My teenage son and I stayed at Lori's place for two weeks this past June.
While Lori seems nice, and she tries to be accommodating we had some issues with our stay.
Before I made the reservation, I reached out to her and asked if she has an extra bed available since my son was not happy about the idea of sharing a bed with me for two weeks. She said that she has two tween air matrasses in her living room that we can use. She also said that she is most certain that she would not be there during our stay, and we will have the living room, kitchen and bedroom for ourselves. With that in mind we invited my son's friend to join us, thinking the two boys will be sharing the living room and I will have the bedroom for myself. Thank God the other boy canceled his trip to LA (it would have been a disaster) Not only was Lori there most of our stay, but she was also using the living room and kitchen area at late night hours and very early mornings. The boys would have not had much privacy or sleep considering that someone would have constantly walked through their space.
Also, when we arrived, she told us that she just ordered a new single air mattress and she proceeded to place it in the bedroom closet. She said that since it fits there perfectly my son can sleep there. The mattress barely fit in between the closet walls and the door had to be open in order to fit. Since my son needed his rest (he was attending a two-week dance program) I told him that I will sleep on that mattress in the closet. It was awful. Every time I moved the mattress would squeak and since there were shelves on the closet walls, I had to sleep with my head towards the door which made getting in and out of my bed a nightmare.
Another issue we had with Lori's place was the cleanliness. Spider webs in the living room and bedroom, windows that look like have never been washed, stains on the dining room chairs, questionable stain on the bedroom chair (yuck), sticky cabinet doors in the kitchen, fingerprints all on doors, broken desk in the bedroom, old squeaky bed, mold in the shower and in the bedroom air conditioner, etc. I was not expecting a five-star hotel, however, for $160 a night this was really disappointing.
To add to everything else, one night we were having dinner in the kitchen and a little creature was staring at us through the window. At first, I thought was a chipmunk, until Lori told us that is a pack rat. Sure enough we saw several of them in the coming days. One was crossing our path in the way to the main street, one almost run in the living room when I opened the front door, another one was in one of the trees in front of the apartment, yuck, yuck and yuck.... For two weeks not only we could not use the small balcony she has, but we could also not open our bedroom window since we were worried a rat could come through the screens or small openings. I almost died when Lori told us one day that we should open the windows for fresh air!!!
Other issues were with the neighbors. While we were getting used to the barking dog and the awful sounding smoker cough the gentleman upstairs had, two doors down there is a fire station. On all hours of the day and night there was a fire truck taking off with the sirens on.
A couple things we enjoyed during our stay was the free Wi-Fi, cold filtered water and the coffee in Lori's apartment. There is also a laundry room in the building that we used often. BTW, the washer and drier do not use coins (as mentioned in the listing) instead you have to download an app on your phone and pay through their prepaid system.
There are also some good restaurants within walking distance. Japanese, Thai, Italian, Irish, all good food and very relaxed atmosphere.
On the same street there is a Trader's Joe and Whole Foods. The bakery around the corner serves very yummy baked goods, very pricey though.
Every day we walked to Santa Monica College and Santa Monica Pier, around thirty minutes each way. While we saw many homeless people on our walks, we never had any issues.