Guardian Arms Apartments

I’ve lived here for almost 3 years with my guy, and have to say Brent is the best building manager we’ve ever had. Anytime we had an issue or needed help he was there. He’s kind and seams to genuinely care about the tenants. I will also add, if we hadn’t moved out of state, we would have never gave up our amazing place. A true hidden gem in LA!

After living here for a year, I can tell you that this building has a thousand issues. The building has a lot of charm and the units look great, but I’m warning you: Don’t let looks deceive you. As a tenant at this building, I urge you to take your rent somewhere else.
PARKING
There isn’t enough parking for all of the units, and if you’re lucky enough to get a spot at some point during your stay here, you’re looking at $ 125+ to park in that spot each month. When rent for a 1 bedroom costs more than $ 1500 per month in this area, I shouldn’t have to pay for parking.
LAUNDRY
The laundry room has 3 washing machines and 4 driers, despite the building having 90+ units. These coin-​operated machines never work. The washing machines don’t spin clothes properly, so if I wash clothing with stains on them, the stain won’t come out unless I go to the laundromat. The driers often don’t get hot or don’t spin. The power goes out in the laundry room regularly, so sometimes you’ll wait an hour for your clothes to dry, then when you go to get them, you discover the power went out 5 minutes into your dry cycle, so now you need to wait 55 more minutes for your clothes to dry.
LEAKS
I can’t even begin to count the number of times leaks have occurred. We’ve had water leaking so severely in the lobby that I had a guest ask me if we had a waterfall when they walked into the building. I had to walk them by the massive leak (embarrassing). We’ve also had pipes break in the basement and the basement went under several inches of water on multiple occasions. Oh, and be cautious of rain! It floods in the basement!
ELEVATOR
The elevator does what it wants. It randomly goes up to the 7^th floor for no reason and then comes back to the first floor. I’ve been stuck inside before and I had to use the call button for help. Luckily it started moving again before anybody got there. The inside of the elevator is disgusting too. The floor is always sticky, it smells really bad, people graffiti on the inside, and the paint is constantly being ripped off the walls (people peel the paint off).
REPAIRS
Perhaps the thing that frustrates me most about this building is that whenever something needs to be repaired you have to submit a maintenance request and sometimes the maintenance request never gets filled, sometimes they say they’ve lost the request, and I have NEVER had anybody come repair something once (it always gets repaired poorly and then has to be redone and redone). We went through three kitchen appliances in the first two months we were here. we’ve asked repeatedly for something to get repaired in the bathroom and it’s gotten to the point where we just stopped asking because we asked multiple times over the course of several months. They came to repair it three or four times but each time it broke as soon as the repair guy left. We’ve had so many shady repairs at this apartment that its become an inside joke between me and my husband. We have the world’s smallest bathroom and when we asked to have the curtain rod repaired the guy repaired the curtain rod and installed a curtain that was floorlength in the bathroom so we couldn’t use the toilet because it was covered by curtain. SERIOUSLY?!
The landlord is a nice guy, but appears to be in over his head. We’ve requested emergency repairs using the 800 number on the website and the wait time is a minimum of two hours, or they just never show.
Living here is beyond frustrating, especially with how much we pay in rent each month. I feel like none of these things should be a problem when this is where I call «home». I shouldn’t be stressed out at home.

Brent is a great manager and he finally finished working on the street level stores bringing them back to their historical glory.
Lets hope they get a good coffee place.
Polished cement floors are amazing.
Make sure you get a high unit away from the Bar.
Harvard and Stone is a great place to hang out, but it can get loud.

I have been living here for about 1 month now and I absolutely love it! The manager Bret was helpful and made us feel at home immediately. All the people who live here have been very polite so far and not to mention the walls are brick and cement so you don’t have the typical apartment noises. Close to a lot of stores, restaurants and less than a mile from the 101. We scored!!! 5 stars for sure!

After living here since Feburary, I can say I’m very pleased with this building. Brent, the building manager, is super friendly and helpful. I had a couple minor maintenance issues when I moved in and they have all been handled.
I love the work that’s being put into this building. The front exterior is being restored to its historic state and it feels like everything is being upgraded on a continuous basis.
Between the concrete floors, crown molding, new appliances and old Hollywood vibes that this building has, I knew I had found the right place.

I really like living in this building. It’s the biggest building on Hollywood that is east of the 101 and it’s got such a morbid and colorful history. The Black Dahlia lived here. So did many drug addicts and bums, although they’re for the most part kicked out now. Back when it was a hotel in the 1950s, police brawled with the lushes that they kicked out for sleeping in the hallways. Old people die here, the coroner parks in front. Crazy people yelling at the top of their lungs have been escorted out of here by police. A suicide happened last year, someone jumped from one of the upper floors and was found on the alleyway next to Harvard & Stone. It’s a very big, dramatic, beautiful and solid Hollywood building. If there is a major earthquake (which will 90% likely happen before 2050), we will all survive due to how strong and well-​built this thick concrete building is.
PROPERTY COMPANY:
With gentrification comes property companies foaming at the mouth, then high rent prices, and then an exodus of all of the crazy people that gave a story to this building. I have lived here for almost four years, before the new property company purchased this building and substantially increased rent prices, and the only thing I give credit to Polaris/​M West Holdings is that they got rid of the roach infestation that Statewide Enterprises never could do. Literally, roaches used to crawl out of the drains en masse. Otherwise I really do not like Polaris/​M West Holdings and think their whitewashing/​gentrification project to this building is rather despicable.
I don’t know who these people are or if they even live in this area but they seem to have grand ideas on what they want done to this building and who they want living here. Last year, they offered $ 8,000+ to all of the occupied units to move out so that they could undergo construction on the building and make it into an ultra-​posh dream building to justify the $ 500/​month and climbing rent increases to each of the units. I am one of the few tenants that did NOT accept their $ 8,000 offer to move out. For those like me who didn’t accept the offer, we’d have an increase to our rent on top of the yearly rent control increase (thank goodness for rent control as Polaris/​M West are extremely consistent when it comes to increasing my rent each year for as much as they can legally get). Ultimately, Polaris/​M West reneged on the deal for the 30 or so units that agreed to move out, decided not to pay anyone but went through construction anyway.
They most recently replaced our sexy chaise lounges in the lobby with ugly business furniture. I could see them one day having a self-​congratulatory presentation in our business lobby about this building’s million dollar turnover with their ‘aggressive leasing’, as I quote one of M West’s successful ‘case studies’ on their website. It would be complete with upwards graphs, corporate high fives and champagne before they go back to their big houses in the hills.
MANAGER:
Brent, haha, is not a jerk, but pretty damn flaky when it comes to maintenance requests. I believe he pays more attention to the many young women with small dogs who moved into the building in the past year, so good luck with getting repairs done if you’re not one of them! It’s funny to read all of these gushing five star reviews about him promptly emailing them back because he –never– –ever– –ever– emails me back. I am pretty damn courteous and respectful too. I try to be reasonable and not demanding, but unfortunately I am also not a girl, nor a girl that owns a small dog. The one time that he sent a maintenance guy to my unit, two out of three of the repairs that he made broke within a day. At least the leaky faucet stayed fixed.
Maintenance request fails:
— Cracked window since mid 2014
— Palm tree leaf and bamboo hitting/​obstructing cracked window
— Broken sink drain (maintenance guy came, fixed it, and it broke the next day)
— Broken bathroom tile partition (maintenance guy oddly super glued it instead of screwing it back in, it fell off the next day)
— Broken bathtub drain
— Water pressure issues for hot water (biggest small issue)
Overall, I generally love this building, its colorful history, the people and the peaceful yet cool atmosphere that Polaris/​M West is trying to kill and will likely stay here for a long time. Maybe I need to be more of a dick about it, but the repair requests are ones I can overlook on a day to day basis. I am hopeful that as for this avaricious property company that owns the building that ‘this too shall pass’.

I’ve been living here for 6 months now and absolutely love it. I live in a studio apartment and it’s absolutely gorgeous. I’m obsessed with the buffed cement floors!
Management has been an absolute dream. Brent (the landlord), is so friendly and courteous. When I first moved in, I noticed a few dings in the wall from the previous tenants and let Brent know. He passed it on to maintenance and it was fixed THE NEXT DAY.
This place is quiet, central, and every one in the building is really nice — what more could you ask for? I’m not sure what the other poor reviews are going on about, but my experience here has been stress free and lovely. I highly recommend! Happy hunting :)

I’ve lived here for about 4 months, and I really love it. If you search online, there are a lot of reviews about this place being terrible when there was a different management company. The current one took over in 2013 I believe, and it’s nothing like those reviews describe now.
I live in a studio facing Hollywood Blvd. There’s noise from the bar at night, especially if you keep your windows open, but personally I like that. I never hear ANY noise from my neighbors unless they’re in the hallway, which is wonderful. The concrete floors really seem to help insulate. The building has been having a lot of work going on lately, but generally cosmetic stuff so no loud tools or anything, and it’s super nice that they’re trying to improve the look of everything (even though, IMO, it’s already so nice looking).
I haven’t met too many of my neighbors, but everyone I have met or ridden in the elevator with has been very friendly. One guy said he’s lived here for 14 years and just loves it, which was very reassuring. The manager and the maintenance guy are also both friendly and take care of things when requested.
I’ve seen one bug in my apartment so far, but it seemed to be an isolated incident. No mice or anything like that. Fingers crossed. I had a couple issues with things in the apartment when I first moved in, but they were taken care of right away. No problems since.
There’s a Starbucks, grocery store, UPS, Petco, CVS, lots of Thai restaurants, and a whole bunch of other things within easy walking distance, which is fantastic. It feels like a pretty safe area. I walk around at night or early in the morning by myself fairly often. Having the bar right there actually helps, knowing there’s always going to be someone outside there until at least 2am.
The only downside so far is that the elevator seems to break every so often, which can be annoying when you live high up, but it’s always fixed as quickly as they can get someone out there, and nobody’s gotten stuck in it or anything as far as I know. Oh, and parking can really be a pain at night or on street cleaning days. I’m used to LA parking, but this is definitely one of the more annoying areas to deal with. Some nights I wait up to an hour for a spot to open up. I’ve been on the waiting list for parking in the building’s lot for a couple months, but I guess it takes awhile.
Overall, great building, great area, great vibe so far!

Talked to the manager a few weeks ago and said he would be there for viewing. Went there and nobody would answer the phone. Kept calling for the next two weeks and left messages and callback number but still no answer. So frustrating since the place shows promise.