eight70 — Local services in Los Angeles

Please listen to this honest review from a tenant that was practically tortured for 11 straight months. I assure you that it is one of the most horrifying living situations you have ever heard.

I moved into 870 Hilgard in late September. In Mid October/Beginning of November the construction started. I am a student at UCLA so I'm used to the loud noise, although this side of campus is known for being quiet (which is why I was so excited to live there). I was paying $2000 for a 400sqft studio which had no kitchen. The apartment was very small, but I had decided that I could make it work because I had a balcony where I had set up a table and umbrella to have all of my meals. This was THE SELLING POINT of the apartment for me. About a month later I went home for winter break and when I had come back there was a notice on my door that said: "We are removing your balcony in the next 2 weeks, remove all items from your balcony we are not responsible for any of the damages to your property". The management here was so incompetent, they overlooked the fact that students on break missed the memos that they left on the door. My first day back from Winter break I enter my apartment to find dust EVERYWHERE. All over my rugs, all over my couch, my computer, my desk, my kitchen. Okay... I was kinda mad but I know that they had to do construction (even though they NEVER INFORMED ME WHEN I MOVED IN). I checked out my balcony door (the only window/source of fresh air in my apartment) and the balcony was just gone. My table and chairs and umbrella, all gone. I went the next day and asked the manager where my stuff went, he told me to check the courtyard. I went and looked my wick chairs, ripped apart. My glass-top table, shattered. My umbrella was the only thing in-tact (covered in paint and dust though). I told the manager my situation and he told me there was nothing he could do and that they weren't responsible for damaging my things. I told him that I wasn't home for a month because of the break and they removed my balcony before I got back, he apologized but told me there was nothing he could do.

Fast forward 2 weeks into this nightmare, I have been woken up at 7am by a jackhammer about 2 feet from my pillow removing the wall that is touching my bed. I was studying with my earplugs in inside my room when 4 large construction worked barge in and tell me they have to replace my balcony door. No notice on my door this time? They proceed to remove my glass balcony door while I'm in the apartment and I was forced to leave just because I was dying from all the dust in the air. I got back and I had a brand new door! Unfortunately THEY FORGOT TO PUT A SCREEN DOOR ON. So now I have 1 big sliding window without a screen door, it's okay at least there are no bugs or anything to fly into my apartment.

Lets fast forward another month. They've removed some of the exterior walls of the building and the walls are filled with holes. I'm studying in my room one lovely quiet Saturday (no construction on Saturday thank God), and I noticed a buzzing by the light in my room. The construction workers didn't notice that 3 beehives formed in the holes that they made outside my balcony door, no screen door to keep them out, no other windows in my apartment. I had to catch about 5 bees EVERYDAY to get some fresh air in my room.

My last horrifying story comes when I was taking a nap in my room one day and the construction workers had to replace my front door. They removed my door but left a piece of wood (the picture below) in it's place and left for lunch with me trapped inside and I had an interview in 30 minutes. I called the emergency management number and explained my situation and they said: "Are you sure". Yeah I'm sure. My horror story goes on but google has character limit on reviews.

I complained to management once a week and nothing changed. Moral of this story. Please don't live here. They don't care about you, they just want your money, and once you sign a lease this place will treat you like trash and leave...

I delayed posting this review until I moved out, so I could give a full account of my experience here. I lived here Sept 2017 to June 2018.

First impressions were good: great location; quiet common areas with gym, pool, and sauna; friendly landlady who was on top of the paperwork; and decent apartments (though lacking natural light). The laundry room and recycling areas were difficult to find at first. Current residents all had a good opinion of the place, so I signed on to a 2 bed, 1 bath with three others, thinking it’d be a quiet place with friendly neighbors and management, and decent amenities.

Oh, how wrong I was.

A month after moving in, a notice appeared about a “community beautification project” to be completed in six weeks. At the same time, the friendly landlady was suddenly replaced. In the next six weeks, scaffolding was built, the pool boarded up, and the gym made inaccessible by the construction. Annoyingly loud hammering and drilling woke us up every morning at 7 am, which was terrible for our college sleep cycles.

Six weeks rolled around and the construction had no end in sight. The lobby was torn up and the boarded-up pool had a bunch of trash dumped on top of it. It looked like a literal dump. We asked our landlord when the construction would finish. He said, with some handwaving, that it was more like January. So, maybe we’d still be able to enjoy half our time here.

In January, construction still wasn’t done. The mailboxes were moved outdoors and resulted in a multitude of lost or delayed packages. The elevator stopped working on multiple occasions. In March, a notice said that the construction would finish in August, when our lease ended. We were living here for the entire duration of the construction. Wow, thanks for the heads up. Over the next month, our front doors got replaced. They forgot about the doorjamb and sweep for our door, so we had three weeks of construction dust getting in, since they decided to tear up the floor outside at the same time. We were concerned about our health, since asbestos was found in the apartment next door.

In June, management got super sketchy, and I’d find no one there and the door locked during posted office hour times. I’d call them and get no response. Sometimes there were whole days of no manager present. Later I found out that they were transitioning between managers again. There were no notices about it until about a week after the fact. Managers themselves were polite, friendly people, but also looked frazzled and overworked.

Some neighbors told me about their construction-related problems. One said their toilet wasn’t working for 3 whole days, no one had come to fix it. Many had their balconies completely torn down and rebuilt. People were in and out of their apartments all the time, which made it impossible to study, not to mention the loss of privacy.

This was not a place I could ever call home. Instead, it was a burden living here, and I regret ever signing that lease. We moved out early because we didn’t want to live here any longer than we had to.

Will it get better after the construction ends? I sure hope so. I sincerely hope the management will learn from this and never be so discourteous to their residents ever again. Personally, I recommend looking elsewhere, because if they can completely disregard the residents once, who’s to say they won’t do it again?

Two stars for presence of bare essentials (shelter, hot running water, air conditioning)...

They started this major 10-month long total reconstruction project and it's made this place completely uninhabitable for the residents and the management doesn't care.

They gave us no notice in advance of this project. My first notice was to be woken up by construction workers at 7am hammering away at the edges of my window. Only later were paper notices posted on our doors. I moved in just 2 months before this; surely Moss knew this project was going to happen and if they had told me I would not have moved into a unit so impacted by this project. Even though it's part of the unit I'm paying a fortune for, my balcony/patio has been taken over by scaffolding, rendering it unusable, and the once beautiful view of the pool has been replaced by a noisy and dusty construction zone (see picture). My view from my bedroom window which used to be a pool is now just wooden boards. The noise from construction makes it impossible to sleep, work, or enjoy being in the apartment. I have to work late hours and usually sleep until 11am, so it's been awful getting woken up by hammering and hacksawing every morning at 7am! For the last week I've been sleep-deprived and forced to leave my unit as soon as I get up to work and recreate elsewhere. While construction goes on (from 7am to 7pm) the unit is completely uninhabitable.

The lease I signed had explicit amendments regarding the pool and fitness center which I was using but I now no longer have access to. These were important amenities I considered in making my decision to sign a lease and, again, if I had known that for half of the term of that lease these amenities would be out of service, I would not have signed it. It was fraudulent of them not to disclose their plans.

Update: After I complained, they moved me to a unit further away from the construction noise. They initially offered me an inferior unit (no balcony or view) but upon my insistence they offered me an even trade. To their credit, although they priced this unit higher, they honored my original price and their building manager was very friendly throughout the process. Unfortunately they did not help me move my things or compensate me for hiring movers; and it was nearly impossible to move furnishings around the construction scaffoldings and areas of the building they blocked off. It's unconscionable that they've done practically nothing to compensate their tenants for the 10 months of lost access to amenities and having to live in a noisy and filthy...