TEMPLE, Texas — Residents living at The Retreat Apartments in Temple are fed up with the maintenance issues they claim to have been enduring for the last few years.
Now, a handful of residents are banning together to seek legal help to either break their lease without any effect to their credit or finally get their issues resolved.
"For the amount of money we pay, we deal with a lot. We don't have time to be getting lawyers and going back and forth about what we need fixed. We just need them to do what they said they would in our leasing contract and fix what's damaged in our units," Retreat Apartments resident Neyrice Brackens explained.
Her and her downstairs neighbor Ashley Huff say they've been dealing with issues with water leaks, mold and mildew in their units.
Huff says she's put in work orders to management about these issues but hasn't gotten anything fixed properly since she put the work orders in nearly two years ago.
"They come in, they patch things up and they go from there. It is never done right and all they do is take the cheap route and cover up what's damaged. It's dangerous for our kids to be breathing in mold. We are not living in livable conditions," Huff explained.
Another Retreat Apartments tenant Aubrianna Bishop says maintenance did come out to her apartment unit when she had a leak, but he showed up at one in the morning unannounced.
"My daughter was scared. They did not apologize and didn't say anything else. He just said that he needed to get into the apartment for the leak, that he had been in and out of our apartment for the entire week. So why come while we're asleep?" Bishop shared.
Both Huff, Brakens, and a handful of other residents are now taking their claims to a lawyer to either get out of their lease without breaking it or just getting things fixed properly in their units.
They wouldn't mind leaving but don't want the financial burden of moving and don't want them breaking their leasing contract to negatively impact their credit score.
As they hope for things to be resolved, they hope situations like this don't happen to any more people in the area.
"They need to do better and we want Temple to be aware of these apartments and what they're doing and for them not to be stuck in a situation like us." Brackens said.
6 News went to the Retreat Apartments to hear their side of these claims but no one was at the office. When 6 News called, they did not answer or respond to any messages.