Home Sweet … Hotel? Students Uprooted from Faulty Student Housing Complex

By Rebecca Butler

Reporting Texas

Stella Perez planned to have an at-home date with her boyfriend on Valentine’s Day. Instead, she got a call from her student housing complex, Crest at Pearl, that she would be evacuated and relocated to a hotel room for “routine inspections” in her unit. 

She spent the rest of Valentine’s weekend in a hotel and the next month haggling with the apartments.

She’s since learned that Crest at Pearl, 706 W. Martin Luther King Blvd. just southwest of the University of Texas campus, has had four code complaints filed against it over two years for structural problems.

“I lived in a different West Campus apartment for two years,” Perez said. “Sure, I had issues with that place, too, but it was never something as dangerous as structural problems. I had more ordinary complaints like loud neighbors.”

Crest at Pearl, built in 2014, is one of 14 student living complexes in Austin’s West Campus neighborhood owned and managed by the Austin-based property management company American Campus Communities. 

The  four code complaints filed against the past two years stemmed from the same structural issues, primarily impacting the corner units above the leasing office. 

In a statement to Reporting Texas, Crest at Pearl said it is working to complete repairs as quickly as possible. 

“We have been in direct contact with students whose units are affected and provided relocation assistance,” the statement said. “We remain committed to fostering a safe, welcoming community where our residents can thrive both personally and academically.”

Perez, a third-year genetics and genomics major, said management at Crest at Pearl was not transparent about the reason for displacement or how long residents would be out of their apartments. Perez said she learned of the December 2023 code complaint only while talking to other residents at the hotel they were sent to by American Campus. 

That city inspection revealed gaps in both of the exterior doors and floors that were sloping about two inches towards the exterior balcony.

The inspection report reads, “While there, (an inspector) dropped a ping-pong ball and watched it roll all the way to the window on the other side of the room.”

Another displaced resident, who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation, said he and his roommates had noticed the floor slanting in their unit. They only reported their experience 10 days after they were displaced with no explanation Feb. 14. 

Upon the resident’s Feb. 24 filing, city inspector Edmond Su visited the building and discovered the top of the building had “some shifting going on, and it had shown some cracks,” according to his report.

Namratha Thrikutam, outreach coordinator for the University Tenants’ Union, said the situation at Crest at Pearl is not unique. She said many West Campus apartments have experienced issues that impacted student housing and led to delayed move-ins or displacement because of structural issues.

“Students are being told two days before they move in that their apartment won’t be ready. Some are even travelling to campus with their families in a U-Haul when they’re informed they won’t be able to move in,” said Kayla Quilantang, the tenants’ union membership director. 

Some notable, past displacements in West Campus include construction displacements in 2022 at Dobie Twenty21 and move-in delays in 2023 at the Rambler and at the Rise.

Martin Serra, an attorney who provides free legal counsel to University of Texas students, said about 67 percent of students he sees seek counsel on landlord-tenant issues; his busiest season is late August through early September, when students are usually moving in and out of their apartments. 

“By comparison with some other states, you would classify the protections in the Texas Property Code as less protective for tenants,” Serra said, noting that most protections were issue-or-circumstance specific.

Serra’s advice to UT students experiencing issues with housing was to take advantage of the free legal services the university provides. 

By the end of Valentine’s weekend, the apartment emailed to inform residents they would not be able to return to the building, and the complex requested relocated residents refrain from checking out of the hotel, paid for by American Campus. 

“At that point, me and my roommates were just joking around like, ‘we’re never gonna get to go back.’ We wanted to be wrong, but we somehow knew we weren’t,” Perez said.

According to the tenants’ union, multiple residents were told to pay March rent as usual even though they were still displaced.

Perez said that Crest at Pearl only began to mediate the situation and offer residents the opportunity to break their leases when she and the tenants’ union took the situation to social media. 

“Their delayed response is just proof that these corporations have these strategies to make it seem like the situation is out of their hands. In reality, they have a lot of control over these situations,” said Kayla Quilantang, the tenants’ union’s membership director.

After attention was called to the situation, American Campus offered to relocate students to other properties they own, including to units at The Block on 25th and meal vouchers for the dining hall at The Callaway House. However, students would have to pay the market rate for that new unit, which, for some, was more expensive.

Others were offered to relocate to different units in the same building they had just been evacuated from, with the option to sign a new lease at the market rate. 

Perez moved back into a new one-bedroom unit in the Crest at Pearl building because she had nowhere else to go; the alternative was another property that was even further from her classes. She said Crest at Pearl management originally promised she only had to pay base rent for the four-bedroom she was previously in, which was $1,240 per month. 

Instead, she said management has been backpedaling on their promise to rent the one-bedroom unit for her prior four-bedroom-unit price, insisting that she pay the market rate for the unit, which is $2,400 per month.

Perez said that American Campus gave residents $500 gift cards and moving assistance as compensation, but residents only receive this if they sign a new lease at one of their other 13 West Campus properties. 

“Part of me wants to just break my lease and wash my hands of the whole situation, but they’ve made it so difficult to do so,” Perez said.