Background Information: This organization offers housing for women and children who have experienced homelessness. Some, not all, participants come from Domestic Violence situations, however, this is not a battered women’s shelter. Their website boasts about how wonderful they are, but I am here to tell you it is all smoke and mirrors. I lived at one of the two properties they own so I have first-hand knowledge of how they run the program. The housing program gets housing subsidies from the City of Austin, is a Rental Housing Development Assistance Programs, and has some affiliation with HUD. It’s worth noting, this organization had ZERO policies in place for anyone with a disability, which is required by law for an apartment complex. They knew my son was disabled because it was on my application for housing and not once did they ask about what he might need accommodations for.
My son and I moved into Saint Louise House’s Program April of 2020, right at the peak of COVID. At the time I moved in, we had been homeless for a year, so I was excited to have my own place again. I was quickly disappointed when I found out it had an extremely bad infestation with German Cockroaches that they failed to tell me about until after I moved in. I was told that it was treated recently, but additional treatments could not be provided until businesses started to open up and I understood this. However, I would have preferred to postpone my move instead of dealing with the disgusting roaches for what lasted approximately 8 months. When everything started opening up, management finally got pest control to come in and spray, however, it was just a general spray, not the proper one you need for treating German Cockroaches. For quite some time, I continued to email management letting them know the general sprays were not working and provided numerous pictures of all the roaches. It was at that time I got an email from the then program director stating that the operations director, wanted me to submit a video of the current roach situation because pest control “had just sprayed my unit.” By this time, I had sent numerous emails documenting the issue and told her I was under no circumstances going to provide a video. The infestation was so bad, I ended up having to repack my kitchen because the roaches were in my cabinets, refrigerator and in our food. Roaches carry many diseases as well as feces as they travel so roach feces were on my countertops and cabinets, inside the cabinets, my baseboards, floors and wall. This created not only a major health hazard, but a major inconvenience to me and my son, but management still dragged their feet for getting the proper treatments and did not care about the health hazard this caused us. As a result, my son and I ended up having to eat out for EVERY meal which exhausted all my savings of $1000.00. Management did not care one bit and made no resolution to refund my money, despite having all my receipts. I continued to send numerous emails complaining about the roaches and nothing was done about it. I even contacted the chairwoman at the time (2022), of the board of directors for the program to complain and she told me the board did not get involved in such issues. My son, who is disabled, was traumatized by the rampant roaches crawling everywhere, including the walls and floors in our dining room and throughout our kitchen. I called the Austin Tenants Council to see what could be done and was told that it was a reasonable request to move to another unit due to my son’s disability. I requested numerous times to move to another unit and was turned down. Management expected me to live in a unit that was a health hazard. The Executive Director of the program told me it was against their policy to allow tenants to move. She accidentally sent me an email intended for other management employees, and she attempted to recall her email, but was unsuccessful. In this email she stated that she would no longer be responding to my emails regarding this issue and that they should help me relocate somewhere else. The Operations Manager, and bully of the organization essentially refused to provide treatment despite numerous photos of the roaches and feces and email requests I sent. I literally had to raise hell and get the city involved to get this issue resolved. Finally, they got the pest company to do proper treatments, although I was thankful, it was a big inconvenience. All my cabinets had to be wiped down with a particular solution before each treatment and because the treatment was toxic, I could not be in the apartment for 3 hours afterwards. Pest control would just show up randomly and want to spray despite me telling them the treatments had to be before my son got home from school. My son is Autistic, and anyone who knows anything about Autism knows that consistency and structure is vital so there was no way that I had any place to take my son for 3 hours, plus COVID was still happening. I feel management scheduled these inconvenient times on certain days just so they could say I was not complying. But I have all the text messages between me and the pest control company, so I was not worried
The next issue that occurred was management started harassing and bullying me, creating a toxic living environment, actions under the law that are considered Landlord Harassment. I truly feel they did these things because I was complaining about the roaches. At this time, we are still in the COVID Era, and our complex was essentially a ghost town. Management made false claims of my sons’ emotional support dog harassing tenants and biting workers on the property. There was zero activity of any work going on at the property and the only time I was ever outside was when I would let the dog out to use the restroom. On 2/15/22, the property manager at the time from CSA Realty Group, banged on my door during my online class and she gave me a letter making these false claims. This letter stated that if my dog was not removed before that Friday, management/maintenance would enter my apartment to remove my dog. First of all, this is illegal as my attorney told them in his letter, which I still have. He told management if they attempted to enter and remove anything from my apartment, I would call the police and they would be arrested for breaking and entering. Under the law, your landlord cannot remove anything from your unit (in these type situations.) There was not one piece of evidence of any such occurrence of my dog biting or harassing anyone. Despite having cameras on the property, when I asked the operations director via email for any police reports, complaints filed with the city, video surveillance, witness statements etc. she could not provide me with any such documentation. She refused to respond to my request. There was also a previous false claim of my dog allegedly attacking the maintenance person when my neighbor was walking my dog on the property. This alleged incident was not brought to my attention until several days later, yet again with zero proof of such an occurrence and my neighbor said it never happened. My surrounding neighbors were all willing to sign sworn affidavits or do anything to help me in this matter because they knew I was a very responsible dog owner and my son, and I were rarely ever outside except to take the dog to the restroom. I still have a text message from one of my neighbors, who has since moved out, that says It was not true. They all knew management was harassing me.
Next, my son started sporadically running off as some autistic people do. He is very sensitive to sound and lights. It could have happened without warning, and I was so scared he would run out of the gate into the small parking lot and into oncoming traffic. In fact, he almost made it a couple of times. We lived on South Lamar, which is an extremely dangerous, busy street. When I approached the Executive Director and the Operations Manager about moving to a unit at the back of the property, I was told both, verbally and in an email, it was against policy to move tenants from one unit to another. I even had a letter from my son’s pediatrician explaining how his disability affected his actions and the lack of understanding consequences due to his actions. I told her the policies of the organization did not supersede the Americans with Disabilities Act and the fight for my son’s safety was on. I contacted Disability Rights of Texas, and an attorney took my case. After months of going back and forth with Saint Louise Houses’ attorney without any resolution, I was advised by my attorney that since the courts were so backed up due to COVID it would be faster to file a discrimination claim with HUD. The Austin Tenants Council assisted me with this and when HUD finally got to my case, they referred it to the Austin Civil Liberties office. After a two-year fight, including the time when I was trying to move because of the roaches, Saint Louis House finally settled, and we were able to move to the back of the property. Their complete lack of compassion, empathy and safety for my disabled child cost them time and money for their attorney when they could have easily just let us move. All the units on the property were exactly the same, but they chose to be difficult. As part of the settlement with the Austin Civil Liberties office, management was required to complete a disabilities sensitivity course within 30 days of signing the conciliation settlement agreement, but they would not admit any fault. When I was moving out of my old unit managements lack compassion and empathy continued. As part of the settlement agreement, I had to turn my key in at the end of the day and pick it up the next day to continue to move. I forgot to get my son’s medication that he required out of the old unit. See Photo for the rest of the review