Izzy Williams believed a nice, clean apartment was waiting for the fall semester.
Williams had done her research, after all. Before signing with The Junction, she found roommates, read through the lease terms, and scheduled an in-person tour.
A horror show awaited Williams as she turned the key into the lock of her new apartment.
“The first day, I remember walking in, and I think my jaw dropped,” Williams said. “I was like, ‘this is the apartment I signed the lease for?’”
The damages were extensive, according to Williams. The apartment was dirty, the floors were coming up, and a huge crack ran through the ceiling. The laundry room and bathtubs were full of black mold.
“Our dishwasher wasn’t working,” she recalled. “It had stagnant water sitting in the bottom of the dishwasher, and we have no idea how long it was sitting there.”
Not only were the appliances not working, but there also was a problem with roaches. Williams said she remembers seeing “at least one roach every month” in her apartment.
“I remember texting my roommates like, ‘Yo, this is not what we thought it was going to be,’” she said.
Then came the unexplained fees.
“It was like a trash fee, and then this admin fee to help our credit score or something,” Williams said. “That wasn’t in our lease, and we had no idea that we were being charged for these things.”
When Williams pointed out this to the leasing manager, “[The manager] kept arguing with me. [She]made me feel like I was dumb.”
Then, in February 2022, a pipe burst and Williams’ apartment flooded.
“The water was coming into my room pretty fast,” Williams said. “We had to call the fire department, and they came out and helped us cover everything and turn off the water.”
Her belongings were soaked, and two of the three bedrooms were no longer habitable. The Junction offered to put Williams and her roommates up in the model unit, but according to her, the unit “was pretty known to have bedbugs.”
Williams and her roommates declined the offer and squeezed into the third bedroom, the only dry bedroom in their unit, where they found themselves stuck for a month.
The Junction is managed by Asset Living, a Houston-based property management firm.
When asked how they handle apartment issues, The Junction’s management team told the Daily Record they respond to each resident’s concern and work “as quickly as possible to remedy any issues.”
The Junction, however, declined to answer other questions, including how many tenant complaints it has responded to within the past year and what options are available to tenants for terminating a lease.
Through a search for parent company Asset Living on the Better Business Bureau (BBB) website, the Record found that the firm is non-accredited and has received an F from the BBB for failing to respond to 57 complaints.
Asset also manages Villagio Apartments, another off campus student housing complex.
Texas State University graduate Samantha Velazquez said she and her roommates liked The Villagio so much, they re-signed after spending a year at Cabana Beach, another off-campus housing facility.
“We enjoyed the Cabana Beach experience, but we were still kind of stuck in the high of living at the Villagio,” she said.
When Velazquez and her roommates re-signed in 2021, they learned there was a change in management. Then the problems started.
“We were promised that everything was going to be cleaned and to a living standard, but unfortunately, this time, it wasn’t,” Velazquez said.
The apartment “had mold everywhere,” according to Velazquez, adding that her bathroom had a leak and the AC wasn’t working.
“I had a missing wall; there was a cavity in the wall,” she said.
Fortunately for Velazquez, she knew to put everything in writing. She listed all of the conditions of her apartment, and the lease manager allowed her and her roommates to break their lease.
One resident of The Timbers, who chose not to be identified, told the Daily Record that The Timbers management team was not responsive to her concerns, including “moldy vents and a urine soaked carpet.”
As she wrote in an Aug. 30 social media post, “It’s been 2 weeks, & every time I’ve called about getting these things fixed, mainly the cat pee soaked carpet & the temperature in the apartment, I’ve been blown off, hung up on, or told maintenance is ‘busy with other apartments.’”
The Record reached out to The Timbers’ management firm, PeakMade Real Estate, and did not receive a response.
Velazquez recalled asking herself why a student housing complex would allow students to live this way.
“We’re all college students; we’re all paying a lot of money for these apartments. So why is my apartment like this?” she asked.
The Daily Record reached out to The Villagio management for comment and did not receive a response at press time.
Shifting strategy
In her 22 years working for the Texas State University Student Attorney’s Office, Shannon FitzPatrick has seen how management firms have shifted their strategies over time.
FitzPatrick said the standard lease had existed for “about 30 to 40 years,” in Texas before “we had the advent of this rent by the bed, individual leases or student-oriented apartments, whatever name you want to give it.”
“Then the leases went from four pages to 54 pages,” she said, noting, “Demands from the various companies [and]corporations became just stiffer and stiffer.”
FitzPatrick offered an example.
“It used to be you could get a nine-month lease in San Marcos because 90% of people don’t live here while they’re college students, so literally, nine months,” said FitzPatrick. “Then they started saying, ‘no, you’re gonna sign a 12-month lease.’”
Under the new lease terms, students would have to pay their rent for the year, even if they chose to go home for the summer.
“It’s great for the landlords, but [it] bites if you’re a college student,” she said.
Part of the blame, according to FitzPatrick, lies with the lobbyists of the “multi-billion-dollar apartment industry.” According to her, lobbyists “get to see that the laws are written in ways to benefit them,” thus leasing managers aren’t incentivized to fix broken appliances.
Chapter 92 of the Texas Property Code states that tenants have the right to have any condition that threatens their health or safety repaired by the landlord.
For tenants living anywhere in Texas, the landlord must provide the following:
1. A dwelling that is decent, safe, and sanitary;
2. Repairs of conditions that threaten the health or safety of a tenant;
3. Hot water at a minimum temperature of 110° Fahrenheit;
4. Smoke detectors; and
5. Secure locks on all doors and windows, including a keyless bolting device.
Nowhere in the code does it require landlords to fix broken appliances such as dishwashers, refrigerators, or stoves.
“Their profit margins go up if [they] don’t have to replace the refrigerator or the stove or the dishwasher,” she said. “I’ve seen people who had complained that their dishwasher wasn’t working, and management came in, pulled out the dishwasher, and there was just a hole in the kitchen and they just left it that way, because under the lease, they’re not required to fix it.”
FitzPatrick recounted one of the most extreme examples of the student-landlord dynamic she has seen in her 22-year career.
“We’ve had students, sadly, who’ve been murdered, and their roommate’s in the apartment, and the roommates had just — I can’t really describe it to you because it’s so horrific — But they [want to] get out of the apartment, and the landlord said, ‘No, no, you can’t get out of the lease, you’ve got to stay and clean the bloodstains off,’” she said.
Finding a voice
There are several factors working against students with legitimate housing concerns.
Texas State University, a campus of more than 36,000, only has three student attorneys, according to FitzPatrick.
Also, “local attorneys don’t do this kind of work,” she said. “You’re limited in what damages you can get, so local lawyers don’t want to do that.”
FitzPatrick underscored the importance of student voices, and said she is hopeful students will “start their own group, a tenants’ union so to speak, where they get together and say, ‘We’re gonna call out the bad actors. We’re gonna lobby the Texas legislature for more rules.’”
“When people get together with a common cause, it helps people find the(ir) voice and know that you’re not alone,” she added.
The Austin Tenants Council offers a Procedure for Requesting Health and Safety Repairs on their website and advises students to call their building inspection department for an inspection of their rental unit if they do not receive a response.
Call the Telephone Counseling Program at 512-474-1961 for more information about tenant and landlords’ rights in Texas.
