So I took in a roomate about 7 months ago, and up till now things have been great. But here it is the 15th, and I still haven't seen any rent from him for this month. He's given me a line of fishy excuses, but I haven't seen him in person since the 5th. I think he's only been coming to the apartment when he knows I'm at work. And now he's been ignoring my calls/texts for the last couple of days. He's a friend of mine so I'm really in a hard spot, and I'm not sure how to handle it. It's come to the long now where I'm thinking about changing the locks on him. I have those quick locks that I can re-key in a matter if seconds. I don't wanna be a dick but at the same time I don't want to be taken advantage of. I'm afraid I'm going to come home and see all of his stuff is gone and I'll never hear from him again. Any advice?
I've been in this position before. Basically I kicked them out (happened more than once). I'd tell him he is over two weeks late, and you need the rent. And if he keeps ignoring you for him to get his shit. I wouldn't change the locks with his stuff in there, that's probably illegal. Not to mention if someone did that to me I would kick the door down.
I'd leave a note for him where you know he'll see it, telling him that you need the rent by a certain day and time, and then change the locks if he doesn't get it to you. At least that way he'll know that you're serious. Still a shitty situation though.
This is what I would do. First warn him properly, if he doesn't pay his part or gives no reaction at all he just get what he deserves.
Does he work? Does he get paid soon? I've had trouble getting rent on time... I always get it though. My name's always been on the lease.
I'd either make sure you can sometime talk to him face to face or leave the note and tell him that you need it in X amount of days or he's out... or at the very least that he needs to be respectful enough to let you know when he will have it and what is going on... and that otherwise you'll be forced to have him leave... esp if he can't even tell you what's up...
I let people go to the end the month sometimes. but then the next payment in the middle. Now you have more your money closer together. but you waited a little while.. either the 1st, 15th , end the latest. if having to much trouble. pay rent on a day by day basis..5/10dollars a day. you can buy smokes you can give me 5dollars for the roofing over your head a day.. Im out the property game now. least for a little while.
He's paid in tips only, so he gets paid daily. he works in a high end restaraunt so he should have no trouble coming up with 350 a month.
I'd leave him a note AND text him telling him the same thing. I'd put in there somewhere avoiding me was only making the situation worse and give him an ultimatum.
Do you suspect that he is become an opiate addict? I ask that because I am one myself (though under legal maintenance now) and his behavior is one of the telltale symptoms of an easily diagnosed disorder. While I don't have a reputation for theft nor am I know as a mendicant, and this is all I'm going to say regarding my character, I of course have been surrounded by other addicts and, during the past 5 years it has even consumed a number of my closest family members and I've watched in disgusts as one after another falls into a rigid pattern of conditioned and expected poor behavioral patterns. All of them, without even a single exception, are notorious for latching themselves onto others who are employed full time in order to take advantage of a warm place to temporarily live and if a financial arrangement is attempted, they dodge it by any means possible, moving around a social circle in the hopes of perpetuating this rent-free lifestyle. My cousins (two brothers, both heroin addicts), who do in fact have their own apartment, are late in paying rent every month and the last details I have concerning this matter is that they were three months behind and so they approached the landlord and offered to do various jobs in exchange for their large debt, one of which was to install security cameras throughout the building with the monitor fed back to a computer. It took them over a month to install two cameras and, in the meantime, the younger cousin while preparing the walls discovered a store of copper which he of course immediately took up and sold for dope. My own younger brother was staying with Aura and I for a few months this past winter because he was supposedly starting a probation program and had to show an address of residence and, because he was working (with our father, at the time) I allowed him to talk me into it. Not only did I give him our second bedroom (I have two young children, bear in mind) and myself use my living room as my bedroom, I told him that he could stay rent free indefinitely, on the condition that he was to show me that he was saving a portion of his earnings in a bank account in order to build up a comfortable savings and within a few months, possibly a year or so, begin to consider moving in with his girlfriend into their own place. Not only did he not save up a single penny, because every Friday his entire paycheck went to Roxicodone 30mg's and cigarettes, but by Sunday and sometimes even Saturday I discovered that he was taking my cigarettes, eating our food, and eventually he got comfortable with taking my maintenance medication, thinking I was oblivious to this (as if I wouldn't know..) and from day one I would wake up, almost on a daily basis, to his boss, calling *my* cell phone, after calling his cell phone numerous times to no avail, and so I was waking up at 05:30 every morning to have to go and break the bedroom door down and drag him out of bed to get him to go to work. Most of the time he would just go back to bed; I'd wake up again at 6:45 and dress and wash my daughter to prepare for school and know he was still in my home, he would wake up around noon and leave, get on the train and go get high with his girlfriend, then show back up to my home from between 23:00 and 01:30 higher than a kite and, rather than have the decency to go straight to "his" room and be quiet knowing I was trying to sleep, he'd go back and forth from the bedroom to the front door (which is literally under 5 feet away from where my head on the sofa rests) in the middle of January to stand with the front door halfway open and smoke cigarettes, repeatedly throughout the early hours of the morning. I bore all of this without a single word of reproach, for fear of harming my relationship with the only of my 8 siblings with whom I have any relationship at all, and for fear of appearing hypocritical (being an addict who many times needed help myself) until he lost his job and my house became a place to go when he was too fucked up to be out and about and sleep it off, eating our food, destroying the room with garbage and clothing and other materials strewn all over it, and the few times he caught me in a good mood and I'd go for a walk with him to get a soda or something from a store, he would puke into the street on the way there or on the way back, from not being able to stomach his pharmacological opiate consumption. I used to joke with him that I'd been on the shit for over a decade and have consumed quantities and qualities that would kill him 5 times over and never once threw up, but I suppose that represents in a very singular way the difference between self education and superlative ignorance. Anyway when I finally could not stand it anymore, in utter disgust and disappointment (indeed, even shock as I expressed it to Aura, that I felt in trying to believe that this person could be a blood relative of mine) and because of a single thing he did to push me completely over the edge (which, out of what little respect for him I have left, I will remain silent on) I finally had to tell him he could no longer remain in my home. Not only did he not thank me for the several months for which I tolerated this utter bullshit, but he had the audacity to complain to me that his life was ruined now, that he had nowhere to go and that now he was going to kill himself. Had it been possible I would have slapped him in his fucking mouth, for he knows very well that I spent my youth (from 15 - 18) entirely homeless as a drifter, wandering from one corner of this country to another and never once would I have disrespected someone, let alone my own family, in return for a favor of this magnitude (which I never received, mind you). To this day he's never come to pick up the majority of his belongings and the bedroom remains littered with empty bottles, unwashed cups and dirty laundry, and three times since then he's called me out of the blue and left messages on my phone pretending like he was just calling to 'catch up with me, maybe hang out sometime' and I've been stupid enough to call him back only to be asked for a 'front' on some of my medication. The point of this story is that if you suspect your friend and roommate has taken on a habit which his character, resolve and masculinity cannot maintain, then tell him to leave immediately, before you lose that friend for good.
^ I forgot to mention in that story that we did not know my brother was an addict before he moved in, I knew he had 'experimented' with percocets and the like but not that he had moved onto 2 and 3 30's a day (he was also the exact prototypical 21 year old "Nah I'm not addicted man because I never get sick, I can stop any time I want" kind, another reason why I couldn't believe this person is related to me)
