Current, former residents file lawsuit against UC-owned Hilltop apartments

Standing outside their sewage-flooded apartment, Izabella Stevens and Sahara Thacker wondered why the professional cleaning crew was taking so long to arrive, suspecting that the Hilltop employee was trying to keep them distracted with small talk from the biohazard that was their home. 

It was Nov. 16, 2024, and Stevens and her three other housemates, all UC Santa Cruz students, say they asked Hilltop managers to relocate them to either another unit in the University of California-owned complex on Santa Cruz’s Westside or to a hotel for the next several weeks before they left for winter break. But managers, the housemates say, told them they had no other units and couldn’t book a hotel for them, so they stayed in the apartment.

Weeks later, after winter break, they say they returned to find their home taken apart from unfinished repairs and a $600 electric bill for dehumidifiers that were running all month. 

Now, about a year after the flood, Stevens is one of 19 plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit in October against Hilltop apartments and its property managers, Greystar Real Estate Partners, for complaints of negligence and breach of contract. 

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs say Hilltop and Greystar are at fault for “making substandard repairs, if any were attempted; making repairs, if any, in an untimely manner; refusing to make repairs necessary to make the living conditions at the [apartments] tolerable; threatening to evict plaintiff without good cause,” among other violations. The plaintiffs say Hilltop and Greystar “failed to disclose to plaintiff[s] that the [apartment] had been and was unreasonably susceptible to water intrusion problems, leaks, damages, mold, no heat, and other habitability breaches.” 

The plaintiffs’ Oakland-based attorneys, Jonathan and Erika Bornstein, say each of the plaintiffs experienced at least one instance when management failed to respond to a maintenance issue. 

“They’re ignoring their responsibility to give people what they paid for,” said Jonathan Bornstein. “They are completely in denial about the severity of what they put our clients through.”

He said the plaintiffs include 14 current residents, current and former UCSC students and people with Section 8 vouchers. The federal Department of Housing and Urban Development administers Section 8 vouchers, or the Housing Choice Voucher program, which provides rental assistance to low-income individuals. The plaintiffs are asking the court to rule in their favor and are seeking $1.75 million in damages and attorneys’ fees. 

The University of California’s Office of Investments purchased Hilltop apartments, located at 363 Western Dr. on the Westside, in 2021. The UC Office of Investments manages the university system’s investment funds. 

When the UC office purchased the apartments, Greystar was already the property manager and was kept on. Lookout contacted Greystar’s attorney, Patrick Torsney, to request an interview, but he said, “I don’t talk about ongoing litigation.” 

UC Santa Cruz is not an owner and has no affiliation with the apartments except that many of its students live there. 

UC spokesperson Stett Holbrook declined to answer Lookout’s questions about the suit’s allegations – including details provided by several plaintiffs – or about how Greystar and Hilltop plan to respond to the lawsuit. He replied with a simple statement: “While UC is not named in the suit, we respect the legal process and await the court’s resolution of this matter.” 

Before someone can sue the University of California, or any other state entity, they first have to file a claim directly to that entity or with the entity’s governing board. The government entity then has 45 days to respond, and if it doesn’t respond or it denies the claim, the filing party can then file a lawsuit. 

Bornstein told Lookout that he filed the claim Nov. 4 and that UC officials haven’t acknowledged receiving it. Instead of acknowledging the claim forms, a UC official from the Liability and Property Programs office told Bornstein that Hilltop is an “investment property” and is not part of the Liability and Property Programs. 

Holbrook later told Lookout that the property is owned by Regency Hilltop, LLC. In a filing with the California Secretary of State, Regency Hilltop declares that its principal is “The Regents Of The University Of California; Regency Broadway Properties, Inc. from Oakland CA, holding the position of Manager.” 

Regency Broadway Properties is located in the same Oakland building as the regents’ office.

If the UC doesn’t respond to the claim by Dec. 29, Bornstein said, he plans to file a new lawsuit against the UC, possibly in the next few weeks. The two lawsuits would then likely be consolidated into one.  

“We took this case because people were being taken advantage of and abused, essentially,” said Bornstein. “These are large corporations with essentially unlimited resources, and tenants didn’t have the ability to defend themselves.”

So far, the lawsuit contains few specific details of each of the plaintiffs’ experiences. Bornstein said the complaint they filed is vague at this point because it’s meant primarily to provide notice to the defendants of the lawsuit. He said once the defendants respond and request more information from the plaintiffs, they’ll provide the individual experiences of the residents. Lookout talked to two of the plaintiffs for this story. 

A crack in the ceiling, ‘debilitating headaches’

Melissa Scalia, a plaintiff and a former Hilltop resident, told Lookout that “it’s been a very degrading experience” to endure substandard living conditions and also lamented the lack of action against the building’s manager. She said she experienced pervasive mold in her two-bedroom apartment, a rotting second-story porch and a crack in her ceiling. 

Scalia said shortly after she moved into Hilltop in April 2023, her son was diagnosed as having allergies for the first time, and she started having “debilitating headaches.” In the summer of 2024, she says she reported the mold issues to Hilltop staff, but that they took no steps to resolve it until a crack appeared in her ceiling in February 2025. 

Scalia said a contractor hired by Hilltop then inspected her apartment before Hilltop staff sent Scalia an email April 23 saying she needed to be relocated for extensive repairs. They told her she could move into Izabella Stevens’ apartment, which Scalia declined because of the sewage leak. Rather than move into Stevens’ apartment, she remained in the unit until her lease ended, and she moved out in August.

Scalia said felt they had no protection against Hilltop’s treatment. 

“Probably more disappointing is how local officials have completely abandoned us, city council, they’ve just basically ignored us,” she said. “The Housing Authority [of Santa Cruz County] has ignored us, everybody that’s supposed to be there to protect the citizens, especially vulnerable citizens, have basically told us it’s not their problem.”

Scalia said she emailed Santa Cruz city councilmembers earlier this year asking if the city could help ensure Section 8 tenants could be moved into a unit without habitability issues or to help them break their leases. Scalia said one councilmember responded briefly, but no one ultimately assisted her. 

Separate from the lawsuit, Scalia filed a complaint earlier this year against Hilltop with the California Civil Rights Department accusing its managers of discrimination due to her Section 8 status. In one allegation, Scalia said an employee unfairly enforced a dog leash requirement on her and didn’t enforce it with non-Section 8 tenants. In September, according to documents, the department dismissed her complaint due to “insufficient evidence.” 

Stevens hopes for accountability

Stevens and her UC Santa Cruz housemates, two in each of the bedrooms, stayed in the apartment until they left in mid-December 2024 for winter break. “It felt gross living in that apartment. Everything felt bad, and I didn’t feel safe at all,” Stevens said. “They did the bare minimum and just left us in it. … It was miserable.”

After winter break, Stevens was the first to arrive back at their apartment. She drove eight hours from her family’s home in San Diego and said she found their toilet outside and plastic barriers sealing off the entryway. Once inside, the floorboards were all off, the bottom half of the walls were gone, the dehumidifiers were still on, and the kitchen sink was in her bedroom. Stevens was exhausted and shocked; she asked for a new unit or a hotel room. 

Hilltop’s leasing office staff offered to relocate the housemates to another unit – one Stevens later found out had recently been repaired because it flooded out. She said a maintenance worker helped her move her mattress, and she slept alone that first night back. 

“We literally just got relocated from one water-damage unit to another. So that’s what irritated me,” she said. “‘This is the best you guys can do? Can we get, like, a non-water-damage unit?'”

Stevens said looking back, she thinks Hilltop staff should have relocated her and her housemates immediately so as to not expose them to the potentially harmful sewage-damaged unit. 

“It didn’t have to be this bad,” she said. “I just hope Hilltop is held accountable.”

Stevens said she and her four housemates paid nearly $5,000 a month in rent for their two-bedroom unit. The building’s website shows a range of options, including other two-bedrooms for $1,899. 

Attorney Jonathan Bornstein said that Hilltop had sufficient time to complete the repairs before the students returned from their break. He feels that was Greystar and Hilltop’s most egregious failure. 

“The owner of the property should be upset with the property manager for not addressing that issue,” he said. “Because it becomes a much bigger problem, more expensive problem, and actually decreases the value of the entire investment.” 

FOR THE RECORD: This story was updated to reflect what information Jonathan Bornstein received from University of California about ownership of Hilltop.

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