Programmer morale is another factor in good/bad technical debt. It can be quite enjoyable to take something like three separate implementations of a similar function, combine them, and delete a bunch of duplicate code.

On the other hand, it is nightmarish to toil through some tightly coupled mess and try to rewrite it in a manner that is more maintainable.

One makes you feel happy and in control, the other makes you feel like everything is falling apart.