Ryan Enos, a political science graduate student, had his toilet
fixed four times, but it kept stopping up.
Whatever the UCLA maintenance people did, plunging or pouring
hot water down the toilet would only work temporarily. The fifth
time it wouldn’t flush, Enos said, maintenance sent one of
the building’s contractors, assuming something was wrong with
it.
Enos said the contractor told him, “You know, they were
throwing so much stuff down these toilets when they were building
it that I’m surprised any of them work. They just threw
whatever they had lying around to just get rid of stuff, like trash
cans.”
Maintenance took the toilet out and found it was blocked with a
piece of wood, he said. Then the contractor put in a work order,
but it was never carried out.
“Then they just forgot about it. The university people
came and fixed it a couple more times, and it broke again,”
he said.
Enos said the difficulties in getting his toilet fixed seem to
be a combination of problems with contracting and problems with
communicating through the UCLA Housing bureaucracy.
Maintenance told him they could not find the piece of wood, so
they replaced the whole toilet, and it broke again, he said. When
maintenance came to replace it, they suggested he stop throwing
toilet paper down the toilet and put it in a trash can instead.
“They said, “˜If we have to come up here again and
fix it, we’re going to charge you,'” Enos said.
He called the manager, who had maintenance bring a robotic camera
to stick down the toilet. The piece of wood was found and
extracted, and now the toilet works.
Enos said construction problems combined with housing being
unresponsive made the situation “less than ideal.”
Other problems in his apartment ranged from his bedroom door not
fully closing to the balcony door not being sealed properly,
creating what he referred to as a “wind tunnel.”
Enos said he was frustrated that he was paying near-market rent,
but felt that the problems he had would not occur on the open
market.
“It was such a pain when we first moved in here,” he
said. “We were paying full price and it wasn’t
finished.”
When he first moved in, the Internet and phone were not yet
installed but were still included in his rent.
“If you’re moving into a place expecting to pay
$850, one way or another, you should be expecting to get the
amenities that you’re paying for,” he said.
By Lee Bialik, Bruin reporter.