Soliciting Advice on Roommate Drama Rama

In My Humble Opinion
21

I agree with everyone that you ought to quickly and politely (since they do have your stuff) get your things out of there and end your financial obligation to your friends.

I don’t think you should send that note. While it may be true that you are ‘right’ about everything, as soon as you start bringing up justifications for your point of view and listing things you have done for them financially, you open up a dialogue that you cannot win. They will not read things like, “I saved you $1000 each,” and “I paid the verizon bill in full two times,” and think, "oh, he’s right, we’re being stupid. What they will do is see that as a call to war. They fired the first shot with a completely unreasonable request for more money. When you respond with financial details, they will continue to argue.

The cheapest, quickest, and most low-stress way to deal with this is to arrange for your stuff to be picked up and moved to a storage area (with as little notice as possible to the roommates), then get yourself off the lease ASAP. If these are truly your friends and you want to keep it that way, maybe pay one more full month of the $200 ‘rent’ after your stuff is cleared out, so they can’t complain about you leaving them ‘in the lurch’.

Then go on your merry way.

But, I would send a letter something like this instead:

==================================
Hey! As so far as the $211 is concerned, no problem. It sucks that that’s how the utilities are calculated. The check is in the mail.

I don’t think, though, that I can afford/justify the $300 dollars. I understand where you get the $300 a month from. A 10% increase (+20), plus the 80 for the sewage. Viola, 300 bucks… but the fact remains that I would be paying nearly 3 times the going rate for storage in the DC area.

So, I’ve arranged for [someone] to come get my stuff on [date]. After that I’ll still pay the rent on the closet for another [month/two months] so you have some time to prepare for that loss of income. And, I’ll get my name off the lease as soon as my stuff is out so you don’t have to pay the increased utilities.

Thanks for helping me out by letting me keep my stuff there for the summer!

22

Oh, and what a bunch of unpatriotic assholes too IMO. If I had a roomate good chances are I’d consider them a friend before long. And then they get shipped out to a war zone / shithole half way across the world? You can believe I wouldnt charge em to keep their shit in a closet.

23

Why the heck are the costs for the utilities based on “theoretical people” and not on “actual consumption”?

Last time I was living in the US, I was amazed that my electric bill was so high. Contacting the power company, I was told that they weren’t taking actual readings any more and hadn’t for years, unless you got your meter updated for telemetry - which they would do for free, but the management company for my building hadn’t taken advantage of that option. I was being charged the average amount… for a family of five! Me, all on my lonesome, in a 550sqft studio, with 70% travel time and neighbors who’d have the heating on so strong that I’d be in my shirtsleeves with the heater off!

After explaining the situation to management, they called to have the meters changed; it took just a few days (even though it was for almost 100 units), and my next few bills were credits instead of debits.

Mind you: that should be your ex-roomies’ problem, not yours. Mark me down as another vote for “get the stuff out of there as soon as possible”.

24

Since you’re looking for advice, I’ll move this to our advice forum, IMHO.

twickster, MPSIMS moderator

25

Send them the check for $211.00 and while they’re still feeling like you’re complying with their wishes arrange to get your items out of the closet. Don’t say anything or give them much warning. If asked just say you found somewhere to keep your stuff and you know they’ll have an easier time finding a new 4th if your stuff isn’t hanging around. After your things are retrieved, exercise your right to get out of the lease.

I might be overly paranoid but if you piss them off they might mess with your stuff.

26

This. When I was living in a group house, we never had the slightest difficulty in replacing a housemate. Generally took two weeks - open the place up on weekends, maybe let one or two people come by during the week, then give every housemate a veto and vote on the surviving candidates. Easy!

Now, getting a room in an existing group house - that’s a bitch and a half.

27

Thanks again for all the replies. I started looking around and found a perfectly affordable storage unit right around the corner that I can get for 125 a month. All I need is to get my Mom down there (she’s in NJ, but she has my power of attorney) to get it going. I’ve already gotten a half a dozen friends volunteering to help move my stuff. Once I get the unit confirmed, I’ll be sending them an email letting them know that on Day X I am send friends A, B, and C to help with the movers to bring my stuff. And I’ll be terminating the lease right afterwards. My goal is to get his done before the end of the month.

As a couple asides:

The building doesn’t track usage for individual apartments. The utilities in my building is divided up evenly between all the units on a floor. Previously I had thought this was based on square footage of each unit, but apparently it’s just based on occupants. Since I’m a lease holder (which is really only as some sort of security blanket for the roommates), I count as an occupant. They did get a replacement for me in the apartment, but that was a good 7 weeks after I moved out. I agree, given the rental environment in DC that it was an excessive period of time.

That said I was only really friends with one roommate(Let’s call her S), but we had no pre-existing relationship before we lived together. She was a friend of friend (named D)that I got the apartment with in the first place. D moved out about a year ago, and we replaced her with J. J and me mostly were cordial with each other but never really bonded in any meaningful fashion. And I don’t even know the new girl. I do have friends that had I still been living with I’m sure they would have offered to let my stuff stay for free, but alas I no longer was living with them.

That’s what I’m going to go with I think. Verbatim :wink:

28

I think the roommates would be justified in being extremely suspicious of someone coming over, completely out of the blue, to move a bunch of stuff out of a closet. If I were in the shoes of one of the roommates: 1) I wouldn’t be asking for $300, and 2) I’d tell someone to beat it if someone came to collect a roommate’s belongings without being told by that roommate that it is okay for someone to move their stuff.

I think the OP has to let the roommates know that some moving guy, friend or other person isn’t stealing his possessions.

ETA: if your mom is moving the stuff out, maybe she should hand them the check for the $211 as she leaves. Personally, I think you’re being quite generous by giving them a month or two more of rent money, but hey – you seem like a nicer guy than your former roommates! :slight_smile:

29

I think that’s a great, level headed email. But please don’t continue to give them money after your stuff is gone. That’s WAY too nice. You’ve already overpaid them. Definitely don’t promise that to them in an email. Get your stuff out, and if they are really nice about it (which they might not be), throw them an extra $200 AFTERWARD if you want to be nice.

30

When you’re deployed with the ARNG, the Army pays you extra for your rent (BHA). If you have a lease, you get a set amount according to your zip code. If you don’t have a lease, you get nada. In the DC area, IIRC, the OP’s getting something like $2,000 a month to pay his rent with.

If he takes himself off the lease, then he’s legally obligated to go to admin and report that, so he’ll stop getting the money. If he’s got less scruples than that, he doesn’t have to self-report and he can keep collecting money that shouldn’t be his.

Part of being on the lease is that you pay the rent, whether you live there or not. That’s the purpose of the BHA in the first place. If the rent went up, you have to pay the higher amount. If the utilities go up, you have to pay that, too.

So the question you gotta ask yourself, soldier, is whether you’re going to live the Army values of Integrity (“Do what is right, legally and morally”) and Duty (“Fulfill my obligations”) or not.

Pay the roommates, pocket the profit, and drive on.

31

You may want to correct the spelling of “voila.” And…

Agreed.

Not agreed.

They already have three to split the costs, which is what they had before you left. And they’ve already cost you extra by not finding the third roommate in a timely manner. I even question paying the $211 for the additional utility bill, but don’t see it as an issue worth fighting over. Paying that strikes me as plenty generous on your part.

32

Wow, well if you are scamming the system, that’s pretty screwed up.

33

You are being more than reasonable. At this point, I would strongly consider taking my name off the lease, putting my stuff in real storage, and not giving them a penny more.

34

NB: It’s not scamming the system to take more money than your rent actually costs. It only matters that you’re paying rent to someone, somewhere. They don’t know or care how much your rent actually is. They just pay you the same thing they pay everyone else from your region. I think it’d be a scam if they did pay what your rent actually was, as everyone would just run out and lease an expensive apartment, let their friends party in it for a year, and maybe take a kickback on the side.

You can use this calculator to find that the DC area pays a single E-5 $1,572 a month, nontaxable, with another $300 if he has a dependent. If he’s an officer, he’s getting north of $2,200 with dependents.

35

Good plan.

Perfect!

I hope you can get this sorted out, JerseyMarine. Normal people would have been just fine with the situation and not tried to hose you for more money; now your former roommates have shown you what they’re like, time to move on.

36

Okay. I don’t really know how this works.

37

Also, your friends are morons. The cost to them to have you on the lease is under $100 per month. You’re paying $200 toward the combined rent and utilities every month. Or am I misreading the OP? It sounds like it’s $100 in their pockets every month in exchange for not using a closet.

38

I don’t have any advice to add to the excellent posts above, JerseyMarine2092, but I just wanted to personally thank you for your service. My cousin, a Marine, was killed in action in Afghanistan exactly one year ago today. Be safe.

39

This, man. Pay the $200/month, keep pocketing that BAH, save it up, and when you get home, use it to get yourself a place without a gaggle of housemates.

40

Can you be more specific? Do you mean BAH or the calculator?

When you do your pre-mobilization processing, you have to bring in a copy of a lease. They take the ZIP code from the lease and fill out a form authorizing the Army to pay you a basic allowance for housing. The amount of rent doesn’t matter. The only thing that matters is that 1) you’re on a lease, and 2) what zip code it’s in. The amount is determined by a survey of “typical” properties in each area. If your rent is actually less than the average, you make a profit. If it’s more than average, tough. You have to make up the difference. Usually, the Army overpays you.

If you don’t have a lease (say you live with mom and dad), then you get nothing. You’ll be making less than everyone else at your pay grade, effectively. Thus, TPTB encourage you to get a cheap lease while you’re deployed so you can get paid.

I’m saying that the OP is getting paid for having a lease. It comes in your paycheck with the rest of your money, so it’s easy to think of it as “your” money, but it’s really not. It’s an allowance specifically purposed to compensate you for having been deployed. So if the OP decides to move out, he’s ethically and legally obligated to tell the Army, so they can stop paying him his $2k/month.

Thus, it would behoove him to stay on the lease and just pay his grubby roommates, who have an understandable reason for raising his closet-rent. He’s still pocketing $1,700 profit.