Is normal for a rental company to sign a lease for an apartment to a new tenant without giving the current tenant the option to re-sign and continue living there?

This has just happened to me and has never happened to me before. I am pretty baffled. I am leaving town in 3 weeks and will be gone til the beginning of August. My lease is up August 1st. I am now thrown into this situation where I am panicking because I planned on re-signing and thought that they just hadn’t officially asked me yet.

When I called the rental company a few days ago, the regular receptionist was out of the office but the man who answered the phone said he didn’t see a lease for next year in the stack of pre-leases he was looking at, and since I’m not in the college area of town he said they normally start showing them a month before they are available, so July 1. That’s what I had figured, so I was feelin good about it. Then I called yesterday just to confirm and I also had a few other questions regarding my apartment, and I was told that they rented out my apartment already, months ago, to my current upstairs neighbors. They are now going to be renting the whole house.

I was baffled. I can not understand why they wouldn’t give me the option to resign before making it available to others, or at the very least, why they would not tell me immediately, if not purely to be professional and fair? Or is this just totally normal? Does this happen all the time? I feel kind of fucked in my situation, not saying it’s not my fault at all. It is. I could have called months ago to be sure. I just didn’t think that type of thing was commonplace. Any insight? Do I have any rights here? No? Should I just call and bitch them out anyhow? No?