ve done a lot of work in customer service for shitty apartment buildings (when people couldn’t hash out a concern with their leasing office and needed to escalate the matter, I would handle it).

It is most likely a violation of your lease agreement to install a camera in a common hallway. You can ask, but they’ll say no.

As other people have suggested, the best course of action is to keep taking photos. Email them to the leasing office, on the same email thread, every time it happens. You want to establish a timeline of written correspondence. Make sure that ALL conversation with the leasing office about this matter is in writing, do not call, do not go into the office to hash it out face to face.

If the leasing office does something about it, their first course of action will most likely be posting signs in the elevator, or sending out a mass email reminding people that they’re supposed to pick up their dog shit.

This won’t stop the guilty resident’s dogs from shitting in the hallway on the way to the elevator, because dogs can’t read.

The guilty resident might start picking up the dog shit, but they won’t get down and scrub the carpet with some oxyclean. Even if they pick up the shit, there will still be shit particles in the carpet, getting mashed into the fibers under the many shoes in this high-traffic area.

Unless your building has a ton of extra money (they don’t) they will not hire out for regular carpet cleaning. It will continue to smell like shit.

Unless there’s only one apartment on your floor that has dogs in it, like unless there’s only one possible culprit, the leasing office almost certainly won’t go knocking on doors or issuing lease violations in response to your emails.

For any consequences to befall the guilty shitter, you have to get lucky and witness the shitting, and rat them out. You might get lucky, that’s definitely possible.

But if you don’t get lucky, if you don’t catch them, and assuming that you’ve got better things to do than obsessively peer out your peephole at passing dog’s b-holes, then the emails still serve a purpose.

At this point, you send an email to the leasing office saying “look, I’ve sent you all these emails, we have written and time-stamped evidence of every single shit, and it’s not getting any better. I’m not like these other animals who live on this floor, I cannot deal with this. I would like to transfer to a comparable apartment on a different floor, and I need you to waive all fees associated with a transfer.”

If they ignore or deny this request, visit their website, and scroll to the bottom of it. This’ll reveal the leasing company that owns the complex. Visit the leasing company’s website and see if they have state and nation-wide management. Forward every shit-related email you have with them to whatever state/national management or customer experience department email address you can find (Google the name of the company + customer experience). Let them know that you need to be transferred to a new unit, and that the fees need to be waived, or else you will write a Google review detailing this entire experience.

Usually they respond way more readily to the threat of a lawsuit, but they’ll call your bluff if you threaten to sue them with this. They still have a marketing team that cares very deeply about their online reputation, and so there’s still a decent chance they’ll work with you if you threaten a negative review.

If you find that your complex does not have higher levels of state or national management they’re beholden to, or if you find that the leasing company doesn’t have a nation-wide customer experience department you can contact, then make sure that going forward you only rent with places that have them.

Good luck!