I have been in the same one bedroom in West LA for six years now and I am not going anywhere, so this is not a moving question. The carpet is the original carpet, the dishwasher takes two cycles to do anything, and the stove has one burner that only lights if I hold a lighter to it. Rent has gone up every year and the unit has stayed exactly the same.
I am fine paying what I pay. I just want to know what is reasonable to ask the owner to replace after six years, and how people actually ask and get a yes.
Six years is past the point where most owners have already written that carpet off, they just do not volunteer it. What works is splitting your list in two. A burner that only lights with a lighter is a gas appliance not working correctly, so that goes in as a repair request and they have to handle it. The carpet and the dishwasher are replacement asks, so put those in the same email under a separate heading.
Two things will move this faster than anything else. Put it in one email, list what is broken separately from what is simply worn out, and attach photos with dates on them. Owners approve what is easy to picture and easy to price.
The other piece nobody tells tenants is timing. Ask two or three months before your renewal, not during it, because once a rent increase is on the table everything you request turns into a negotiation over the increase. And if your building is under the RSO, an owner can apply to pass part of a large improvement through to the rent, so be ready for that answer and decide in advance what you would accept.
I asked for a new dishwasher by offering to be home any weekday for the install, which removed their only excuse. It showed up three weeks later. Make yourself the easy option.
One thing worth checking first is whether your building is rent stabilized, because it changes the whole conversation. You can look the address up on the LAHD portal in about a minute.
If it is RSO, ask for your repairs in writing and keep every copy. If it is not, you have less leverage but more room to trade, and a small bump for a real kitchen upgrade is a deal plenty of people take.
Ask for the stove and the dishwasher first and leave the carpet for later. Appliances are a few hundred dollars and one afternoon of work, carpet means your furniture goes out the door and they know it.
Being realistic, six years of asking for nothing is part of why nothing has happened. Quiet tenants who always pay on time are the ones owners never spend money on. When I finally sent one email listing three things with photos, I got two of them within a month and a straight no on the third, which is still better than the nothing I had before.
Timing is everything.