<human>: Can you condense the text into three sentences or less?

I am a college student.  I lived with other college students in a house we rented.  The entire dealing was shady.  We don't even have a real housing deposit receipt (just a check with "deposit" written, and bank records), because the landlord didn't want to write one.

We moved out.  The landlord has been ignoring most of our attempts to contact him.  It has been over 2 weeks and we haven't received our deposit.

We finally get a text message response recently.  The landlord says problems such as dust, roaches, and a couch that didn't get moved out.

However:
  
  -we cleaned VERY thoroughly, any dust should be extremely minor and not justifiable for deposit deduction

  -the roach problem was there before we moved in.

  -the couch is HIS couch.  Of course we didn't move it out.  If we had moved it out, he probably would have used THAT as an excuse to keep deposit.

Overall, the landlord hasn't repaid us in two weeks, and has made these excuses which I feel are unfair.

I am waiting for him to give us our deposit back.  I told him I expect it promptly, since we are college students on a tight budget.  I am expecting that I may have to bring this up to a small claims court.  However, I do not have pictures or anything of this house.  This seems like my loss then.

What should I do?  In particular, what can I do if I take this to a small claims court?
<bot>: two weeks no deposit return, landlord making unfair excuses, very little evidence/documentation to support our side of the story