EQUITY RESIDENTIAL BLEEDING TENANTS WITH FAILED UTILITY SYSTEM!

In the past 2 years at Equity Residential’s Versailles Apartments in Woodland Hills, amongst many problems within the building, such as break-ins, security cameras not working, dysfunctional alarm systems which have the entire building very regularly go off in the middle of the night for no reason, leaks and floods… one of the biggest concerns reported by tenants in the past year has been the insane increase of Utility Bills managed by the EQUITY RESIDENTIAL & CONSERVICE and charged back to Residents using the RUBS Method.

RUBS, short for ratio utility billing system, is a billing method that “proportionally” allocates utility costs to tenants. In our building it’s used to bill costs for water, water heating, sewer, trash and pest control to residents – all of whom are weighted differently based on a formula.

While this system can seem fair for buildings who don’t have individual meters, when there’s no accountability for how the building pays for and manages their share/pay for wasted water due to leaks that go on for months if not years …. we are left with the bills !!

It’s very easy to compare when we are being taken advantage of by comparing the LADWP average price increase to what is being asked from the tenants! We can also compare to other families in neighborhood communities.

So far no one has seen this kind of increase : In the past year our water bills have doubled while LADWP rates have increased just 14% !

1st Utility Bill one full month after moving in*:

Utility Bill December 2021*:

Utility Bill December 2022*:

*this is for a 2 bedroom apartment with the following occupancy one single mom full time and 2 small children 50% of the time.

With one resident starting to take legal action we have seen instances of addressing building leaks but regarding the bills, all we are being told is we are “looking into it” while still being charged these insane amounts.

As we come together as tenants, we want to find solutions that seem fair and i’d like to start with a simple Poll to all Versailles Residents:

SHOULD WE COME TOGETHER AND ASK EQUITY RESIDENTIAL TO CREDIT US FOR ALL THESE OVERCHARGES BASED ON FAIR MARKET COMPARISONS ?