Some people are really shitty. I just have to say that, sorry.

When we got into LA, our room mate called some people who lived here that we all knew from Austin. All of whom said that they would help us out when we got here. No one did. We spent our first week in that hotel in Torrance, running to interviews, looking for an apartment, and chilling out as much as we could while we watched our money dribble away on the room.

I think that 3 people and 2 huge dogs were too much for people to handle. Still, they should not have offered if they didn't intend to help. One couple did offer us a couch for a night, BUT that night they were having a party for a bunch of swingers. (If you are not familiar with this, it's exchanging sex partners temporarily) . My SO and I are not into that so we were left to sleep in the car for a night before we got our apartment. Our roomie had a place to sleep, since the couple are really his friends and didn't mind getting groped by strangers.

The apartment locater we found was the most helpful person in finding a place to live. I know, "duh." However, the way apartment locators work in California is totally different than in Texas. In Texas, the locater gets a kick back from the apartment complex, so it's all free. The locater drives you around, asks all the hard questions you forget to ask, tells you which apartments are most likely to rent to you. Here in California, however, the apartment locators charge you for providing access to their database, then you do all the driving and calling. I LOVE the locater we found. Imagine Harvey Firestone as your locater - it was worth the $150 just to be entertained by him. He asked us what we were looking for, what we had that might disqualify us for any apartments, and what the price range was. He told us EXACTLY what to say to the apartment managers that would make us sound like more desirable tenants, how to talk about our dogs in a way that would make the apartment managers more comfortable, and told us what neighborhoods were safe for us to live in. He literally told us he was searching for apartments in areas "where a pretty girl could walk around buck naked at 2 AM and not have to worry."

We went to one service that we paid them their money and they sat us in front of a computer and said "there you go." Crappy service, if I ever saw it. The only listing they had were in not so nice neighborhoods. The listings weren't in Compton or Watts, but still not safe at all.