I live in a one-bedroom apartment in Houston. It’s the summer and I have central air coming out of two vents, which normally is far better than the window unit I used to have at old apartments.

But last summer and this summer it’s been unable to cool my apartment down to the temperature it’s set too during the hottest months. Yesterday I had it set to 80 and it reached as high as 86 inside with all the curtains and blinds shut and the fans on full power.

Last year I tried filing maintenance reports with my apartments company and they sent some guys out but the end result was they did everything they could and the apartment was still inadequately cooled.

I filed a report yesterday asking them to look at it again, see if they could change the filters or clean the ducts or whatever they could to make it work better. Not only is this uncomfortable and possibly hazardous to me and my cats but it’s costing me a fortune in electricity bills, because I assumed as weak as the AC is it’s still better to have it run than have it not.

What should my expectations be here? Is it really reasonable that my low-income apartment’s probably cheap AC unit is simply not strong enough to deal with Texas’ increasingly hot summers? Am I going to have to move or simply deal with 2-3 uncomfortable months every year? What should I tell my apartments management if they are unable to fix the problem?