My husband and I are working people in our 60's and have been living in the same apartment in a nice neighborhood in north San Antonio for more than 5 years without incident. We are both non-smokers. A family moved in next door to us several months ago, a middle-aged couple with an adult daughter and teenaged son. Our front doors are about 3 feet apart with a shared top-floor landing of about 6' x 18" and a shared stairwell. Our main problem is that three members of the family intermittently smoke throughout the day, together and singly, from morning until late at night on that small shared landing outside both our doors. The smoke drifts into and fills our apartment, causing a health hazard to us and respiratory congestion for hours. Despite our repeated, polite requests to them to please smoke at the bottom of the stairwell, which they can as easily do and which is sheltered in the event of inclement weather, they refuse to do so, knowing the health problem it is causing us. In addition, when it is not too cold, they often gather on our shared landing or on occasion, their back porch adjacent to our bedroom window and talk in a very loud volume, sometimes past midnight. Two weeks ago I (the wife) had to come out at 1:30 am and politely ask them to please lower their voice; in response they increased their volume, including foul language directed at us, until 3:45 am and we never got to sleep; this is far from the first time we have been met with their rude, abusive responses to always polite requests. We have verbally complained to the manager of our complex repeatedly and she advises us that she has no legal recourse to force them to smoke other than wherever they want to, nor caution them about noise as no one else has complained. We also learned they reported a lie about us slamming our door at night. Our lease has only vague language protecting tenants from discomfort, with no night hour specified as a limit for noise. We still have until next fall on our current lease, and these neighbors are escalating what we feel is a pattern of malicious harassment, laughing and talking ever more loudly outside our door as they smoke right by it. What can we do to protect our rights as tenants and our health, if anything? We do not have the funds to pursue legal action and we gather that in this state with such minimal tenant protection, it would be futile. Thank you for whatever guidance you can provide.