With No Lease, Battling Tenants Must Solve Problem
QUESTION: My roommates and I hope you can answer some questions about removing a bad roommate.
There are five roommates and we live in a five-bedroom townhouse. No one has signed a lease. We each paid a $750 deposit to the former tenant, who has moved out. Four of us get along well and pay our bills on time.
The other one, call her Jane, is the problem. In mid-December she informs us that she has been laid off at work but says not to worry because she has significant savings.
As January moves into February, Jane continues using the Jacuzzi in her second-story room, despite our repeated pleas for her to stop because it leaks into the downstairs bathroom. I write a letter to the landlord letting him know about the Jacuzzi and explaining that Jane owes her share of the rent for the last two months.
The next day the landlord calls us to tell us that we are going to get an eviction notice because of nonpayment of rent (Jane’s two months and another roommate’s February share of the rent that got lost in the mail).
We all talk and agree that I will write Jane a letter asking her to move out and to pay $1,070 owed in rent and utility bills by Feb. 12. Otherwise, the letter says, we are prepared to take legal action and we have talked to a lawyer who has informed us of our rights.
On Feb. 9 Jane claims she has personally paid her share of the late rent to the landlord and has paid all of the utility bills.
But on Feb. 22 one of the roommates calls the gas company to change the bill from the former tenant’s name to hers. She finds out that the bill has not been paid since November 1995.
We have had it; I write a letter to Jane confirming that we have already asked her to move out but giving her until March 31 to do so. A few days later we notice that she has put a new doorknob on her room with a key lock. We talk and agree that we don’t want to wait until March 31. We call her on the phone and ask her to move out sooner, but she seems unwilling to do so.
What are our rights? What are hers? Can we change the locks if she doesn’t move out by March 31? If not, what steps should we take to get her out? Should we get a lawyer? Any help you can provide is appreciated.
ANSWER: Under no circumstances should you change locks and lock out your roommate. California state law takes a particularly dim view of lockouts, and the penalties are fairly stiff, up to $100 a day.
You have left out some vital facts, so we are going to make the following assumptions. The original tenant in some manner terminated his original agreement with the owner and left the five of you in possession of the townhome. Also, you each have an oral obligation to the owner to occupy the place and pay one-fifth of the rent.
If these assumptions are close to right, here’s what happens when one of you fails to meet your obligations: That tenant is in default with the owner, not with his co-tenants. Since the owner accepts one-fifth of the rent from each of you, nonpayment by one of you makes only that tenant liable for eviction by the owner.
It appears that this course of conduct has been going on since at least November 1995, so it would be difficult for the owner to now claim that each of you has an individual responsibility for the entire rent, especially since there is nothing in writing that any of you have signed.
There seems to be no justification for the roommates to request, or enforce a request, for another to move. The deal appears to be between each of you and the owner.
As far as the utilities are concerned, it appears that Jane has the obligation to pay them. Unfortunately, if no one pays them, they will get turned off, so you may have to pay them again. If you all have paid your portions of them to her, and she still hasn’t paid them, she is liable to you through a Small Claims Court action for any double payment you may make to the utility companies.
As for the leakage from the Jacuzzi, this is another matter for the owner to handle. If the tenant is committing “waste” (damaging the property), she should, again, be evicted by the owner.
If anything she does damages any of your property, through leakage or otherwise, that’s another good matter to resolve in Small Claims Court.
Regardless of how this matter is resolved, the advice I gave in the previous column is still good. From now on, get it in writing.
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Postema is the editor of Apartment Age magazine, a publication of AAGLA, an apartment owners’ service group. Mail your questions on any aspect of apartment living to AAGLA, 12012 Wilshire Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90025
