Hi, my husband and I recently moved into an apartment in Texas. Immediately upon moving in we smelled an extremely strong cat urine odor. We reported it to management the day we moved in, and within two days a flooring company came to do an enzyme treatment. The enzyme treatment did not work, and they have no removed the laminate flooring to treat the subfloor.
Fast forward to two weeks later (today) and two subfloor acid treatments later, the smell and damage is still present. The property manager has reached out to us, and at first offered a $200 rent credit or another unit to move into. We were told that we could not reside in the unit for the week while the floor was being worked on and torn up, and that is why the other unit was offered. I asked if they would compensate us for movers to the new unit as we already paid for movers to move into this one. We were told corporate denied our request.
Now the options we were given as of this morning are to find somewhere else to stay M-F 8am-5pm and a $300 rent credit, or we move units ourselves and still receive a $300 rent credit.
We really need help as to what our options are legally. It cannot be fair for us to have to be out of our apartment for 9 hours of the day with only a $300 rent compensation! We also have two cats, so where would we go during that time? Please let me know what we should do!
I have lots of photos of the damage on the floor and video recordings of the flooring company and property manager speaking with us. I also have screenshots of texts with the property manager about the situation if that’s relevant.