Roommate Disappeared - What Are His Rights

[mica113]

My question involves a roommate in the State of: Massachusetts

My roommate and I had resigned the lease to our three-bedroom needing to find another roommate. We found one shortly before 9/1, and I explained to him our rules including that he would have to pay first and last month's rent to move in.

On 9/1, he called me to tell me that he did not have the last month's rent because he wasn't expecting to have to pay it but he would have it soon. We let him move in after he confirmed that he had dropped the lease off (I asked my landlord to tell me if there were any issues) and paid the first month's rent in cash. I later got him to agree to pay the last month's rent by 9/16. On 9/13, he went home to New York for a few weeks (his classes start on the 28th), and I reminded him that he needed to send the last month's rent, and we needed October rent by 9/25, and he said he would send it. Since then, he has subsequently failed to respond to any of my attempts to contact him, and I have learned from my landlord that he did not actually sign the lease. My most recent email said that he did not sign the lease or send money that he said he would send, could he mail the keys back, and when would he pick up his stuff?

Other circumstances
-we don't really trust him, and would like to change the locks
-we only have one lease (just separate pieces of paper), and we'd prefer to be able to find somebody else by 10/1 to avoid paying for an empty room
-he has probably only stayed here for about seven nights total, and never received mail
-my landlord is not offering advice

We just want to make sure that we aren't getting in legal trouble by changing the locks/making him move. My father will be in the area today and can change the locks -- our thought is to just change the deadbolt, and then use the other lock until the first, since he did pay September rent. Does he have any right to be here beyond then? When I emailed him, I asked him to remove his stuff by the end of the month. The email was sent on the 23d, and a voicemail restating the requests was sent yesterday. He doesn't have much here, but if he keeps not responding, what do we do with it? We have room in basement storage, should we just stick it there? When can we assume that he has disappeared?

Thanks so much!

[Mr. Knowitall]

You need to be careful - ideally you would get him to sign something stating that he has surrendered his right to live in the apartment having voluntarily moved out, and that he'll collect the balance of his items by a particular date. You can't do a "self-help eviction" in Massachusetts, you would have to go through a court, and if what you do ends up being classified as a wrongful eviction (unlawful detainer) you subject yourself to possible legal consequences. You may also trigger duties under your state's eviction storage law.

[mica113]

Thank you. Can I throw out a few more specific things that I am wondering?

He is not responding to emails, phone calls, or texts. I don't have an address. I could try sending his ex-girlfriend a message on facebook, I suppose, to see if she knows what happened. (Not something I particularly want to do but perhaps something I should do). We can't get him to sign anything if we can't contact him. At what point can he just be considered gone? I mean, nobody can expect us to just leave the room empty indefinitely.

Also, if we assume that he has legal occupancy for a period of time, and we can’t lock him out, doesn’t he also owe us rent money for October? He hasn’t given us any notice, much less 30 days. I don’t know if that would be any leverage? Our lease situation is so odd, because we allowed him to move in, not under a sublet agreement, but under the condition that he would be a cosigner on the lease and pass the application. Then he lied about it. So I feel like we’re subletting to him but we never agreed to that?

In terms of his stuff, we have a lot of basement storage that we can put it in for however long we need to, so we don’t need to get rid of it. I’m just concerned because we need somebody to be paying for the room. I made it very clear to him that I needed a check by the 25th because I do not regularly keep enough money in my bank account to cover it. While my roommate and I can have our parents front the money, it is expensive, and I don’t want to keep the room unoccupied forever in the hopes that he will answer us. Do you know how long we have? Thanks so much.