Houston in 2026: The Housing Squeeze Is Real, and It Is Hitting Specific Families the Hardest
If you are reading this in Houston, Harris County, or anywhere along the I-69 corridor — if you opened this page at the kitchen table after staring at a rent increase, an eviction notice, or a homeowners insurance bill that jumped 10% in twelve months — this page is for you. We are Attorney911, The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC, and we work personal injury and wrongful death cases across Texas. Housing affordability law is not our practice area, and we will say so plainly in a moment. But the housing crisis in Houston creates real injuries, and where unsafe housing conditions cross into physical harm, that is exactly the fight we know how to wage.
The Kinder Institute for Urban Research released its 2026 State of Housing Report, and the numbers describe what you already feel. More than half of Houston renters are cost-burdened — spending over 30% of their income on housing. In Harris County as a whole, the figure is 51.2%. In the city of Houston, it is 52.6%. These are not abstract percentages. They are families choosing between rent and groceries, between the electric bill and the bus pass, between staying in the neighborhood they grew up in and moving out to a county they cannot afford either.
Behind the percentages is a geography. The 16% drop in Black homeownership between 2023 and 2024 is concentrated east of I-69 and TX-288 — in Third Ward, Fifth Ward, Sunnyside, and parts of South Houston, the same corridors that were redlined in the 1930s and that have never recovered the wealth they should have built. The driver is not mysterious. It is rising insurance costs in a Gulf Coast county that is hammered by hurricanes and floods. It is the absence of generational wealth that white Houston families passed down through property. It is institutional investors with access to cash purchases, outbidding individual buyers and turning single-family blocks into rental portfolios.
Eviction filings in Harris County remain at roughly one per ten households. The Justice of the Peace courts process the volume. Texas has no rent stabilization, and a 2015 state law (Tex. Loc. Gov’t Code § 214.902) prohibits cities like Houston from passing one. Average two-bedroom rents have climbed past $1,400 a month. Homeowners insurance premiums keep rising, and the Texas Legislature just passed two bills — HB 1738 and SB 2220 in the 88th Regular Session — trying to respond to a Gulf Coast insurance market that has priced some families out of their own homes.
This page does three things. First, it breaks down what the Kinder Institute data actually means for the people living it. Second, it explains what Texas law does and does not do for renters, owners, and families facing displacement. Third, it points you to the legal-aid and fair-housing resources that actually handle eviction defense and housing discrimination — because we do not. And at the end, it is honest with you about the narrow but real connection between the housing crisis and the personal injury cases we do handle: when unsafe housing conditions cause physical harm, that is when you call us.
What “Cost-Burdened” Actually Means for a Houston Family
The federal standard for “cost-burdened” is paying more than 30% of your gross income on housing costs — rent, or mortgage plus property taxes, insurance, and utilities. The federal standard for “severely cost-burdened” is paying more than 50%. Both are widely used by HUD, the Census Bureau, and researchers like the Kinder Institute. They are not arbitrary lines. They are the threshold at which a family stops being able to absorb a single $400 emergency — a car repair, a medical copay, a broken air conditioner in July — without falling behind on rent or going into debt.
When 52.6% of Houston renters cross that line, the consequences are not just financial. They show up in health outcomes, in school stability for children, in the ability to keep a job without a reliable address, in the cumulative stress that drives ER visits and mental health crises. The cost-burden statistic is a public-health statistic, an education statistic, and a workforce statistic — not just a housing statistic.
For Harris County’s median renter household, paying 30% of income on housing means a rent ceiling that is already below the average two-bedroom asking price. The math is simple and unforgiving: if the median renter income in the county is roughly $42,000 a year, then 30% of income is about $12,600 — or $1,050 a month. The average two-bedroom in Houston has climbed past $1,400, according to Houston Apartment Association data from 2025 and 2026. The gap is the squeeze. It is not a temporary blip. It is the structural condition of the market.
What this means in daily life is that the renter in Manchester, the family in Sunnyside, the young couple in Denver Harbor are all running the same calculation: can we make it work, or do we leave? Many are leaving — to Liberty, to Conroe, to Cleveland, Texas, to Baytown, to places where rent is lower but the job is farther and the bus does not run. The cost-burden number is what the Kinder Institute is measuring. The displacement it produces is what the 16% homeownership drop east of I-69 is documenting.
The Geography of the Black Homeownership Drop: I-69, TX-288, and the Long Shadow of Redlining
Houston’s racial geography was drawn by federal policy. Home Owners’ Loan Corporation maps from the 1930s shaded neighborhoods east of downtown — Third Ward, Fifth Ward, Sunnyside, parts of South Houston — in red. Red meant “do not lend.” The federal government, through HOLC and later the Federal Housing Administration, steered decades of mortgage capital away from those neighborhoods and into the white subdivisions west of Main Street and south of Bellaire. The wealth built in those subdivisions was equity in homes that appreciated, were inherited, and were sold. The wealth denied east of I-69 never accumulated.
Generations later, the same corridor is the area where Black homeownership is collapsing fastest. The Kinder Institute’s 16% single-year drop from 2023 to 2024 is not a sudden shock. It is the visible surface of a longer trend: institutional investors buying single-family homes in bulk, paying cash, and turning them into rental properties. When a hedge fund-backed LLC can offer all-cash, 30-day close, above asking, the individual buyer trying to finance through an FHA loan with 3.5% down cannot compete. The individual buyer loses the home. The block turns into a rental portfolio. The neighborhood changes character within a generation.
Three factors compound the displacement. The first is insurance. A 10% annual increase in homeowners insurance is not a single crisis — it is a compounding one. A home that costs $3,200 a year to insure this year costs $3,520 next year and $3,872 the year after. For a Black family earning median income in a neighborhood where property values are already lower, the insurance bill alone can push the mortgage out of reach. The carrier does not care about race, but the rate the carrier charges is calibrated to the flood zone, the wind zone, and the claim history of the property — and those risk scores track the geography of historical disinvestment because the housing stock is older, the drainage is worse, and the proximity to the bayou is closer.
The second factor is generational wealth. The white family in West University whose grandparents bought in 1960 for $25,000 inherits a home now worth $1.2 million, tax-free under the Texas homestead exemption, with the equity available for a down payment on the next home for the children. The Black family in Third Ward whose grandparents were denied a mortgage in 1960 has no comparable equity to pass down. They start every generation from zero. When a 10% insurance spike hits, they have no cushion.
The third factor is institutional buying. Single-family rental platforms — Invitation Homes, Progress Residential, and the private equity-backed LLCs that have flooded into Houston since 2020 — have made the Sunnyside-to-Southside corridor a target market. The math that drives them: Houston’s rent-to-price ratio is favorable, the population is growing, and the barrier to converting a homeowner neighborhood into a renter neighborhood is just capital and the patience to outbid individuals. The result, captured in the Kinder Institute data, is a measurable drop in Black homeownership inside a single calendar year.
The Insurance Crisis: Why Your Premium Jumped 10%, and What Texas Is Doing About It
Homeowners insurance in Texas is in crisis. The 10% annual increase cited in the Kinder Institute report is below the national coastal average, but the cumulative effect over the last five years has been brutal. Some Houston homeowners have seen their premiums double. Some carriers have stopped writing new policies in the county entirely. Some have non-renewed existing policies, leaving homeowners scrambling to find coverage before their mortgage company forces-places an expensive policy on them.
Three forces drive the rate increases. The first is reinsurance. The international reinsurance market — the companies that insure the insurance companies — raised prices sharply after Hurricane Harvey in 2017, then again after Laura in 2020, then again after the 2024 season. Texas carriers passed those costs through to policyholders. The second is catastrophic loss frequency. The Gulf Coast gets hurricanes, but it also gets severe hailstorms, tornadoes, and the slow-moving tropical systems that drop twenty inches of rain on already-saturated ground. The third is litigation. Texas has been a hotspot for homeowners insurance litigation for a decade. The carriers argue that frivolous claims drive up their costs. The plaintiffs’ bar argues that carriers deny legitimate claims and force families to sue. Both can be true. The Legislature has tried to address it.
In the 88th Regular Session, the Texas Legislature passed two bills aimed at the insurance market. HB 1738 addressed rate filing and review processes at the Texas Department of Insurance. SB 2220 addressed claims handling and timelines. Neither bill brought premiums down. Neither was designed to. They were structural changes meant to stabilize a market that was losing carriers. The Houston homeowner paying the 10% increase this year did not see a rebate or a rate cap. They saw their escrow payment go up, and they felt it.
What can a Houston homeowner do? First, document everything. Photograph your home’s condition, inside and out, dated. Save every estimate, every contractor report, every adjuster communication. When the carrier sends their adjuster, you are entitled to have your own contractor present. When the carrier offers a lowball, you are entitled to dispute it in writing, with citations to the policy language. When the carrier denies a claim that is clearly covered, that is not a final answer — that is the beginning of a fight, and the Texas Insurance Code (Chapter 541, the Unfair Methods of Competition and Unfair or Deceptive Acts or Practices provisions) gives you weapons. The Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003 gives you two years from the date the claim was wrongfully denied to file suit. Use them.
The Eviction Landscape in Harris County: One Filing for Every Ten Households
Texas Property Code Chapter 24 governs residential evictions. The process is fast. A landlord files a citation at the Justice of the Peace court in the precinct where the property sits. The constable serves it. The tenant has a tight window to answer — usually five days from service, though the exact timeline depends on how service was made. If the tenant does not answer, the landlord gets a default judgment and can have the constable remove the tenant. If the tenant does answer, the case is set for hearing, and the Justice of the Peace rules.
Harris County processes an enormous volume of these cases — hundreds of thousands of filings in recent years, ranging across all sixteen JP precincts. The cumulative effect is roughly one eviction filing for every ten renter households in the county each year. Most filings do not result in a physical lockout; many are settled, dismissed, or resolved by the tenant moving voluntarily. But the filing itself is the leverage. Once a citation is on a tenant’s door, the clock is running, and the tenant often does not know what to do, does not have a lawyer, and does not realize there are defenses that might apply — habitability issues, improper notice, retaliation, disability accommodation failures, or federal CARES Act and Emergency Rental Assistance program protections that have not been waived.
What Texas does not do is the larger story. Texas has no rent stabilization. Tex. Loc. Gov’t Code § 214.902, passed in 2015 and amended since, expressly prohibits cities from adopting local rent control. Houston cannot cap annual rent increases. Austin cannot either. The only Texas city that had rent control — San Antonio, on a small stock of older properties — had it grandfathered before the state preemption. A landlord in Houston can raise the rent from $1,200 to $1,500 in a single renewal cycle. The only practical check is the market, and the market is not kind to a tenant who cannot afford to move.
The legal-aid resources that handle eviction defense in Harris County include Lone Star Legal Aid (713-652-0077), Houston Volunteer Lawyers, and the Houston Bar Association’s LegalLine. These are the people who go to JP court with tenants, raise habitability defenses, negotiate with landlords, and stop lockouts. We do not do this work. We can tell you that it exists, and that calling one of these organizations the same day an eviction citation arrives is the single most important step you can take.
What Texas Law Does and Does Not Do for Housing Discrimination
The Texas Fair Housing Act, codified at Tex. Prop. Code Chapter 301, prohibits discrimination in housing on the basis of race, color, national origin, religion, sex (including gender identity and sexual orientation, after 2021 amendments), familial status, and disability. The language mirrors the federal Fair Housing Act, 42 U.S.C. § 3601 et seq. Both laws recognize disparate-impact claims — the theory that a facially neutral policy can still be illegal housing discrimination if it has a discriminatory effect and is not justified by business necessity. The U.S. Supreme Court confirmed disparate-impact liability under the federal FHA in Inclusive Communities Project, L.C. v. Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs, 135 S. Ct. 2507 (2015). Texas state courts have applied the same standard to claims under Chapter 301.
Disparate impact is the legal theory that fits the Kinder Institute data most directly. A landlord or property management company that uses a tenant screening criterion that excludes a disproportionate share of Black applicants — criminal history, eviction record, credit score, source of income — may be liable under the FHA and the TFHA even if the company never wrote a rule that says “no Black applicants.” The statistical pattern, the lack of business necessity, and the availability of less discriminatory alternatives are the elements of the claim.
What the law does not do is provide a private right of action that is easy to pursue without counsel. FHA and TFHA cases require administrative filing with HUD or the Texas Workforce Commission Civil Rights Division before a lawsuit can proceed, and the litigation is document-intensive and expert-driven. The organizations that handle these cases in Houston are the Houston Fair Housing Center, Lone Star Legal Aid, and the Texas Civil Rights Project. These are the groups that know how to turn a statistical disparity into a complaint, and a complaint into a settlement or verdict.
42 U.S.C. § 3604(f)(1) makes it unlawful “to refuse to sell or rent after the making of a bona fide offer, or to refuse to negotiate for the sale or rental of, or otherwise make unavailable or deny, a dwelling to any person because of race, color, religion, sex, familial status, or national origin.” Tex. Prop. Code § 301.021 imposes the same prohibition under Texas law. Disparate-impact claims under both statutes are governed by the three-step burden-shifting framework the Supreme Court confirmed in Inclusive Communities Project in 2015.
When Housing Conditions Become a Personal Injury Case
This is where our work at Attorney911 enters the picture. The housing affordability crisis is a public-policy problem that requires public-policy responses — more affordable housing supply, stronger tenant protections, fair-lending enforcement, and insurance reform. We are personal injury and wrongful death trial lawyers. We are not the people who solve the affordability problem.
What we do solve, every week, is the case where a landlord, property owner, contractor, or property manager knew about a dangerous condition, failed to fix it, and a family member got hurt. That is the narrow but real connection between this page and the work that pays our firm’s bills. When the housing crisis is also a safety crisis, the personal injury system is the lever we pull.
The conditions that cross from housing into injury are well-documented. Toxic mold exposure in an apartment the landlord refused to remediate. Lead paint poisoning in a child in a pre-1978 property the owner failed to disclose. Carbon monoxide poisoning from a faulty furnace. A stair collapse or balcony failure from poor maintenance. A fire from faulty wiring the landlord knew was failing. A slip-and-fall on a common-area floor the property manager let deteriorate. An asbestos exposure during an unpermitted renovation. A dog attack in a common area the landlord failed to secure. None of these is a housing-affordability problem. All of them are premises liability cases, and all of them belong in our office.
Texas law gives the injured person two years from the date of injury to file a personal injury lawsuit. That deadline is in Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003, the general two-year statute of limitations for personal injury claims in Texas. There are exceptions — minors, incapacitated persons, the discovery rule in some cases — but the two-year clock is the rule, and it runs from the date of the injury, not the date of the medical diagnosis or the date the landlord finally admitted fault. If your housing condition has already caused physical harm, the deadline is already running.
What a case like this is worth depends on the injury. A child with documented lead poisoning that produces cognitive deficits has a lifetime of special education, medical monitoring, and lost earning capacity — a number in the seven figures. A young adult with toxic mold illness who now has chronic respiratory compromise has a different but still substantial damages profile. A family that loses a member to a building fire or a carbon monoxide leak has a wrongful death claim with the full measure of damages Texas allows — including the value of the life itself, loss of earning capacity, loss of consortium, and in egregious cases, punitive damages against a landlord or owner whose conduct rose to gross negligence. We have seen oilfield injury cases settle in the seven figures. We have seen TBI cases and amputation cases in the same range. We have seen the wrong kind of housing case climb into seven figures as well. The exact number depends on the facts. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes.
The Evidence Clock: What Exists, Who Holds It, and How Fast It Dies
Evidence in a housing-injury case is perishable, and the defense knows it. The photos of the mold stain on the bathroom ceiling can be repainted by the landlord the week after the tenant moves out. The faulty wiring that caused the fire is documented in the fire marshal’s report and then buried in the rebuild. The maintenance request the tenant submitted three times in writing is on a server that the property management company controls. The contractor’s pre-installation inspection notes are in the contractor’s truck, which is sold when the company closes.
Here is what exists, who holds it, and how fast it dies. Medical records are in your provider’s system and exist permanently, but the documentation of the connection between the housing condition and the injury is built from the early chart notes. Get to a doctor immediately if you have not already. Photographs and videos of the condition are critical — date-stamped, multiple angles, with something showing the date in the frame. Lease agreements, move-in inspection reports, repair request emails, and text messages with the landlord are all discoverable and all perishable in the landlord’s hands. Code enforcement complaints filed with the City of Houston or Harris County produce public records that we can demand. Fire marshal reports, building inspection reports, and contractor invoices related to the property exist in agency and contractor files.
The preservation letter goes out the day you call us. We send a written demand to the landlord, the property owner, the property management company, the contractor, and the insurance carrier to preserve every document, photograph, video, communication, and physical evidence related to the property and the condition that caused the injury. The demand cites Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.051 (spoliation and the duty to preserve evidence) and notifies them that intentional destruction can support an inference of guilt and a separate claim for spoliation. The letter does not get the evidence back if it is already gone. It does set up the consequences if it disappears after the letter arrives.
For Texas personal injury cases specifically, the two-year statute of limitations under § 16.003 is the legal deadline. The evidence deadline is shorter. We move in week one to freeze what we can, demand what exists, and reconstruct what has already disappeared. That is the work that has to happen before the discovery process, before the depositions, before the trial — and it is the work most firms never start until it is too late.
The Insurance Adjuster Playbook: What the Carrier Will Do, and What You Do Back
When a homeowners insurance claim involves a serious loss — a fire, a hurricane, a flood, a structural collapse — the insurance company deploys a playbook. The playbook is not a secret. It is the same playbook used on every claim, in every state, with local variations. Knowing it before it runs on you is half the fight.
Play 1: The friendly first call. Within 48 to 72 hours of the loss, a claims adjuster calls. The tone is warm. The questions are pointed. Where were you when the loss happened? When did you first notice the damage? Have you had any previous damage to this property? Have you ever filed a claim before? The call is being recorded. Anything you say about pre-existing conditions, about the timeline, about how much you remember, can be used later to deny or reduce the claim. The counter: do not give a recorded statement to your own insurance carrier without counsel present. Tex. Ins. Code § 541.060 protects you from retaliation for invoking this right, and a written statement you control is always better than a recording the carrier controls.
Play 2: The lowball initial offer. The first check arrives faster than you expected. It is also lower than you expected. The adjuster explains that the policy limits the recovery, that the depreciation calculation reduces the payout, that the deductible applies, that the scope of covered damage is narrower than you thought. The check often comes with a release printed on the back — a signature that ends your claim against this policy forever. The counter: do not sign a release without reading it, do not cash a check you think is too low, and do not accept the first scope of damage as final. Independent adjusters and licensed public adjusters can re-scope the loss. Building code upgrade coverage, Ordinance or Law coverage, and contents coverage are often missed in the first offer.
Play 3: The denial by category. When the carrier is going to deny the claim, they do not say “we do not believe you.” They say the damage was caused by a peril not covered (flood instead of wind, gradual deterioration instead of sudden loss), or that the policy was not in force, or that the insured failed to cooperate, or that the documentation is insufficient. The denial letter is a template. The counter: the Texas Insurance Code Chapter 541 gives you a private right of action for unfair settlement practices. If the denial is not supported by the policy language and the facts, the carrier’s denial can become the basis of a bad-faith claim that pays the original loss plus attorneys’ fees and, in egregious cases, treble damages under Tex. Ins. Code § 541.152.
Play 4: The delay until desperation. A family that cannot live in a damaged home while the claim is being processed is a family that will eventually accept whatever the carrier offers just to end it. The counter: the prompt-pay provisions of Tex. Ins. Code Chapter 542 impose statutory deadlines on the carrier’s handling of the claim, and an unreasonable delay can support interest and penalty payments on top of the claim itself.
These four plays are not unique to housing losses. They are the same plays we see on commercial trucking cases, on car wrecks, on refinery injuries. Lupe Peña spent years inside a national insurance defense firm before he joined our side. He has watched these plays run on the other side of the table. He knows what the playbook looks like from the inside, and that is the perspective we bring to every claim we handle.
Where to Turn for Help in Houston — And What the Firm Does and Does Not Do
We are a personal injury and wrongful death firm. We do not handle landlord-tenant disputes. We do not handle eviction defense. We do not handle Texas Fair Housing Act litigation. We do not negotiate rent reductions. We do not file for emergency rental assistance. Those services exist, and the organizations that provide them are listed below. If you are facing one of those situations, start with them — not with us.
For eviction defense, call Lone Star Legal Aid at 713-652-0077 the same day an eviction citation is served. They handle eviction defense in Harris County JP courts. For tenants facing lockout, the Houston Bar Association’s LegalLine and Houston Volunteer Lawyers operate pro bono clinics. For housing discrimination, contact the Houston Fair Housing Center and Texas Civil Rights Project. For disaster recovery and FEMA appeals, Disaster Legal Services and the Houston Office of Emergency Management can help. For rent assistance and utility assistance, Houston Health Department and United Way 211 (dial 2-1-1) connect to current local programs.
What we do handle, and what we handle every day, is the case where unsafe housing caused physical injury. Mold illness from a landlord’s failure to remediate. Lead poisoning in a child. Carbon monoxide from a faulty furnace. A stair collapse. A fire from faulty wiring. A balcony failure. An injury to a construction worker on a residential renovation. A wrong-site excavation that hit a gas line. A dog attack on a tenant or invitee. If the housing condition crossed into physical harm, we want to hear from you. The two-year statute of limitations under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003 is the legal deadline. We will tell you on the first call whether we can help.
We also handle the cases that intersect with the housing crisis in less obvious ways. The driver who is rushing through a neighborhood to make a delivery and strikes a child walking home from the bus stop. The contractor who is uninsured and causes an injury on a residential site. The rideshare driver who hits a pedestrian in a crosswalk. The 18-wheeler whose brakes fail on I-69 and crashes into a home. The refinery worker exposed to a toxic chemical. The offshore worker injured on a Gulf platform. The construction worker who falls from a height. The brain injury that changes a family’s life. The wrongful death that leaves a family grieving and circling. We handle these cases. We do not handle evictions.
Frequently Asked Questions
What does it mean to be “cost-burdened” as a renter?
A renter is “cost-burdened” when more than 30% of gross household income goes to rent. A renter is “severely cost-burdened” when more than 50% of income goes to rent. The 30% threshold is the federal benchmark used by HUD, the Census Bureau, and most housing research, including the Kinder Institute’s 2026 State of Housing Report. The 52.6% figure for Houston means more than half of city renters cross the 30% line, and a substantial share of those cross the 50% line as well.
Is rent control legal in Texas?
No, not for new properties. Tex. Loc. Gov’t Code § 214.902 prohibits cities in Texas from adopting local rent stabilization or rent control ordinances, with narrow grandfather exceptions for the very few programs that existed before the state preemption. Houston, like every other Texas city, cannot cap annual rent increases. A landlord can raise the rent at lease renewal by any amount, and the only practical check is the market and the tenant’s ability to find comparable housing.
What can I do if I am being evicted in Harris County?
Call Lone Star Legal Aid at 713-652-0077 the same day you are served with the eviction citation. Texas Property Code Chapter 24 gives a tight answer window, usually five days from service, and missing it can result in a default judgment and lockout. A lawyer from Lone Star Legal Aid or another legal-aid provider can raise defenses — improper notice, retaliation, habitability failures, disability accommodation failures, federal emergency rental assistance protections — that a tenant facing the court unrepresented would not know to raise.
How do I report housing discrimination in Houston?
File a complaint with HUD online at hud.gov or with the Texas Workforce Commission Civil Rights Division. You generally have one year from the alleged discriminatory act to file a HUD complaint and two years to file under the Texas Fair Housing Act. The Houston Fair Housing Center and Lone Star Legal Aid can help you prepare and file the complaint. Disparate-impact claims — where a facially neutral policy has a discriminatory effect — are recognized under both federal and Texas law following the Supreme Court’s 2015 decision in Inclusive Communities Project, L.C. v. Texas Department of Housing and Community Affairs.
Why are homeowners insurance rates going up so much in Houston?
Three forces drive the increases. Reinsurance costs have risen sharply after a decade of major Gulf Coast storms. The frequency and severity of catastrophic weather in Harris County has increased losses. And litigation over denied or underpaid claims has raised the carriers’ cost of doing business. The Texas Legislature passed HB 1738 and SB 2220 in 2025 (88R) to address structural issues in the market, but neither bill capped premiums. For most Houston homeowners, the practical response is to document the home’s condition, shop coverage annually, and dispute lowball or denied claims aggressively, including under Tex. Ins. Code Chapter 541’s unfair settlement practices provisions.
Can I sue my landlord for unsafe living conditions in Texas?
You can sue for physical injury caused by unsafe conditions if the landlord knew or should have known about the danger and failed to fix it. That is a premises liability case, and it is the kind of case we handle. The two-year statute of limitations under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003 applies. You cannot generally sue your landlord in Texas for the condition itself (mold, lead, code violations) without a personal injury — habitability claims in Texas are limited and the remedies are narrow. But when the unsafe condition crosses into physical harm, the personal injury system is the lever we pull.
What is the statute of limitations for a personal injury case in Texas?
Two years from the date of injury under Tex. Civ. Prac. & Rem. Code § 16.003. There are exceptions for minors, for incapacitated persons, and in some cases under the discovery rule, but the two-year clock is the rule and it starts running on the date the injury occurs. If the housing condition has already caused physical harm, the deadline is already running. We will tell you on the first call whether we can help and what the timing looks like for your specific case.
Does Attorney911 handle landlord-tenant disputes, evictions, or fair housing cases?
No. We are a personal injury and wrongful death firm. We do not handle landlord-tenant disputes, eviction defense, Texas Fair Housing Act litigation, rent negotiations, or emergency rental assistance applications. For those matters, we refer to Lone Star Legal Aid (713-652-0077), the Houston Fair Housing Center, the Houston Bar Association’s LegalLine, and Houston Volunteer Lawyers. If the housing condition caused you or a family member physical injury, that is when you call us.
What should I do if my homeowners insurance claim is denied?
Do not accept the denial as final. The denial letter cites a reason — excluded peril, no coverage, insufficient documentation, late notice. Each of those reasons can be challenged. Request the entire claim file from the carrier in writing, including adjuster notes and internal correspondence. Get an independent damage scope and an independent public adjuster if the loss is large. If the denial is not supported by the policy and the facts, file a complaint with the Texas Department of Insurance and consider a bad-faith claim under Tex. Ins. Code Chapter 541, which can pay the original loss plus attorneys’ fees and, in egregious cases, up to three times the actual damages. The two-year statute of limitations under § 16.003 applies to the bad-faith claim.
Where can Houston renters and homeowners find free legal help?
For eviction defense: Lone Star Legal Aid at 713-652-0077. For housing discrimination: the Houston Fair Housing Center and Texas Civil Rights Project. For general civil legal aid: Houston Volunteer Lawyers and the Houston Bar Association’s LegalLine. For disaster recovery: Disaster Legal Services and the City of Houston Office of Emergency Management. For rent and utility assistance: dial 2-1-1 to reach United Way’s resource line. The Houston Apartment Association and the Texas Apartment Association also publish tenant-rights resources for renters.
What kinds of housing-injury cases does the firm actually take?
Premises liability cases where a landlord, property owner, property manager, or contractor knew about a dangerous condition and failed to fix it, and a person was hurt. Toxic mold illness from a known mold problem the landlord refused to remediate. Lead paint poisoning in a child in a pre-1978 property. Carbon monoxide from a faulty furnace or water heater. Fires from faulty wiring. Structural collapses and balcony failures. Slip-and-fall on a dangerous common area. Dog attacks in apartment common areas. Construction injuries on residential sites. Asbestos exposure during renovation. We handle these cases on contingency, with no fee unless we win, after a free 24/7 consultation at 1-888-ATTY-911.
Who We Are, What We Do, and How to Reach Us
Attorney911 is The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC, a Texas personal injury and wrongful death firm founded in 2001. Our managing partner is Ralph Manginello, a trial lawyer with more than 27 years in courtrooms including federal court, a former journalist who tells the client’s story the way it deserves to be told, and a former point guard who learned a long time ago that the only way through a hard fight is straight at it. Ralph was inducted into the Cheshire Academy Athletic Hall of Fame in 2021 and is admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Our associate attorney is Lupe Peña, a South Texas College of Law Houston graduate who spent years inside a national insurance defense firm before joining our side. Lupe has sat in the rooms where carriers decide how to deny, delay, and devalue claims. He now sits on your side of the table, in English or in Spanish.
Our practice is built on the cases that happen when someone else’s negligence causes real physical harm. We handle 18-wheeler and commercial vehicle wrecks, car accidents, motorcycle crashes, wrongful death, traumatic brain injuries, refinery and industrial accidents, offshore and maritime injuries, construction site injuries, toxic tort and chemical exposure, insurance bad faith, and workplace accidents. We have recovered more than $50 million for Texas families since 1998, including multi-million-dollar results in truck-crash, traumatic brain injury, amputation, and wrongful death cases. We were part of the litigation following the BP Texas City refinery explosion. We are currently representing a fraternity hazing survivor in a ten-million-dollar-plus case that has already resulted in the chapter surrendering its charter.
The housing affordability crisis in Houston is real, and it is hitting the same families who were hit by redlining a generation ago. We cannot fix the affordability problem. We can, when the housing condition crosses into physical injury, fight the fight the personal injury system was built for. If you or a family member has been hurt by unsafe housing — mold, lead, carbon monoxide, a structural failure, a fire, a dangerous condition the landlord or owner knew about and ignored — call us. The consultation is free, there is no fee unless we win, and we are available 24/7 at 1-888-ATTY-911. Hablamos Español.
Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. This page is community information from a law firm and is not legal advice for any specific housing dispute. If you have a landlord-tenant, eviction, or fair housing matter, please contact Lone Star Legal Aid at 713-652-0077 or the Houston Fair Housing Center. We are glad to be a starting point for information, and we are glad to be the firm that fights the physical-injury case when the housing condition crosses the line.
— Attorney911, The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC · 1-888-ATTY-911 · Contact us · Ralph Manginello · Lupe Peña · Practice Areas