# Roommate situation -- what should I do? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [March 9, 2011, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roommate-situation-what-should-i-do/574060 "2011-03-09T16:00:11Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2011, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roommate-situation-what-should-i-do/574060/21 "2011-03-10T06:11:22Z")
If you can afford it, give her back 66% of the March rent, get her name off the lease and pay the rent yourself. You can arrange for someone else to share the remainder of the lease yourself if you need help to pay the rent. The apartment is half hers as long as she is paying rent. You can’t totally stop her from allowing others access to the apartment, but your lease probably precludes her from subletting. If you can prove she did that, it may even be grounds for removing her from the lease. You can expect the landlord to cooperate with you, as long you keep paying the rent. They don’t want to end up with both of you running out on the remainder of the lease. ---
**Author:** ![LurkerInNJ](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/ed655f/32.png) [@LurkerInNJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LurkerInNJ)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2011, 7:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roommate-situation-what-should-i-do/574060/22 "2011-03-10T19:21:55Z")
> [@Tanaqui](#): > > Wrong. SHE is allowed to use the apartment. SHE is allowed to live in the apartment, because she is on the lease. No one else. Under my lease, subletting is _not_ permitted unless I agree. The management company made this very clear. I signed a lease agreement with my roommate, not random crazy woman from Craigslist. > > And I don’t consider the apartment 100% mine–if she comes back from New Jersey, she’s welcome to move back in. I will, of course, give her the key. She’s not allowed to let random strangers traipse through my apartment while neither of us is around. I will let her use the apartment by facilitating any time her friend wants to come in and sell her stuff/send her stuff off, but I’m not giving some random guy a key to my apartment. Wrong. You don’t get it. She doesn’t need to “come back from New Jersey” or “move back in” to have a key. She is on the lease and she paid the rent. That makes that key HER key, not your extra key. “_I will let her use the apartment_” but “_I don’t consider the apartment 100% mine_” WTF? The hell you don’t consider it 100% yours. What was that about “\*traipse through **my** apartment \*”. Shouldn’t that be our apartment? And “\*When I sent a polite message suggesting that her friend-across-the-hall keep her stuff in his apartment \*”. That was because the place is still half hers until March 31st, but you would prefer it if her stuff wasn’t there, right? You BOTH are on the lease. You BOTH paid the rent. You don’t have the right to dictate the rules that affect the BOTH of you. You BOTH have to come to an agreement on things like who gets access, not just you making the decisions. Please quote where I said it was ok to use the apartment as a hotel, because I can’t find it. My condo has by-laws that prevent any unit from being used as short term rental, as do almost every apartment or condo I have ever seen. My problem is with your it’s all mine and I can do whatever I want and she has to do whatever I say because I didn’t have enough experience or foresight to realize that when I rent a place with someone it’s a two-way street and ground rules have to be worked out in advance so issues about basic things like friends having keys don’t come up later. ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2011, 8:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roommate-situation-what-should-i-do/574060/23 "2011-03-10T20:28:44Z")
Frankly, I’d change the locks, and let the roomie know that she needs to tell you if she comes back and wants to use the place. And let the neighbor know that the old key doesn’t work any more, too. Yes, she is still legally a tenant in that apartment, but that does NOT give her the right to sublet it without your knowledge (especially by the night!) and it doesn’t give her the right to hand out keys to anyone without your knowledge. It certainly doesn’t mean that a NON tenant (and non landlord) has the right to show the place to people without your knowledge, and it doesn’t mean that a non tenant/non landlord has the right to enter the place to get stuff out of the apartment. She can have this buddy keep her stuff in HIS place, where HE can take charge of it. Or she can continue to keep her stuff in the apartment, until her lease is up. If Divine wants to live there until the end of March, then Divine needs to come up with both the rent and security deposit in advance. Couch surfers are generally not solvent, and a lot of them are also opportunistic thieves. Not all of them, but there’s plenty of horror stories about them. Now, Absentee Roommie might have come from a culture where it’s OK to casually rent out an apartment by the night, and OK to hand out keys to anyone. But she’s in a different society now, with different rules. ---
**Author:** ![Kaio](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/c68b51/32.png) [@Kaio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaio)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2011, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roommate-situation-what-should-i-do/574060/24 "2011-03-11T18:33:00Z")
Agreed. Absentee Roomie’s payment of rent grants her the right to access the apartment _herself._ The fact that she’s made it geographically impossible to do so was _her own choice._ It **does not** give her a right to distribute keys/access to _anyone_ else without the express consent of everyone on the lease (and this would remain true even if she were still living there). Absentee Roomie has made a series of choices which makes it difficult for her to manage/sell her belongings long-distance, but again, this was her choice, and she needs to grow up and live with the consequences. She has a number of options which don’t involve riding roughshod over the rights and safety of the other legal tenant. It may be less convenient, but oh well – she’s the one who chose to move out. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/roommate-situation-what-should-i-do/574060.md?page=1)