Blog from Sidney Beaty and Erin Hahn
Throughout a series of blogs this year, we have shown that eviction filings in Bexar and Harris Counties are not evenly distributed across the rental market. Instead, they are concentrated among a relatively small number of rental properties and an even smaller number of owners. We have shown that for some landlords, many of whom benefit from public subsidy, eviction is not a last resort, but a routine part of operations.
But court records only tell part of the story. An eviction filing says little about what life at a given property is like before a tenant steps into a courtroom. To better understand that experience, we looked beyond eviction filings and examined property maintenance records for the highest-evicting properties in Bexar and Harris Counties.
We found that some of the same San Antonio properties that produce the highest numbers of eviction filings also experience persistent maintenance problems. While not every high-evicting property has substantial code violations, the overlap is too common to ignore. This suggests that housing instability is driven not only by the threat of eviction, but also by the quality of housing itself.
However, it is harder to understand the landscape of local low-income housing issues and hold problem properties accountable when code complaint data is less complete and accessible. In the course of working on this series throughout 2026, we have seen some cities, like Austin and San Antonio, produce usable and informative data while other cities, like Houston, have far more ground to make up in data transparency to hold substandard properties accountable.
These findings align with a growing body of research: at some properties, poor conditions and high eviction rates are closely intertwined and, in some cases, built into the same operating model. This is a public health issue that can be remediated through policy.
Housing instability is a public health issue
Housing affordability often dominates conversations about housing policy, but housing stability is not just about whether someone can afford to keep a roof over their head. It is also about whether that roof is safe.
A home that is unsafe, unhealthy, or poorly maintained can have lasting consequences for the people living there. Physical housing conditions, like evictions, can have a substantial impact on physical and mental health. Research has linked substandard housing conditions (including mold, water intrusion, structural deterioration, pest infestations, poor ventilation, and inadequate maintenance) to asthma, respiratory illness, injuries, chronic stress, anxiety, and other adverse physical and mental health outcomes.
For many families, moving to a better apartment that may be outside of their budget is simply not an option. No family chooses mold, leaks, pest infestations, or unsafe living conditions because they are desirable – they often accept the best available option. Eviction records, poor credit, criminal histories, and tenant screening practices can leave households with few alternatives. In our previous post, we found that some households received eviction filings at multiple high-evicting apartment communities within the same year, suggesting they were limited to renting at other properties with similar issues.
If those same properties also allow persistent maintenance problems, tenants may find themselves cycling between housing that is both unstable and unhealthy. Poor conditions are hard to challenge when tenants fear retaliation. Properties can more easily evict tenants and defer maintenance when tenants have nowhere else to go.
In some cases, the connection between evictions and conditions is not hidden – it is an openly stated strategy. One of Bexar County’s most prominent high-evicting owners, Shippy Properties (also known as Quantum Leap), has publicly described his wealth-building formula of investing in older, lower-cost apartment communities, cutting maintenance costs, and charging tenants new fees. In his own writing, founder David Shippy refers to these properties as “cash machines” and describes residents as a “captive audience.”
When renters are forced to choose between remaining in unhealthy housing or facing higher housing costs, eviction, or even homelessness, poor housing conditions become more than a maintenance issue. They become a public health issue.
Some top evictors in Bexar County do not maintain their properties
To better understand whether eviction activity and housing conditions intersect, we analyzed City of San Antonio code enforcement data for Bexar County’s highest-evicting properties between 2022 and 2024.
Some of the county’s highest-evicting properties generated property maintenance cases year after year, while others had sharp increases in cases following ownership changes. The same owners that appeared repeatedly throughout this blog series also emerged in the maintenance data.
Among the most notable examples:
- Palatia Apartments recorded by far the largest number of property maintenance cases among Bexar County’s top evictors, with 469 cases in 2023 and 382 in 2024, compared to 110 in 2022 before its ownership change.
- Icon Apartments saw maintenance cases more than triple – from 29 in 2022 to 91 in 2024 – despite being one of the smallest properties on the list with just 240 units.
- Copper Mill Apartments, a tax-exempt Public Facility Corporation property partnered with LYND, nearly tripled its number of maintenance cases following its 2023 acquisition.
- The five Shippy-owned properties among Bexar County’s 30 top-evicting properties account for 114 property maintenance cases in 2024 – over half of those at Indigo Apartments alone.
Includes code violations for property maintenance, fire general, dangerous premises, or water concerns that were either closed or pending resolution during this period. Five of Bexar County’s top 30 high-evicting properties are not shown above. Four properties (Meadows Apartments, Montage Apartments, The Arcadian, Bristol at Somerset, and Frontera Crossing) are located outside the City of San Antonio. A total unit count for Crestwood Estates Mobile Home Park was not available from the Bexar Appraisal District.
The code enforcement issues at the top-evicting properties are not minor concerns. These issues directly impact tenants’ health and safety – water issues, structural hazards, unsafe living conditions, etc. These patterns are not limited to a single property or owner. They appear across multiple high-evicting properties in Bexar County.
The City of San Antonio’s Proactive Apartment Inspection Program (PAIP) provides enhanced oversight of apartment communities with persistent code enforcement issues. Four of Bexar County’s highest-evicting properties are currently enrolled, accounting for 20% of all properties currently in the program. Some properties have been enrolled in the program for years without graduating, suggesting ongoing health and safety concerns despite increased city oversight. Palatia Apartments has been enrolled for three years.
Lack of transparency in Houston makes accountability difficult
We also reviewed a variety of City of Houston complaint datasets ranging from the early 2000s to 2026. However, complaint data for Houston is a bit more difficult to access and understand.
Houston’s recently-approved apartment inspection ordinance requires properties with 10 or more health, fire, or building code violations in a six month period to register for enhanced oversight and proactive inspections. It is not currently possible to get a comprehensive dataset of health, fire, and building code complaints.
Two types of data are easily available for Houston: 311 complaints and Community Code Enforcement cases. There are many well-documented issues with 311 data, including the fact that 311 systems reflect patterns of civic engagement and neighborhood composition more than underlying need. They also include complaints that do not become fully investigated cases (e.g., if there is not enough information to investigate the complaint), but do not include code complaint cases that originate outside of 311, like issues found during habitability inspections.
In 2024, there were roughly 600 311 complaints associated with the top 30 evicting properties, around 280 of which are related to health, fire, or building codes or multifamily habitability concerns. Sterling Point alone accounted for about one-fifth of these complaints, including reports of pest infestations, broken A/C, mold, and leaks.
While 311 data does not provide a lot of detail on case investigations or resolutions, some 311 complaints may not be fully investigated due to evictions. Five health code complaints at four top-evicting properties for mold, pests, and broken A/C were marked “service completed” and state that the tenant was evicted in the resolution notes. An additional eight complaints across four properties were closed because the complainant was not a current tenant. These could include valid complaints from tenants who left following an eviction.
While 311 data has its issues, reviewing 311 records is one of the only ways to get a high-level picture of serious code issues in Houston. City complaint information is heavily siloed and is only available upon request to the department overseeing that specific issue. Even then, health, fire, and building code cases are only available on a property-by-property basis. The most comprehensive data available are Community Code Enforcement complaints, most of which are nuisance violations for issues like excessive trash or weeds on the property.
A 2024-2025 dataset of Community Code Enforcement complaint cases included just 940 cases at multifamily properties citywide. Only five of the top-evicting Harris County properties had any cases at all, accounting for eight cases total.
The lack of cases and complaint datasets in Houston is surprising given findings from other major Texas cities. The City of Austin, for example, openly publishes complaint data that can be compared to the top evicting properties in 2024 listed from BASTA’s Eviction Dashboard. Austin’s top-evicting properties account for 167 complaint cases in 2024, 98 of which resulted in confirmed violations. All but one of the top-evicting properties that could be matched to both Austin and Travis County data had complaint cases in 2024 and more than half of the properties had violations.
Austin also has a program for problem properties with repeat conditions issues. One-third of the 2024 top-evicting Austin properties are currently in the City of Austin’s Repeat Offender Program (ROP), accounting for 153 structure condition violations in 2024 and 2025.
Unlike in San Antonio and Austin, the preliminary list of 12 properties to be enrolled in Houston’s new inspection program does not include any 2024 top-evicting properties (though there are some familiar names). The lack of accessible fire, health, and building code complaint data makes it difficult to determine whether this reflects differences in actual housing conditions between top evictors in Texas’ major cities or gaps in Houston’s data and enforcement system.
More and better public complaint data is necessary to understand how evictions and poor physical conditions interact and impact low-income tenants at multifamily rental properties in Houston.
Looking forward: data and policy needs
When tenants live in unsafe housing conditions and simultaneously face the constant threat of eviction, meaningful accountability is nearly impossible without public oversight. Families have little leverage to demand repairs or challenge unsafe conditions when doing so could jeopardize their housing.
But local code enforcement can play a role in ensuring that the health consequences of substandard housing are not inevitable. They are the result of policy choices about housing quality, enforcement, and tenant protections. Local and state governments can implement changes to reduce the harmful effects of both substandard housing and housing instability more generally. But access to information is an important first step.
One of the clearest lessons from this series is that the local city or county datasets needed to understand housing instability are often fragmented across different departments, incomplete, in incompatible formats, or only available by request. Eviction filings, ownership records, subsidy information, and property maintenance data each tell part of the story, but it is only when they are viewed together that broader patterns begin to emerge.
That kind of transparency should not require months of public information requests, data cleaning, and cross-referencing. Tenants, policymakers, researchers, and advocates all benefit from having a clearer picture of which properties repeatedly appear across eviction filings, poor housing conditions, and public investment. Better data is not just a research tool; it is essential for accountability.
Throughout this blog series we have also highlighted several policy changes that are not only effective in preventing unnecessary eviction, but could also help address issues with physical conditions.
- Rental registries that connect ownership, eviction, and property condition data can help identify repeat offenders and improve accountability.
- “Clean hands” policies can prevent landlords with unresolved health and safety violations from pursuing evictions until hazards are addressed. A city could require that properties maintain basic standards (“clean hands”) in order to remain on the rental registry and ban properties not on the rental registry from filing for eviction.
- Allowing tenants to bring remedy and repair claims as valid counterclaims against landlords who fail to maintain standards while filing for eviction can also help prevent eviction until hazards are addressed.
- Expanding access to legal representation can also help tenants assert their rights when facing both unsafe housing conditions and eviction.
Safe housing and stable housing cannot be separated. Reducing displacement requires more than eviction prevention. It also requires ensuring that families have access to housing that is healthy, well maintained, and accountable to the communities it serves.
Note: Because code enforcement is under the jurisdiction of local cities as opposed to counties, complaint data was not available for all top evictors. This analysis covers properties that fall within both county and city boundaries. San Antonio provided all code violation case records from 2022-2024 in response to a public information request. Our analysis includes cases categorized as property maintenance, fire general, dangerous premises, or water concerns that were either closed or pending resolution during this period. City of Houston data came from public datasets and multiple open records requests as described in the blog.