hotinhouston
New Member
- Jurisdiction
- Texas
I moved in last year on Aug 28 2025, 1 year lease. The house had maintenance problems immediately after moving in. The ac didn't work, when we turned the water on there were several leaks. We contacted the landlord and he put a bandaid on it. Over the past year we have made 18 maintence requests. All of them have been "fixed". In July our rent assistance was stopped because the landlord didn't want to participate. In July the landlord died. We didn't know until the beginning of August when we got an email from his son in law saying he is going to take over. The property is owned by an elderly lady who is the matriarch of the family, we have never spoke to her directly. We also received a non renewal on Aug 1 from the son in law and the ac also broke the same day. I sent a repair request to the landlord like I always did, I didn't know he had died at the time. I sent the request to the son in law after he said he was taking over. The son in law acknowledged it and said to move out. I asked again to repair it, he said pay the rent, so I did. He sent a notice to vacate for non payment. I asked why he sent a non renewal, he said the answer for the non renewal is in the notice to vacate. The notice to vacate gave non payment as the reason. The non renewal was sent before the rent was due so how could he say he didn't want to renew the lease because of non payment? He was the one that ended our rent assistance. I think he intentionally ended our assistance as a reason to kick us out. He wasn't expecting us to pay it but we did. Fast forward to today, he filed an eviction on Aug 20, I filed a repair and remedy claim on Aug 24 because the ac is still broken and it's 100 degrees in the house. I won the eviction because the rent was paid. The judge told him to wait 5 days for the appeal window to close and then he can send another notice and start all over. He has been dodging service in the repair and remedy case so that has stalled. He sent a repair guy to look at the ac but he has not fixed it. He sent another notice to vacate on the 13 and it said to be out by the 12th, which is impossible. So with all of that said, could this be considered retaliation for requesting repairs? It's not our fault they did a half ass job on the repairs and things kept breaking. We are also considered hold over tenants, we cannot simply leave because we cannot even pack our stuff because it's too hot with no ac, and we can't find another place because the eviction he filed, even though we won it still shows up. He has manufactured the situation and is making our lives hell.
