In response to months of disruptive and dangerous conditions as a result of construction, without transparency or communication from management, residents at Marina Tower have formed a tenants union that currently has over 40 members. Marina Tower is managed by Moss & Company, a property management firm that oversees hundreds of units across Los Angeles. The union has also received support from the Coalition for Economic Survival and the Los Angeles Tenants Union (LATU).
“[The construction is] allegedly an earthquake retrofit, but they’ve been demo-ing all the balconies for months now, so it’s constant jackhammering during the day,” shared Rob Thorington, who has led the tenants’ fight in organizing.
Another tenant, who prefers to remain anonymous, said, “The location is awesome, but basically everything else sucks. It’s an old building, and it’s not earthquake proof, which is the reason for the construction.”
He went on to explain, “I didn’t receive any heads up about the construction until an hour after it started, and my understanding is most residents had the same experience. The drilling was insane. Everyone sent emails, and then they sent an email saying they were doing construction. The drilling starts exactly at 8 AM and goes on til about 4 PM. I feel like I’m going mental with all the reverberating.”
Renting a unit at Marina Tower costs over $3,000/month.
Tenants asked to be compensated for the cost of relocating, given the incessant construction and the hazards it causes. Multiple residents reported that epoxy resin had ended up inside their apartments, and one was hit on the shoulder with a golf ball sized rock due to the lack of scaffolding shielding the sidewalk.
In response to these ongoing conditions and the lack of meaningful action from Moss & Company, tenants have now filed a multimillion dollar civil lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court. The complaint includes allegations of uninhabitable conditions, negligence, and retaliation.
“After our first four days of organizing, they agreed to give us $400 off a month and backdated it 2 months, because of the construction,” said Thorington. “They apologized for the construction noise and said we can break our lease without 30 days notice if needed. They previously gave us headphone earmuffs, like aircraft marshallers use, if you work from home, and offered to reimburse us if we go to a coworking space like WeWork. They’ve also been putting muffins in the lobby.”
The regional manager of Moss & Company, Franklin Scotti, secretly joined their private tenant union under a fake name, Francis Rucho, to monitor their communications without consent.
“Franklin Scotti emailed me and asked how many of us were organizing,” said Rob. “I googled the name Francis Rucho, and it said it was his alias. I took screenshots and responded to him on behalf of the group, [saying] ‘We’re reaching out in good faith with serious concerns about billing transparency and habitability, for you to engage with tenants under a false identity makes it so that we don’t trust management at all.’ It’s really disrespectful to the tenants group.”
Another resident, Kevin (who prefers to omit his last name from this article), a healthcare worker who moved into Marina Tower in July 2024, shared that when he first looked at his unit, he saw scaffolding on the side of the apartment and wondered how long that had been there. He was told his balcony would be finished by August 2024.
“I applied, and a couple days later they had said I had been denied, even though I had been transparent about my finances and didn’t have a bad rent history, he said. “Then they said I could move in if I paid three months in advance and a deposit of a month and a half, but this was after California had passed a law in the last month saying that they couldn’t charge more than two months rent upfront.”
Kevin had to move out of his previous apartment, and he was worried he wouldn’t be approved anywhere else.
“I had to pull out $9,000 out of my retirement to cover the deposit cost, so then they gave me the apartment,” he explained. “But after that, I was like, is this legal? I was just really taken back, but I was like, I guess they’re a large leasing company so they probably know what they’re doing.”
Kevin explained that, following moving in, months passed without any construction, although the scaffolding remained. “I had been expecting my balcony to look better by October in 2024, but there was no construction for all of 2024,” he said.
Then, in early 2025, the construction began, and the noise was constant. In mid-April, Kevin saw a flyer about tenants organizing to come together to discuss their stories about what’s been happening here in the apartment complex.
“I’m a resident physician, so I often have to work at night, and it sucks to come home and have to hear drilling all day,” said Kevin. “They never told us when the construction was going to end — the last they sent out said at least a year. As a tenant, it’s unsafe for me because I need to rest so I can provide adequate care for my patients.”
Kevin shared that his goal was to be relocated to a different building with a different company, saying, “I honestly don’t feel the safest staying here at this point.”
Thorington learned at an LATU meeting in May that Marina Tower never issued a Tenant Habitability Plan (THP), which is legally required for major construction such as the structural and seismic work they’ve been doing. Throughout the construction, new units have been rented without THP. None of the current tenants have signed anything or received notices, which is a major violation, making Moss & Company vulnerable to up to city penalties and tenant compensation.
In addition to construction noise that has reached recorded 90–110 decibel readings, a lack of a tenant habitability plan, and health concerns from persistent dust and debris, the square footage of studios has been listed at 450 sq ft while, in actuality, the square footage is 370 ft. For most of the units, the HVAC system has not been working for 8-12 months for most units in the building, which management attempted to solve by providing space heaters, and failed to provide updates or responses to complaints. There are also no vents nor windows in the bathrooms, the parking garage gate, elevators and laundry machines routinely break, and maintenance requests are frequently ignored, with history of the reports deleted altogether.
“I spoke with a resident whose water was cut off without any warning,” said Thorington. “When they moved into the unit, the HVAC didn’t work. They ignored him for eight months, and then after he ramped up his complaints two months ago they finally came, but no one was onsite to help the repairman, so he had to guess which unit’s water he should shut off.”
He went on to explain, “The manager is usually in the gym working out; a lot of times you have to go there to find him. Someone was knocking at my door while we were on the phone, and I said that I needed more than a 30 second heads up. They just walk into your unit, they come in without permission. It’s happened to almost everyone on the group chat.”
Utility bills are shared throughout the building, but the cost is higher than what the math adds up to, and there is zero transparency regarding the amount or its fluctuation. In December 2024, the water was shut off for 48 hours without notice, and again in May of this year for 8 hours, also without notice.
“I realized how high our utility bills were and that was a big red flag,” Thorington said. “We’ve formally requested a breakdown of the bills, as we can by California Law, they’ve refused.”
Kevin also shared that one of the tenants in the Discord server had spoken with a Moss & Company employee, who stated that the way they charge us for utilities is essentially a scam. It increases every month, but she said “that isn’t real, we just charge you whatever we feel like.”
When tenants post informational flyers or union communications in the building, Moss & Company management employees continue to remove them, despite state laws that protect tenants’ rights to organize and share information with one another.
When the Los Angeles Housing Department (LAHD) inspector arrived on May 8, Scotti and another Moss & Company employee were already in the lobby, eager to frame the situation in their favor. They told Thorington “to search the building and find him.” When tenants did speak to the inspector, he deflected every issue they raised, claiming that noise, elevators, and harassment were not their department. He rejected concerns about THP, claiming that it was not relevant because “construction was outside,” even though it was happening on their balconies, which is included in the square footage of each unit.
Thorington continued, “Moss & Company had their head of maintenance trailing the group during the inspection. I asked him to leave, and he refused. In short, the inspection felt like a setup. The inspector seemed more interested in protecting management than listening to tenants.”
What started with unanswered complaints about constant construction noise and broken promises quickly escalated into being woken by jackhammers, surrounded by scaffolding, and left in the dark and misled about what was coming next. Inflated utility bills, illegal entries into their apartments, and a complete lack of transparency from the building’s management, Moss & Company, led to the unification of tenants who were tired of these violations of their rights. Their lawsuit is ongoing.
