Residents at Ayla at Castle Hills on Jackson Keller Road say they have gone without hot water since the beginning of September, leaving at least one family to boil water on the stove and pay for hotel showers. Michael Aaron told KSAT that his household of four, including two teenagers, paid about $60 for a hotel room last week so the family could bathe.
Aaron also described practical effects at home, including difficulty washing dishes and managing laundry with cold water. He said the family has reported the problem to San Antonio’s 311 service and the office of District 1 Councilwoman Sukh Kaur. During KSAT’s visit, water tested in the apartment bathroom did not become hot.
A repair is described as ready, but service has not returned
The property entered receivership at the end of August, after which Madison Real Estate Group took over management and operations, according to the report. Management said it had completed improvements involving gas systems, furnaces and water systems, and that the work had passed required city and state inspections. The remaining step, management said, is for CPS Energy to install equipment needed to activate the new hot-water system.
A CPS Energy spokesperson said Monday that the utility was looking into the matter. The available accounts do not establish when the equipment will be installed or when hot water will be restored, leaving the central question for residents unresolved.
What local rules require
San Antonio’s 2024 Property Maintenance Code generally requires kitchen sinks, lavatories, laundry facilities, bathtubs and showers to have hot or tempered and cold running water. The code also provides for a written violation notice and a correction order allowing a reasonable amount of time for required repairs, according to the city code.
Separately, the Texas Office of the Attorney General says tenants who follow legally required repair procedures may, depending on the circumstances, have options that include ending a lease, repairing and deducting the cost from rent, or filing a lawsuit to compel repairs. Those remedies can depend on the facts of a case and the tenant’s compliance with notice and other legal requirements, so the guidance is not an automatic guarantee of reimbursement for hotel costs.
A documented comparison, not a measure of a trend
The current dispute also resembles a separate Leon Valley apartment case, but the comparison does not establish that the properties share the same cause or that hot-water outages are becoming more common. In April 2022, code enforcers investigated 20 complaints about units without hot water at the Vista del Rey complex, the San Antonio Report said.
For Ayla at Castle Hills residents, the immediate issue remains practical and time-sensitive: whether the final utility work can be completed and when hot water will be available throughout affected apartments. Until then, residents say they are absorbing the costs and disruption of managing a basic service that their building is expected to provide.
