Meet Your New Neighbors!

Well, maybe not all “new” neighbors. Some of us have been involved in the community for…18 years and counting. We’re a pretty quiet bunch, on this 1.5 lane street, so you might not have noticed us much. Until March 8, when all the trucks and noisemakers came. And it’s been PAR-TAY ever since! (If you like paint and unfriendly semi-workers and beat-up trucks and tons of waste at your party.)

Taylor Equities bought 2965 Waverly Drive sometime in the fall of 2017, but they didn’t take control until March 8. We didn’t know the name of the buyers until they slapped 10 pages of rules on our doors. We knew they were dangerous; our manager, Katrina, walked around the property with them the day they marked the plot, like dogs do, and she heard them talk about “moving walls.” She was terrified. As proof, only a few days later she asked me to help her sell her entire collection of Barbie dolls. (When you’re in a sinking ship, you toss out all the babies..).

The papers left on our front door included info on how to pay rent, changes to our lease that we had never signed, House Rules  (more on them later), and finally, the name of the buyers, our new landlord: Stephen Taylor, owner of Taylor Equities.

A basic search on Google turned up Yelp reviews very quickly. Apparently Taylor’s business was so unpopular on Yelp in 2017 that he changed the name of his company from Ness Properties to Taylor Equities.

Or was it that pesky article on Curbed LA that poked him? When you go to the link, you can see, the article has been retracted/hidden/redacted! (Shades of the OJ trial.)

 

One of the bitter reviews on Yelp pointed out that Taylor Equities was #1 Worst Landlord in LA Curbed, so we found the original article in the Wayback Machine. Why not print the whole article here? Wouldn’t everyone like to see who the 10 Worst Landlords in Los Angeles are? Well, one reason is, we aren’t bitter, we’re just reporting. Facts are awesome.

Later, I found a thread on Reddit by the author of that article in CurbedLA, and he said that there were 4 or 5 threats from landlord attorneys. The writer didn’t even want to post the article on Reddit, bc he didn’t want to get sued or threatened. Free speech isn’t allowed with land owners.. He also said he spent a lot of money and time writing the report, almost as much as he got paid, as he had to pay to get back records from Housing and elsewhere for the facts.

So we won’t reprint the whole article here, since we aren’t into being sued, either, nor taking someone’s intellectual work. But we are interested in sharing, so we have a couple of juicy quotes that we may have found in the invisible article.

Here’s how some of those landlords operate:

The illegal evictor is the slumlord 2.0. These landlords use nefarious methods to get their rent-controlled tenants out so they can raise rents to market rate. These methods sometimes include classic slumlord tactics, e.g. refusing repairs and letting apartments rot, but it’s not for the purpose of saving a few bucks. It’s so the tenant will be so miserable that they’ll move out.

Then they started doing illegal repairs and construction without permits. They kept playing games like they were doing work on the garage, etc., little harassment-type things. They learned that that worked from experience, and now they’ve applied it to a number of their other buildings.

“They’re trying to force people out. That’s why they make so much noise,” says Don. “There’s a lot of new tenants and they’re just running over the old tenants. The workers are almost provoking stuff to happen. A worker slammed a door in my face once, like he wanted to fight.”

 

Yes, yes and yes. Astonishing that landlords are capable of such cruelty. We recommend you read the article for yourself.

Okay, so back to the other neighbor introductions. Keep an eye out for the 40 or 50 of Taylor workers who slide in and out of Waverly every day.  It’s been 7 months and it never ever stops, and no apartments are ever finished. No one knows their names. Only contractors are bonded, but no one knows who they are. I would be very cautious of these men. They don’t care about the community or neighbors or even the tenants. Paid thugs.

The rest of your neighbors here are like me: tenants who have been here for years, and contribute to the stable community. There are only about half of us left, however – The horrible living conditions, threats, and harassment have driven  out all the other renters. And those of us left got either eviction notices or rent raises of several hundred dollars. We are the walking dead tenants.

Now, you would think that a landlord would want an income property to bring in some income, wouldn’t you? But instead of quickly painting and fixing up an empty apartment and turning it around in a week – which is what the former managers  have done here for years – nothing is available for rent!  Every empty unit is half-assed done and just sitting there. Controlling the rental market, much? Only one “upgraded” unit was rented – to another tenant who got an eviction notice, and had to find a place quick. His kitchen and bathroom ceilings were open to the bare wood for weeks, but he stayed!

But say Steven Taylor does decide to rent the other apartments some day. Who will your neighbors be then? Well, the manager says rent will be way high: $2500? $3000? At those prices, these little units will need 3 or 4 tenants to pay the rent. Think dormitories. Animal House!

That’s what the Silver Lake Neighborhood Council is for: to complain and report developers you think are misusing and ruining the neighborhood…and property values. Join us! Because without Rent Control, this is happening all over the city. Even on tony Waverly St., splitting Los Feliz and Silver Lake.

It should give you chills.