I posted this review on Yelp.com on 5-3-12 at 1:00 a.m. in the morning:
I live at L'Estancia Apartments. When I first moved in, I was downstairs and the neighbor above me would run back-and-forth in her small efficiency apartment and roll heavy weights around on the floor every day at all hours. The apartment manager would do nothing about it. In desperation, I told him it must stop or I am moving. He said he had a nice, quiet 1 bedroom apartment on an upper floor. It would cost more but it would be nice and quiet.
So, I moved and loved the location. I still do. That was a year-and-a-half ago. Since December, my next door neighbor has allowed her son and his girlfriend to live there. Apparently this was unknown to the apartment manager.
That isn't the problem. The problem is that the boy lives in a bedroom right next to my apartment. There is a sliding glass door a mere 6 ft. away from my living room. Since December, he has been slamming the front door and the sliding glass day-and-night. At first, I believed they were moving in. In a few months, I decided the jarring door slamming wasn't going to stop.
I approached the apartment manager. He spoke with the woman to no avail. She says she hears no noise. How could that be??? I complained again to him because it grew worse. The apartment manager told me I could move to another apartment or he would let me out of my lease. I asked why, since I am not the problem--the jarring door slamming is the problem. He took the maintenance man to the apartment and checked the sliding glass door. Made a small adjustment and hoped that would help. No such luck.
I stated that I liked my apartment, didn't want to move and really couldn't afford another move right now. I just want the noise to stop. He asked me to e-mail him each time the noise startled me or woke me up. I sent him over 13 such e-mails since February of this year until yesterday. Nothing has changed.
Last night, the boy arrived around midnight. He slammed the front door so loud that it startled me from my sleep. Then, he proceeded to continuously slam his sliding glass door for one solid hour. He fell asleep at one a.m. I couldn't go back to sleep until well past 3:30 a.m. I wrote the apartment manager and cited my lease and Sec. 13 regarding "nuisance or an unreasonable annoyance." His ongoing response is that he or his staff must hear the noise in person to do anything about it. I replied that nothing in my lease states that he must hear anything and there is also a California Noise Control Act about excessive noise that is detrimental to public health. My stress level is now excessive over this.
My reply from the apartment manager was the same. Either he or his staff must hear the noise in person, yet I see no effort on his part to record it or try to observe what is happening to me on an ongoing, daily/nightly basis. It feels as if I am the one who should move and spend needless money, even though I am perfectly happy in my apartment.
Newsflash: I am not the problem. Surely he can't believe that if I moved, the next tenant will gladly would tolerate this constant, mind-numbing and totally unnecessary door slamming next door.
No, he won't be happy to read this review but seriously, this is the second apartment at the beautiful, lovely L'Estancia Apartments where I experienced the same type of disruptive neighbor noise and received no effective, reasonable, or acceptable response or action from the apartment manager, whom I always liked. This treatment, however, is just plain poor business. Had it been handled and stopped four months ago, I wouldn't be writing this complaint. Alas, it was not to be...
I would like to see him utilize some specialized equipment to monitor my noise complaint because it is so aggravating and causes me extreme loss of sleep and enjoyment of my most expensive one-bedroom apartment.
Who knows, he might learn a good way to help other tenants here who may also be suffering from the same unrelenting neighbor noise today or in the future... read more