Our Backyard Blight Makes Us Feel Like Pigs

When Taylor Equities bought our building at 2965 Waverly Dr in March of 2018, the very first thing they did, after posting 16 pages of house rules and promises of downgrades, was rebuild our iron gate. Why fuss with a gate, when Steven Taylor had apartments to get ready to rent?? And electric gates are notoriously difficult to fiddle with…

Why, to turn the gate into a solid wood wall, of course! To hide his demolition and pollution in here. To hide ALL THE CRAP he planned to do, from neighbors and nosy inspectors .

This is the only driveway or entrance into the property, and it was white steel bars. It provided safety and a great breeze and view of the shady street and our neighbors. It took three weeks for the surly Taylor workers to ruin both the aesthetics and the fresh air, and cut up teeny tiny pieces of wood, like a mosaic, to glue to the gate.

It was like an Amish fence-raising, only the neighbors all hated it and wouldn’t help.

We only realized this gate obsession later, when Taylor imported 20 and more construction vehicles, heavy duty trucks and beat-up cars into our tiny parking lot, all hidden now behind the wood gate. And he started to destroy every. single. inch of every apartment he could reach. All out of sight. So here’s what you missed!

Now, after almost 8 months of constant construction, ludicrous rent raises and no-reason evictions, there are only 13 tenant-occupied units out of the original 36 left. Jacob Woocher wrote a pretty detailed assessment of the situation in Knock-LA: The Waverly Tenants are fighting back against one of LA’s worst slumlords.

I would want to change one word in the title: 2965 Waverly Dr apartments were never a slum! That’s the irony: this building was as close to perfect as apartments get in LA, before Taylor Equities (formerly Ness properties) got his hands on it. (He’s the opposite of King Midas — everything he touches turns to lead.) HCID had done their detailed yearly inspection just a few months before he bought it. We were graded A+ condition.

Now, it’s the unhappy place you see in these photos.

abandoned tire in common space — Every article on blight should start with an old tire in your backyard.

pigpen on waverly — This is one of our pigpens. That is very precious plywood Taylor is protecting.

throwing dishwasher into the dumpster — This is classic waste in this building. Every single new or slightly used appliance has been torn out and goes into the landfill.

fiberglass alley — We don’t have many children here, but we have a play area – we call it Asbestos Alley.

dangerous apartment courtyard — Time for a game: how many dangerous objects can you find here in 30 seconds?

stove dragged out of apartment — We found this white sculpture – some call it a “stove” – sitting in front of one unit for weeks. One worker decided to be helpful and left “lunch” on it to show us that this hunk of metal might be used as a dinner table.

Blight, flight, and fight

Someone might say, Hey, demolition and construction is ugly, so deal with it! That would make sense, if Taylor was actually fixing or improving something. But none of this is repairs, and most of it has made beautiful living spaces into cramped, horrifying hell-holes. Some believe the entire 2nd row is unlivable.

In any case, he’s literally destroying many units down to the studs.

Here is a rather overwrought and political definition of blight, but it sets the stage. At night our building is almost completely deserted – dark windows, no cars, not a laugh to be heard. Instead of paying rent, we should be paid as night watchmen and women on a construction site.

The whole courtyard is filthy and dangerous – many of us are getting tire punctures, with nails and equipment standing out and in our way. Toxic paint cans, demolition that should be carted away in haulers goes into our own dumpsters, fiberglass everywhere, dirty food wrappers and bottles, and the asphalt is ripped and broken everywhere.

I didn’t have room to show the over 20 open holes punched in walls for cellar windows, the trash left uncollected for 2 weeks, breaking into our lockers, and of course there’s the water turned off, excruciating constant noise, and the growing outrageous abuse from undocumented workers – we called the LAPD about them, so gross.