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  1. #1
    Join Date
    May 2008
    Posts
    1

    Exclamation Roommate Decides To Up And Leave, Refuses To Pay Rent For Remainder Of Lease

    My question involves a roommate in the State of: Washington State (city of Seattle)

    There are four of us that live in my house, we all worked together and were friends at the time we moved in. I had lived with 2 of them before, but the other girl (we'll call her Jane) had not only never lived with the three of us before, she had not lived on her own.

    Problems started after about 2 months. She started paying bills late, she kept saying "I forogt, I'll give it to you tomorrow my checkbook is in my car." or, "Oh, I'll go get it for you after I finnish my dinner." and then she would just not be home when she said she would pay them. I also know for a fact that she was fibbing to her parents, saying she couldnt give them the money she owed her mom because she was broke from the bills she hadnt paid yet. Anyway, we talked to her about that, as well as other things.

    All she would ever talk about was herself, and me and my other roommates got tired of it and quit giving her attention. She kinda quit coming home, no one would ever know where she was or when she would be home next. We would only see her when she needed to barrow something from us, or when no one else would hang out with her. It got really bad though because she had a cat, and she would only remember to feed it and give it water once a week. There were several times we had to feed her cat tuna because she was too busy partying to remember to buy it food when it was out. About 3 weeks ago she was watching her moms dog while she was out of town and brought it over to the house. It started eating the cat's food, according to her, and so she put the cats feeder on the top shelf of her closet. She forgot to take it down and after she left her cat was going around the house meowing. I looked in there for the food (thats what the cat would do when it was out of food, it actually happened quite alot- I even had to start keeping it in my room.) and couldnt find the feeder. I refilled the food & water supply in my room and waited until she came home to say something. The next day I had to go in there to look for a dress she barrowed of mine, and found the feeder. I texted her and told her, but because I was keeping up with the food in my room I didnt move it. She came home 3 times in the next week and by the end of the week the feeder was still there and she had no idea about the food in my room. We had to keep the door to her room closed all the time because she wouldnt keep the litter box clean and the smell would stink up the whole top floor of the house until we got after her about it every time it needed to be cleaned. By the way, she never asked us to do any of this- we just did it, I dont really know what she was planning.

    Anyway, there were several other things she would do on a regular basis that would bother us and we would talk to her about them. The second time I sat her down and talked to her about bills (at that time she was over 3 weeks late on $53) she said she didnt remember the first time we all sat her down- and it wasnt like a brief conversation, it actually turned into a blow up because she didnt like the way my other roommate talked to her. Everytime, she would keep doing whatever it was we talked to her about. First we were nice, then we got more aggressive.. nothing worked.

    Well, we got sick of her freeloading a couple months ago and told her if she did nothing else around the house her one job was to send our landlord the rent payment. The first and second month I had to give her an envelope & stamp, as well as teach her to write out the envelope. The third month she lost her checkbook and, without telling any of us that she didnt know what else to do, she paid the full rent in cash. She put $1440 (the amount we pay per month) cash in our landlords mailbox in the middle of the day with the rest of his mail and drove off. A few days later my other roommate got a voicemail from our landlord saying never to pay rent in cash again. We called and apologized to him, but we were all shocked. We knew she wasnt the brightest crayon in the box, but we still couldnt believe that she did that. Shes the kind of person who doesnt think about what she does before she acts, she thinks that just because shes Jane everything will be fine. Its SO frustrating! Anyway, after having talked to her about lesser matters to no avail, we decided to take stronger actions to make sure she never did it again.

    We all decided together to let her realize how bad what she did was by letting her think for a night that the landlord was saying he didnt get rent. I called her and asked her what was going on, and instead of telling me the truth she started making up lies. First shes like, "What?! The money isnt in my account..!" and I was like, "You wrote him a check, right?" and she's like, "yeah." and then I'm like, "Okay, well since you wrote a check all you have to do is get a copy of the check." Then she calls me back later and says that the money IS in her account. I guess what she had done in the mean time was call her dad and got her dad to agree to pay the rent to cover for her, and she was going to go drop the money off to the landlord in the morning and not tell us. Well, the next morning we called her early and told her that the landlords wife had gotten the cash and it was all a misunderstanding (the landlord really was in on it, by the way, just incase she tried to call him or actually give him the money). Then we asked her why she lied to us the night before, and she gave us this whole sob story about how she didnt know what else to do. She had a horrible excuse about why she paid rent in cash, something about how she thought we were mad at her and she didnt know what a moneyorder was (even though I remember fully well telling her EXACTLY what one was and where to get one the cheapest). Really, I know she probably just didnt plan ahead and didnt get up early enough to get a moneyorder AND drop off rent before she went to work on the 1st.

    Anyway, she ended up finding out what we did and got mad about it. We tried to reason with her and explain to her why we felt forced to do it, and that us fibbing to her was no different than when she fibbed to us. She wouldnt hear it and came and picked up her things when no one was home 2 days later. She wont speak to any of us. She got a new job in another state and will be leaving at the end of the month. She has put in her two weeks where we all work and has called in sick for every shift since then. Our lease is up August 31, 2008. She gave us 0 notice of moving out, has done nothing to help us find a new roommate and, though we are looking, its not looking good as far as finding another roomate before the lease is up. She wont give us a straight answer as to if she well pay rent or not, she has almost $100 in bills piled up. She has told others she doesnt plan on payng rent, she has said to us though that she has money to give us for bills. She has a favorite dress of mine, and some clothes of my other roommates. She left a few of her things here and I took her favorite dress as colatoral to get mine back in good condition. She also left her new snowboard and I want to hold that until she gives us rent, but I'm pretty sure I cant legally do that so if she asks for it I'll give it back before then. I havent said any of this to her, other than I want my things back and that she needs to pay for everything she owes us, because I dont want it to get to that point. She'll make a really big deal about it, shes a drama queen like that. She thinks she has every right and we have none.

    Anyway, I want my things back and I want her to pay rent until we find a new roommate. We all pay equal shares of rent, though we all usually pay with cash so it could be hard to dig up records for that. She moved her things out around the 7th of this month, so 30 days notice goes into June. How can we force her to pay rent? We have her last months rent (August) with the landlord, along with her deposit wich is only 1/3 of what rent is. We need rent for June & July, but I dont know how to go about making her pay it. We have her parents phone number and want to make them aware of the situation, but we are concerned that she has fibbed to them about us and you know how some parents can be about their kids. We dont know them, though, so they might not be like that. Anyway, should I approach the situation with paperwork? Any advice of what I can do to enfore the lease would be helpful. Do I need to get the landlord involved and have him help us?? One of my roommates is broke and she cant afford to pay anymore than we already do for next month, I can help make up her share (shes one of my best friends and I would totally do that for her) but we shouldnt be in this position.

    ANY advice would be helpful, even if you could site some laws I could look up... ANYTHING

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jan 2008
    Location
    Toledo, OH
    Posts
    16,307

    Default Re: Roommate Decides To Up And Leave, Refuses To Pay Rent For Remainder Of Lease

    What you did was stupid, but that doesn't release her from her lease obligation.

    Take her to small claims court for the rent and bills that she owes. If you prevail, you'll also have to go back to court to get her wages garnished, which sounds like the only way she's going to pay.

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