My Name is Courtney, I’m the oldest of 5 siblings who I care about very deeply. My best friend and little sister Brittany has made my life so much sweeter by giving me the best, most beautiful and kind nieces and with that being said, here’s the real tea.

This whole week my sister has been being taken advantage of by a rental company called Vinebrook homes they claim that they have small families in mind and are providing affordable housing for low income families. Friday 9/5 my sister received a very excited e-mail that their application was approved for a home that had not seen virtually or in person. As the email continues it stated to secure a home with them they must pay a holding fee of $700 that would go towards the first months rent, which was due Tuesday 9/9. My sister reaching out with excitement, she asked when was the soonest they could tour the home. As this was the weekend no one got back to her. So Monday 9/8 Brittany called 30 times, emailed, texted with no response. Trying to be positive she just thought maybe they are just really busy. Tuesday 9/9 no contact was made after more attempts of texting that morning, with hope & confusion my sister drove to the rental office to speak with rental rep & pay holding fee to secure their application. No one came to speak with her & the receptionist took her deposit. Around 1:30pm after the payment was made finally the representative reached out to set up a viewing of the property at 2:30pm! My sister was excited, but when they arrived walking in the home, it smelt of animal piss and shit & there was dead cockroaches everywhere. The rep shrugged it off to “they hadn’t cleaned the home yet”. As this was not what my sister expected, she quickly asked to view other properties. With almost frustration that Brittany was upset with what she was seeing, the rep says “if that’s your preference.” As they left Kim (that’s what we will call the rep) let Brittany know that her fee could be moved over to any home.

Frustrated my sister called me to tell me the news. She was very upset but hope was still alive because they had a couple more to see. The next day Kim hit my sister up at noon stating she could show her another home at 1pm, my sister left work and came back at 1:30 again frustrated because Kim never showed up. Kim finally texted Brittany back shortly after she got back into work. Saying that Kim accidentally went to different property down the street and they lol “just missed each other.” At this point Brittany started to lose hope and was ready to throw in the towel and ask for her holding fee back because no home had been held for them. After some encouragement I offered to go with her to check out the other properties. So we planned to see 2 homes Thursday at 2pm, As we arrived we were met with a very smug Kim again stating that this home was not ready and also was not cleaned yet. To my shook we walk-in and again dead roaches everywhere and smell that smacked me in the face. With kids in mind Brittany asked could we view the last property with our fingers crossed. As we walked behind Kim she never said a word to us. We walk up to this home and it looks better, the inside is nicer, no smell, no roaches that we can see. We start to ask more questions about why these homes have roaches, Kim responds with “we are classified as class c, and we cannot help the way past tenants want to live, we treat everyone’s home but this is the reality of most of our homes.” I brought up the hold fee asking if they could have it back since there was no home being held. Kim let us know that this was a “nonrefundable but transferable so any home Brittany wanted it could be moved.” So far everything was not going well, so there really wasn’t any more homes to move it to except the one we were standing in. After leaving Brittany was teary eyed and frustrated because none of these homes felt safe enough for my nieces. I volunteered to study their listing and find some other options since this fee was no longer an option to get back. Finding two I begged Brittany to go see them on lunch the next day, ready to just sign the lease on the last home we saw because their apartments lease ends 10/1, Brittany texted Kim about the last home and the one we wanted to tour. Stating she wanted to see this last home & after that if it didn’t meet her expectations she wanted to move forward with the home from Thursday. As an hour passed we hear from Kim, that the home they have listed to apply for was not ready & house #2 from Thursday had been rented. So now they have my sisters money with no home on hold, no home prospects, no other options in my nieces school district. Brittany asked for the fee back since there was never a home on hold and was met with attitude and reminder that it was nonrefundable.

After further research on this company we found out that they just had a 17 month long law suit against them and really bad reviews online, tho this is an afterthought, we all understand how it feels to have blinders on when you are working towards improvement in life, and excitement blinds us. After witnessing the cold hearted reps attitude towards my sister. I realized these people expect low income people to just deal with living with these issues because it’s “affordable” which I’m sorry 1300 is not necessarily affordable for a tiny house in a not so great neighborhood for a small family. Expecting all low income families to be full of desperation they lack the empathy towards them wanting somewhere nice and clean to live. As we are working on getting the money back we see it going nowhere good as it was stated on the application that this fee was nonrefundable, but there has been no home on hold. Trying to raise alittle bit to help them secure a new place to call home.

Times are tough and I understand we give what we can but even $5 bucks from 20 people would make a dent for them.

thank you