Union Lofts — Local services in Los Angeles

The place started good, but it’s definitely sliding. The good news is, it’s a tiny bit cheaper than many of the other buildings and it’s in a decent area to walk around in. Now the downside …

1. you have a mandatory $50 per month amenities fee, for a building you have to go across the street to. And to get access to that building, you have to give them your drivers license to hold onto. The problem is, they cannot keep an employee to save their lives. so you will get complete random people holding onto your personal ID, people you’ve never seen before… And you just hope your information is safe.

B) if you live at Union, the glass door is broken at least once a month. so because of that they lock the first floor to the mailboxes and package room after 8 PM. You can still get down there, but it’s a little bit of a maze. They often repair the broken door and remove the shattered glass fairly quickly. They will do everything except for the most common sense thing, just put security down there like every other building in down.

3. as of late, the water gets shut off. Usually we get an email but sometimes we don’t. In fairness, most of the time you do. But when they turn the water back on, that’s when it becomes the brown water show. Your pipes are filled with every type of gunk and rust. Please, if you choose to move into this building, let your faucet run for at least 10 minutes each to get everything out of the system. I want to ask them to do a water test for the building, swiftly refused. It’s not safe.

4. maintenance is very kind. However, if you want something done, you need to email corporate and Canada and then out of fear they move fast. If you ask them for compensation, because the food in your fridge, that just died spoiled, they will move fast. If you have to ask them to wash your clothes at one of the other units which are vacant, then they will move faster. They are very corporate so you have to speak Karen.

5. this is my favorite one, they have literally addressed things no one complained about. We complain about security for the building, not addressed. We complain about clean water in the building, not addressed. we complain about people off the street stealing our Amazon packages… Somewhat addressed, they locked us out after a certain time at night… or you have to go through a maze.

But my favorite moment (drum roll) they put everyone on a spectrum Internet plan mid-lease and because they hid a tiny little line in your contract, they have the right to change theanytime. No one asked for it and they did it. Are likely making a profit off of a low corporate bill from spectrum. do you have Verizon home wireless and in a contract? Too bad, now you have two Internet bills. Are you somebody with a $25 a month student rate for spectrum cable? Too bad!

By contract now you have to pay $75 per month and they changed your plan for you!! Are you low income and get a little bit of a stipend from the government? Yes you, you are also screwed and you are forced to pay $75. but maybe you don’t want Spectrum at all, maybe you don’t want to use it… Tough luck for you! You’re getting $75 per month added to your utilities bill.

Bonus) deep in your contract, deep in there… They stated that you have to pay for an HVAC fee. That’s for the air-conditioning etc. of the property outside of your own apartment. So on your lowest month you are paying about $105 on top of your own utilities bills. During the summer months you’re paying about $200 additional on top of your own usage.

And very recently, we all got letters about a class action suit of how this management company search confidential information and did not follow the law. In fairness, the class action suit is an allegation and not proven.

let me say something positive, because this was such a downward slide… the gym is nice for $50 and the pool is great. Usually you can use most of the machines at the gym, currently there are four machines that have been out of orders since at least November and this was posted in late January. Call it Spirit...

edit: In response to Union Loft's reply to my review: I raised every one of these issues, repeatedly, with the management while I was a tenant. For the most part, my concerns were ignored or dismissed.

I was a tenant at Union Lots for almost eight years. When I ended my tenancy, management billed me, on top of my security deposit, for a $160 cleaning fee, even though I left the apartment as clean as it was when I moved in. The property manager told me they deduct a standard cleaning fee from every security deposit, which is not permitted according to the California Tenants Guide. In practical terms, the sum was small enough that I did not want to deal with the hassle of disputing the debt or going to small claims court to win my deposit back, so I paid them.

Their collections agent called from a random, unlisted number, and never left voicemails. By chance, I happened to pick up one of her calls; if I had not, I'm sure Onni would have tried to tack on even more fees and penalties.

Everyone else I knew at Union Lofts also had trouble with the management, and they were happy to move out. I wish I had joined them sooner. Positive reviews here should be taken with a grain of salt; in the past I have seen reviews posted by Onni employees who do not disclose their connection.

My thoughts on my tenancy:

Positives: Good KitchenAid appliances A solid maintenance team, who are able to fix numerous electrical and plumbing issues created by the builders The building common areas are generally kept clean Concierge desk often helpful at working around the management's bureaucracy

Negatives: Pretty regular disruption to hot and cold water, A/C, and elevators. Poor craftsmanship in the kitchen and bathroom cabinetry. Floors, floorboards, and countertops aren't level Hundreds of dollars per month in unpredictable fees for trash/water/HVAC/etc. Shady management. During my tenancy the management tried to institute an illegal building-wide rent increase in the form of a new "amenity fee" (see Emmanuel C review on Onni Group Vancouver), and recently began refusing rent payment by check or any means besides their fee-based web portal, which I believe is unlawful [CCC 1947.3(a)(1)]. Sloppy accounting. I was routinely mischarged various fees, whether fees waived in my lease or fees in excess of the amount allowed by my lease, and had to dispute them with management to get them reversed. Parking problems. I received two $45 parking fees due to problems in their parking garage system, which took months of nagging follow up emails on my part for them to reimburse. Privacy lacking. Twice, management failed to provide notice when sending maintenance workers to enter my apartment in order to work on exterior building fixtures. I encountered total strangers who had entered my apartment, on one occasion while leaving my shower, and another time returning from lunch. Unacceptable even once, and the second was after receiving false assurances from management it wouldn't happen again. Management had presumed I was out of town and thought that meant they didn't have to give me notice to enter. No rhyme or reason to when maintenance tickets are addressed. Maintenance generally does a good job of repairs, but tickets may go weeks...

My wife and I lived here for 5 weeks before we asked to break our lease.

During that time, we experienced the most unpleasant living situations either of us has ever been in.

Building management is difficult to get a hold of, the maintenance team is understaffed, the AC units and appliances are old and cheap and break frequently.

The unit was clean on move-in, privacy shades promised to us before move-in were never installed.

The biggest two problems were that the bedrooms were directly over the trash rooms and right next to the trash chute. The building was clearly not properly converted from when it was a bank, because the noise was extremely loud and frightening, particularly in the more interior of the two bedrooms. It was impossible to sleep through the night in this room, particularly on any of the three days per week that the trash was picked up between 3-5am.

This wasn’t disclosed to us. It also wasn’t disclosed to us that people had climbed into the back patio of the apartment (despite being on the 2nd floor) and the police had to be called. This issue was in security’s notes, but we weren’t informed of it until after we had a separate security issue of our own where some drugged out dude made it past security and was sitting outside our apartment when my wife arrived home alone one night around 11pm. (She made it inside safely thankfully).

The unit hadn’t even been cleaned properly before we moved in. The floor was visibly dirty and gritty to the touch, the cabinets were sticky and had oil and sauce spilled in them.

Move-in was very unprofessional. We were handed keys by security and got no info regarding parking (we ended up taking a week to get our key cards after at least 5 attempts with the valet company and having to pay for parking we were already paying for). We weren’t given a bill or login info for the resident portal until after 5 days of asking.

I believe the manager wants to do right by the building, but her communication skills and availability need to improve dramatically and she needs a larger team.

Many other residents in the building had long-standing maintenance issues they complained about when we talked to them. Some didn’t have AC during a weekend heatwave.

After 5 weeks of this, ending with the security issue, we asked the manager (who spoke to the regional manager I was told) to be let out of our lease and for some compensation for the experience. We were granted an end of lease without the early termination fee, but not so much as even a sorry in addition.

Avoid...