We're having an on-going situation with a pair of Carolina wrens, who initially insisted on trying to build a nest in our newspaper tube. After pulling out their nesting material numerous times, we bought a wren house and placed it in dense Japanese maple next to the tube. Of course, they ignored it and next tried to build their nest in garage whenever I left the door open and were evicted numerous times. They continued to ignore the wren house.
In the meantime my wife moved a bunch of house plants onto a stand on the front porch. Included in the house plant collection was an ivy that had been trained around a wire trellis. When I poured water on it one day, out flew a wren, and when I looked, there was an egg in a nest in the center of the plant.
I surrendered and placed a saucer under the plant where I can water it from the bottom. BTW, there are now four little wrens in the nest that squeak loudly whenever the parents come with food. For a while we seldom saw the wrens except when we walked out the door and they flew. Now they ignore us and appear even when we're sitting in chairs right next to the nest.
Obviously wrens don't like public housing, they're choosy about where they live, or it's location, location, location...