W hen Abigail Hein and Daniel Guerrero moved into Seven Oaks Apartments in May 2021, they were relieved to have found a home.

Rent at the complex near the South Texas Medical Center was manageable, water was paid and they were closer to Hein’s mother. It was the family’s first home with both their names on the lease. It was where they brought their infant son home after he was born.

Their relief turned to horror.

Hein began waking up with red, itchy bedbug bites. Cockroaches emerged from electrical sockets, fell from the ceiling and crawled on walls. She found roach droppings in cards she kept on her nightstand — and in a box with her dead dog’s ashes.

“It’s absolutely disgusting. I couldn’t go to people’s houses because I didn’t know if roaches were going to crawl out of my baby’s diaper bag,” said Hein, 34. “I didn’t know if I was taking bedbugs to people’s homes. I felt alienated because of my living situation.”

Unable to get the complex’s owners to fix the issues, the family recently moved out.

“They don’t care,” Hein said. “Nobody should live here.”

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Zhi’Ria Cook stands in the middle of her Seven Oaks bedroom as water pours out of every fixture, flooding it.

Kryslyn Stanely gives an impassioned speech at City Hall, where she and other residents from the Seven Oaks apartments and representatives from Texas Organizing Project went to demand a meeting with Mayor Ron Nirenberg. Nirenberg has since met with residents, a spoeksperson said.

Seven Oaks resident Claudia Nega speaks with San Antonio Police Department personnel after calling them to issue a complaint about a maintenance worker.

Seven Oaks tenants raise their hands as Texas Organizing Project organizer Marco Acuna asks them questions about what is not working in their apartments.

Nyx Statton stands on the pavement at Seven Oaks staring at pooled water coming from a leak from a nearby apartment.

Seven Oaks is an extreme example but San Antonio is peppered with thousands of aging, deteriorating apartments occupied by working-class residents.

Some are “second chance” properties, so called because they accept tenants with criminal records, evictions and those relying on Section 8 vouchers. With rental housing scarce in San Antonio, such apartments represent the only chance for many to put a roof over their heads.

They’re also attractive to investors looking to cash in on strong demand in a city with a swelling population and stable economy. They can buy at bargain prices, renovate, rebrand and raise rents.

That’s just what happened with Seven Oaks. Last winter, 5903 Danny Kaye LLC, a company affiliated with Austin-based Achieve Investment Group, purchased the 54-year-old complex. Achieve’s plans are to fix it up, raise rents and try to attract a higher-income clientele. It’s also renamed the complex Colinas at Medical. 

In a page on its website touting the opportunity for investors, Achieve described Seven Oaks as having “solid value add potential” with rents of $789, “well below” the $970 average in the surrounding area. The company said it was putting about $2 million into renovations.

“We’re gonna change (the) demographic and tenants’ profile in this asset,” co-founder James Kandasamy said in a video in which he’s seen walking around the complex talking about planned upgreades.

The 254-unit complex was in poor condition.

Before Hein, Guerrero, their infant and 4-year-old daughter moved out, they suffered this summer’s record heat without air conditioning — it stopped working for three months. When the water was shut off without notice, she was late for her job at Toyota’s truck manufacturing plant because she couldn’t get ready for work.

Other tenants have lived with mold caused by leaky roofs and plumbing, rats, nonfunctional laundry facilities billing problems and crime. They said problems went unaddressed or got Band-Aid fixes only to reoccur soon after.

But there were other kinds of problems, too. As Achieve prepared to begin renovations, some tenants said they received notices to vacate with little time to move. Others got eviction notices saying they had not paid their bills, which some disputed.

This summer, Seven Oaks tenants and representatives from the nonprofit Texas Organizing Project began pushing for changes. They formed a union, hosted meetings, sought advice from attorneys, talked to news outlets, traveled to Achieve’s office and pressed elected officials for support.

PUSHING BACK: Seven Oaks residents, Texas Organizing Project goes after poor living conditions, eviction notices

Ernestina Martinez argues with an employee of Achieve Investment Group as she and other Seven Oaks tenants and organizers from the Texas Organizing Project descend on the firm’s Austin office.

The efforts have prompted a widespread response.

City code enforcement staff has visited Seven Oaks multiple times and issued citations. The city’s Building Standards Board has directed Achieve to make repairs.

The company has been working to meet maintenance requests, remedy the violations and address tenants’ concerns, spokesman Colin Strother said.

“Trying to satisfy the tenants and repair deficiencies as quickly as possible” is Achieve’s focus, he said.

District 7 Councilwoman Ana Sandoval’s office, the city and Bexar County paid for motel rooms for residents without air conditioning. Sandoval, who represents an area that includes Seven Oaks, has pushed for policy changes to make the problems tenants have faced more rare.

In response, city officials are considering stepping up apartment inspections and setting up a registration program for “bad actor” properties with a high volume of code violations.

About half of the Seven Oaks complex is empty after tenants have moved out, found new apartments or been evicted. In the past two weeks alone, “default” judgments were rendered in several eviction cases, which occur when tenants don’t show up to court.

There are thousands of run-down apartments in San Antonio.

About 49 percent of the 183,251 units in the city’s multifamily market are considered Class C properties, which are typically older and have lower rents, according to a fourth-quarter report from ApartmentTrends.com.

Despite their numbers, available units are often hard to find — especially affordable ones. Rising rental rates are also making it more difficult for tenants like those at Seven Oaks to move.

July rents in San Antonio were up nearly 13 percent from a year earlier and by more than 22 percent since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, according to Apartment List, a rental search website. That put median rent at $1,076 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,329 for a two-bedroom. The city’s rent growth last month outpaced both Texas and national averages.

“We’re in a brutal housing market right now,” said Sandy Rollins, executive director of the Texas Tenants’ Union.

Income gains haven’t kept pace with rising rents, pushing the bar even higher for some. “So they’re stuck searching in vain for a unit that does not exist,” Rollins said.

Public housing isn’t often an option; there’s not enough to keep up with demand.

Rollins said she’s seen people stay at motels, sleep in their car, couch surf or double up with friends or family because they couldn’t find a home. For people with evictions and felonies on their record, finding a landlord willing to rent them a safe, affordable apartment is difficult.

“There’s ripple effects throughout society,” she said. “When you have people becoming homeless, the effects are going to be felt by the taxpayer through the jail system, the hospital system, the social service system, the educational system.”

People of color and low-income families are “disproportionately” affected by rising rents, surging eviction filings and poverty, said Uel Trejo-Rivera, a community equity analyst at Texas Housers.

Many of the tenants the advocacy group works with are dealing with safety concerns in their apartments, roach infestations, shifting foundations and other problems.

“It’s increasingly harder for these people to find housing that is affordable to them and that is an acceptable standard of living,” Trejo-Rivera said. “Lower-income communities usually have to face the brunt of the properties that have more issues.”

Complaints about Seven Oaks are not new.

In Google reviews stretching back at least seven years, tenants described roach infestations, mold, leaks, crime and slow responses from management.

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Catherina Gonzales and her four children, Trista, Bryson, Hunter and Dallas, eat pizza. Gonzales and her children were evicted from the Seven Oaks Apartments.

Frustrated and hot, Debra Watts wipes sweat from her face after another disappointing call looking for a new apartment.

Daniel Guerrero holds his son, Henry Wayne, in the laundry room at the Seven Oaks apartments. The laundry room had been non-functional for months.

Zhi’Ria Cook stands in her doorway, looking at the belongings she was able to salvage after her apartment flooded.

Twonya Mondy, right, embraces her friend and neighbor, Zhi’Ria Cook after her apartment flooded.

Amanda Williams folds laundry while her daughter, Charlotte, plays in moving boxes. Williams and her husband Kaleob Williams have been packing their belongings after receiving a notice to vacate from the property management of the Seven Oaks Apartments.

Anthony Adams, Richard White and Gerry Adame, all neighbors at Seven Oaks, play chess outside their apartments with Adame’s young son, Jeremiah, runs around them.

Sylyn Murphy, 9, struggles to carry a laundry basket filled with clothes and blankets as she helps her mom, Kryslyn Stanley, move her and her sister back to their Seven Oaks apartment after staying at a Motel 6 for nearly a month.

Kryslyn Stanley wakes her daughter Nyx with cuddles and kisses and singing “wake up Nyx-opotamus,” causing Nyx to giggle even as she tried to fight waking up.

Adam Duran stands outside his apartment at Seven Oaks with his belongings after being evicted.

Between August 2021 and August 2022, the San Antonio Police Department responded to about 900 calls to the complex for family disturbances, threats, deaths, stolen vehicles, assaults, burglaries and other reasons, according to a spokesperson for the department.

Achieve bought Seven Oaks in November for $23.2 million from a company affiliated with Vasile and Nita Trif of Chicago, which had owned it since 2015, according to state corporate filings, property records and Achieve’s website.

Other apartments managed by the Trifs have also had a history of code violations.

The complex was in “total disrepair” when Achieve acquired it and was “a terrible environment for the tenants,” Strother said. There were several dozen nonpaying tenants.

TOP got involved earlier this year. Community organizer Jessica Azua said it connected with Seven Oaks residents after canvassing the neighborhood, hearing concerns and seeing online reviews.

“That’s what made us see that we needed to take immediate action in organizing this apartment complex,” Azua said.

TOP representatives and tenants started publicizing conditions in June.

At Zhi’Ria Cook’s apartment, water poured out of the vents and light fixtures, ruining her possessions.She said relatives are caring for her young son because she is scared to have him living at Seven Oaks.

Peair Richardson, a server at a Chinese restaurant, said at a June 23 event he had been without hot water for months.

Ernestina Martinez said she has not used one of the bathrooms in her apartment because the toilet backs up into the bathtub when it’s flushed. Martinez, who uses an oxygen tank, said there also been roaches, mold, flooding and stretches without air conditioning.

Twonya Mondy, a teacher, said her air conditioning unit regularly froze and she injured her ankle in a fall coming down her damaged front steps. She has since moved out.

On June 23, a group of tenants and TOP leaders took a letter with a list of demands to Seven Oaks’ leasing office and taped it to the door.

Among their demands: that maintenance problems be fixed within 72 hours, no tenant be forced to move out before Dec. 23, relocation assistance of $6,000 per unit be provided, late fees be removed and deposits be returned when they move out.

They also said they are facing “unfair eviction notices” and requested that no evictions be documented.

TOP representatives and tenants traveled to Austin to protest outside Achieve’s office and visit Kandasamy’s house, where they left fake eviction notices and invoices taped to his garage and in his yard.

They pressed Mayor Ron Nirenberg to meet with them and packed into the lobby of City Hall demanding an appointment. Nirenberg has since met with tenants, a spokesperson said.

City staff have helped residents apply for relocation assistance and code enforcement personnel have issued citations for violations, including broken air conditioning units and windows and no hot water.

About two months ago, tenants told Opportunity Home San Antonio — formerly known as the San Antonio Housing Authority — that Achieve was no longer taking housing vouchers and not renewing their leases, “displacing our families in need of affordable housing,” a spokesperson said.

Apartments rented to residents receiving vouchers must meet quality standards set by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. If they don’t, Opportunity Home must give them the chance to fix the problems.

If the problems persist, the apartment receives a final fail notice and Opportunity Home gives residents vouchers to find new housing, the spokesperson said. The agency continues paying landlords unless the apartment has failed.

As of mid-August, Achieve had repaired some of the problems but not others and some families were in the process of moving out, another Opportunity Home spokesperson said.

Since TOP representatives began working with Seven Oaks residents, Azua said tenants at other complexes have reached out to share the substandard conditions they are dealing with.

Ernestina Martinez sits in her walker outside her Seven Oaks apartment looking at her belongings. Martinez had just returned from a month long stay at a nearby Motel 6 to find her apartment overflowing with water from a leaking that had slowly been getting worse. Unable to put her stuff inside Martinez sat in the heat waiting to hear if an how the office management would help her. They did agree to move her into a new apartment, but the first one they offered her was on a second floor, which she was unable to accept because she could not climb the stairs.

Achieve’s aim is “acquiring and operating properties with significant value-add components” in fast-growing cities, and its portfolio includes apartments in San Antonio, Austin and Houston, according to its website.

After buying Seven Oaks, Achieve spent about two months putting together a plan to rehabilitate it. Strother said he realized there had been a “communications gap” between tenants and the property owner regarding maintenance problems.

The firm set up a 24-hour hotline and a Twitter account to share information about repairs and water shut-offs, Strother said.

Some tenants said they received flyers with a list of designated times to visit the office and speak with management about their concerns after the scheduled meetings had occurred.

Strother said Achieve has completed hundreds of work order requests since Jan. 1 and worked with Sandoval’s office and code enforcement staff.

“There were multiple instances, dozens of instances, where we didn’t know there was a deficiency in a unit until we heard from a third party,” he said.

He said TOP has been “more of a hindrance” than a help and told tenants not to submit work orders. Azua denied that and said representatives have helped tenants submit work orders via certified mail.

Strother also questioned why TOP and code enforcement personnel were not involved earlier if there have been problems at Seven Oaks for years.

“Where was TOP ... when this property was in complete, total disrepair?” Strother said. “Where was code compliance?”

Renovations are underway at the complex. The firm is targeting annual returns of 22.1 percent, according to its website.

“They’ve already made it safer. They’ve already improved the cosmetic appearance of it. They’re at the beginning stages of a rehabilitation program,” Strother said. “The ownership group believes it’s going to be a substantially upgraded property that can attract a different clientele, a higher income bracket for sure.”

The city does not have an annual inspection program for apartments, said Michael Shannon, director of the Development Services Department. So it relies on calls from residents to learn about problem complexes.

When calls began coming in from Seven Oaks this summer, code enforcement visited.

“I don’t know if I’d call this one the worst I’ve ever seen, but it’s right up there and one of the worst,” Shannon said.

At an Aug. 11 meeting of the Building Standards Board, which hears code violations, Code Enforcement Supervisor Dale Russell described a litany of violations. Among them: Broken air condition units, sewage leaks, stairs that weren’t level, light fixtures hanging by wires, broken windows, missing smoke detectors and water heaters not meeting required temperatures.

Some repairs had been done without proper permits. As of Aug. 11, some violations had been remedied and proper permits issued for other repairs.

Management’s “efforts have been up and down on compliance,” and city staff had trouble setting up appointments with some tenants, Russell said.

Several board members excoriated Seven Oaks’ management for the violations and lack of permits before setting penalties and timelines for correcting the problems.

“I’m just wanting to get to just plain decency. We’ve been through a heat wave here ... I can’t imagine anyone being in a home without air conditioning that are paying their monthly rents,” Joel Solis said.

Board member Ann Winer asked, “Would you want to live like that? Would they want to live in that? I don’t think so.”

James McKnight, an attorney representing Achieve, said the company was working to address the violations and eager to come into compliance with city codes.

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Kryslyn Stanley and her daughters were among the Seven Oaks tenants staying at a nearby Motel 6 because of substandard conditions at their apartment.

Nyx Statton gives her mom, Kryslyn Stanley, a kiss after making herself comfortable on the steps at City Hall. Stanley and other residents from Seven Oaks were protesting conditions in the complex. They had been escorted out of City Hall by police and waited on the front steps for over an hour trying to meet with the mayor.

Kryslyn Stanley and her daughters were among the Seven Oaks tenants staying at a nearby Motel 6 because of substandard conditions at their apartment.

Kryslyn Stanley washes her clothes in her Motel 6 bathtub to save money.

Kryslyn Stanley and her daughters were among the Seven Oaks tenants staying at a nearby Motel 6 because of substandard conditions at their apartment.

Substandard conditions at Seven Oaks and another complex, Wurzbach Manor, could prompt the city to change its policies.

“Complexes present a unique and challenging situation when owners fail to meet the city’s property maintenance and safety codes because of the negative impacts to health and quality of life to multiple tenants and families,” City Manager Erik Walsh wrote in an Aug. 9 memo to the mayor and City Council.

The city has considered setting up proactive inspection and registration programs in the past, but the proposals have failed amid pushback from groups such as the San Antonio Apartment Association.

City staff recommended the second option, which would need to be ironed out with city staff, apartment owners and operators and housing advocates, Walsh wrote.

Amid the change, many residents have left Seven Oaks.

When Hein and Guerrero moved out, they threw away groceries, toys, appliances and their bed because of damage from roach infestations. The water was off for several days so they had to wait to clean the apartment.

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Kryslyn Stanley and her daughters were among the Seven Oaks tenants staying at a nearby Motel 6 because of substandard conditions at their apartment.

Linda Sanchez (front car) and Twonya Mondy (back car) wait for Marco Acuna of Texas Organizing Project to check them into a Motel 6.

Kryslyn Stanley, a single mom, is stressed about having to find a new place to live, and paying all of her expenses after losing her job due to illness.

Gerry Adame happily throws himself on a bed at the Motel 6 near his apartment at Seven Oaks. Adame had not had working air conditions in his home for weeks.

Catherina Gonzales hold her son Hunter while two of her other children, Bryson and Dallas play video games.

Hein said she had to take two days off of work and spent $1,100 on applications, but the couple finally found an apartment. It’s the same size as their Seven Oaks apartment. in a gated community with covered parking and less crime.

When she told the manager there that the air conditioning unit wasn’t working, it was fixed within 30 minutes. She said she put on sweatpants because it was so cool.

“It’s a million times better,” Hein said.

Martinez stayed at a Motel 6 for awhile and is now living with a friend at Seven Oaks. She could have continued renting, but wants to leave. She’s hoping to be approved for disability benefits and has applied for housing assistance.

Mondy said it’s difficult finding housing because of lengthy waitlists and more landlords refusing vouchers. Some properties that do accept vouchers are in worse condition than Seven Oaks.

But she recently found a new apartment and hopes to move in soon.

“I’m just ready to get away,” Mondy said.

She said she has started taking medication for anxiety and depression because of what she’s been through. And she is an active member of the tenants’ union.

“Even though we’re leaving, there are other tenants that are going to be there that deserve proper running stuff in their apartments and good apartments to live in,” Mondy said.

Out front, colorful signs around the property tout “new management.”

Hein said she hoped it makes a difference for her former neighbors.

“I don’t want much, I don’t think anybody wants much,” she said. “They just want a nice, decent home. They want hot water that they’re paying for. A home without mold.”

Jaqueline Gutierrez in the Precinct 2 Justice of the Peace courtroom after losing an eviction judgment.

Madison Iszler covers real estate, retail, economic development, and other business topics for the San Antonio Express-News.

Reach Madison at 210-250-3242, madison.iszler@express-news.net and @madisoniszler.