The Disappearing Housemate

This is a cautionary story and quite a world away from anything I’m used to writing about! This is for all you people out there who, like me, cannot get on the property latter and have to rent. Everything in this post happened to me over the last year and a half and writing this down will not only be therapeutic, but I also hope that it will help some of you out there who are in a similar situation.

I have had some bad housemates in my time, from ones who stank so bad that the simple act of opening their bedroom door fumigated the entire house, to ones who would steal your things and leave dirty used knickers lying around the lounge. But none of them left me as emotionally and physically f***** up as my last flatmate. For legal purposes her name has to be changed so we shall call her Rachel.

Rachel and I met on the first day of our degree and became best friends. We did everything together and we were inseparable. I won’t go into the mushy detail of how close of friends we actually were, you’ve all had a best friend you can relate this relationship back to I’m sure! I will just say this though, I loved her as my best friend for who she was, warts and all and would always have had her back, as I do with any of my friends.

In our first year, we had to do a work experience module. We decided to do it together and booked to go to Guyana in South America as part of the field research team for a month with Operation Wallacea. It was while I was out in Guyana that I met two other dear friends of mine, an American called Brittany, and a Canadian called Camille. Rachel was out there for all of about five days. She cried the entire time and was clearly very miserable. We tried everything we could to cheer her up but ultimately, she decided being away from her parents, isolated in a jungle with no means of contacting them wasn’t for her, so her parents paid for her to fly home early. I divulged to my new friends that Rachel and I were planning on getting a flat together once we’d returned home as she was desperate to move out of her parent’s house and I had recently been made homeless, due to the landlord of my previous flat wanting it back to live in. It was at that point that they both raised concerns. Was I sure that I wanted to live with a girl who couldn’t stand being away from her parents whilst in one of the most beautiful, untouched places on Earth for even a week? What made me think that she wouldn’t quit the flat, just like she quit the jungle? They had only known her five days and quite obviously got more of a measure of her than I had through the year I had known her. I dismissed their concerns and blamed her misery on the pressures of being in the middle of a jungle and that this remote, challenging adventure just wasn’t for her.

I was extremely pleased to see her at the airport when she picked me. She and her family had been looking after my dog (Charlie) while I was away and they had done such a good job of it. He wasn’t even pleased to see me come home. We got to flat hunting. We found one that was lovely and spacious, in an extremely convenient location and we were so happy with it. We even hugged a jutting out wall in the kitchen when we got approved for it. We signed a joint contract for 12 months. The problems started just a few weeks in.

I had been renting for around eight years at that point. I had built up plenty of furniture which we both agreed was good, because it meant we didn’t have to buy anything much. Being students, frugality was important! She on the other hand, had never lived away from her parents and had only a very small bedroom with them so she didn’t have much in the way of furniture to bring to the flat. After a few weeks she began to complain that the flat didn’t feel like it was her home as she had so few possessions. I had tried my best to make it feel like hers, making space for her stuff on the bookshelf for example, setting up her own account on the Playstation, buying posters together to put up. Nothing worked. She began to not go to college or to work. She spent more and more time at her parents, sleeping in her mother’s bed while her mum slept on the sofa. Alarm bells were chiming but I told myself that she is still my friend, we had not had a single argument or disagreement, she would tell me if she was planning on moving out. Then, on New Year's Eve 2017, just three months after moving in, I came home from work to find this:

I got that gut dropping, heart stopping feeling like you’ve just gone over a drop in a rollercoaster after a steep, slow incline and I had no idea why I felt that way at first. The letter to begin with, is clearly very nice and reinforces the fact that we are, first and foremost, friends and she wanted to remain that way. She was clearly ill and needed the support of her mum. However, the more I read the letter the worse I felt. Reading between the lines I realised, it was New Year's Eve. As of the next day, I was going to have to pay for all the bills—all by myself. She had given me no notice. As she pointed out in the letter, I did not have a lot of money. I had just bought a car and had just enough to make sure my half of everything was paid until my next pay day. The majority of her stuff in the flat was gone so she wasn’t GOING to move out she HAD moved out. I, unlike she, had nowhere else I could go. I couldn’t go and live with either friends or family and she knew this. What did she think was going to happen to me in this scenario? I was stuck in a flat I couldn’t afford on my own. Above all else why, oh why had she just not talked to me about this? Instead she had to purposely wait until I am at work to come in, move her stuff out and leave this bombshell to come home to. Happy New Year, Laura! She has always been able to talk to me in the past, we have always had a great open dialogue so why not now? Surely she knows I'd never be angry at her decision to leave? I am very pro doing whatever it takes to get yourself well, but to leave your friend high and dry? No. Her reasons for leaving are her own and I still, to this day, do not begrudge them. What is wrong here is the complete disregard for any potential consequences of just literally upping and leaving without taking the appropriate steps. Her subsequent actions are also rather selfish and childish.

A friend who lived down the road from me at the time, came and saved me that night. She, upon hearing about the letter, came and picked me up and took me over to her flat whereupon she informed me that she had doubts about us moving in together, owing to her inability to stick to the jungle, and that she had known all along that this would happen. Her boyfriend at the time confirmed that she had indeed predicted these events. Yet, another person who had the measure of her better than I.

Of course, she never paid for any bills, even the December ones she promised to do in the letter. Nor did she pay for January’s rent, her dad did, despite the fact our student loan got paid on the day after this letter. Nor did she contact Sally (who was the estate agent in charge of managing our property at the time). When I contacted them almost a week later, it was a complete shock to them that she had moved out. I asked for their advice and they told me that unfortunately we had signed a joint contract and that it didn’t expire for another 9 months. If she didn’t pay her half of the rent, we were both equally liable for it meaning they would chase me for it just as much as they would chase her. They were on my side however, should I need any backup whilst pursuing legal action, they were more than happy to testify on my behalf. Some comfort that was. There was nothing for it, I’d have to either find a new flatmate or move out myself.

Neither task proved easy. I first advertised the room for rent, however, since the room was unfurnished while the rest of the flat was furnished, not many people wanted it. Team that up with the fact that I had a dog, I was a student that was exempt from council tax (so any non-student would have to pay 75% of it) and it being January, so fellow students weren’t looking for accommodation at that time. Nobody came forward. I started looking for a new place to live myself with some desperation in February is when it was confirmed by the estate agent that Rachel hadn’t paid for her half of that month’s rent, nor had she had any contact with them at all, despite their trying to get in contact with her ever since I told them she had moved out. Again, the biggest problem there was that I had a dog and a student’s budget. There was hardly anywhere within my price range that would be suitable. The first place I went to look at was a studio flat that consisted of one room with everything in it for a grand sum of £500 a month. This dirty, smelly, damp riddled room was more than my half of the rent for my current flat and made me want to cry. If that was the only thing I could afford whilst living on my own, what on Earth was I going to do? I looked at a few others. There was a spacious flat in the middle of where they place people who are going through drug rehabilitation (yards away from the scene of a stabbing a few days previously) and was only accessible through a foul, dangerous feeling alleyway littered with mattresses, clothes and needles. There was another studio flat with not enough room to swing a cat (the fold up bed was pressed up against the cooker) that after initially saying would accept a dog, decided that they wouldn’t after all. A farm filled with lovely people but after initially having a room available suddenly didn’t, though there would be one if I could wait until the summer, and a flat that was perfect, but I missed out on it by five minutes. Someone else had got there first.

In the meantime, having not contacted Rachel at all since sending an email informing her of how much those December bills were going to cost, telling her that her name was on a lot of those bills and she would have to sort those out herself as I couldn’t (and receiving a vile voicemail back saying they weren’t her responsibility anymore and she wasn’t going to do it), I received a nasty email from her regarding the fridge. Her parents had bought it as a house warming present and they wanted the money for it. Seeing as I wasn’t going to be taking the fridge with me to wherever I was going to end up, I saw no reason to pay for it. If they wanted it, they could come and get it. I told the estate agent this and he said he would pass on the message. I never heard anything back. I had sought legal advice by this point and was instructed to not communicate directly with her without discussing it with them first. Nothing could be done legally until I’d moved out and final payments had been added up with the estate agent.

It was mid-way through March before I stumbled across the flat I’m living in now. I jumped on it. By this point I was thoroughly disheartened and fast on my way to being broke. My mum had to put up the money for my deposit and at £600 a month, it was then and still is now, out of my price range but continuing to live in the other flat was not an option. I moved out two weeks later in the beginning of April and was assured that the estate agents for the previous flat would contact me soon regarding what was going to happen.

It was June before I heard anything from them. The reason for this being that our contract couldn’t be terminated (and therefore we were still having to pay rent) until there was somebody else signed up to live in the flat I had just vacated. I received an email stating that I would not be getting my deposit back for the old flat. It would be needed to help cover some of Rachel’s rent arrears. £600 gone just like that. I have never lost a deposit on a flat before, that was a real kick in the teeth. It made me wish I hadn’t bothered paying for the carpet cleaning service before I left.

In July, we finally got a letter stating that Rachel’s rent arrears, plus the breach of tenancy fee occurred via the early termination of the contract amounted to £2,547.44. Our joint deposits totaling £1,200 would be taken off this amount leaving a total of £1,347.44. If the amount isn’t settled in 21 days, court action will be taken. This letter was sent to myself, my mother (who was a guarantor), Rachel, and her mother.

Upon receiving this letter, we went back to the people who were advising us legally. They advised attempting to contact Rachel and her family regarding this. A letter outlining that Rachel was at fault for her lack of notice and communication and that should it be us who had to pay out, we would then in turn, sue her for the total amount, including my lost deposit and the legal fees incurred. This we did. It got checked over by the person dealing with our case and by my mum’s friend, who works in business law but nonetheless knows if what we were writing was all above board and would stand up to scrutiny down the line. Despite the promise to sort legal action out against Rachel, it was a heartfelt letter that stated our sorrow that the situation had come to this and that it really would have been a simple thing to just give me some notice before her moving out that could have saved our friendship, a lot of stress and a lot of money.

A few days later it was my mum’s birthday. I gave her a text wishing her a happy birthday and telling her I would be 'round after work with her present. The message I got back is as seen below.

As it turns out "quite aggressive" was an understatement. My mum is a very strong, yet sensitive woman. She hates conflict of any kind but is more than capable of standing up for herself and putting people in their place, it’s part of her job. Adrian is my mum’s partner. The fact that she wished he was there says it all. I have never been so angry in all my life. Not only has Rachel failed to shoulder any responsibility for her actions, but her dad then has the audacity to go 'round my mother’s house and be aggressive and threatening towards her. It still makes me sick to this day. My poor, lovely mum who has had to put up with mine and my sister’s dramas through the years does not deserve to be treated like that.

Why was he acting so disgustingly I hear you ask? It turns out that he and the rest of their family are completely ignorant to the ways of the rental business. They assumed that should Rachel just up and move out, some magical insurance company would pay for her share of the rental arrears until the situation could be resolved. I should explain here that neither myself nor Rachel took out any insurance policy, not even home insurance. The only insurance policy he could be thinking of is the landlord’s insurance. The only way they pay out is if the tenant either dies or disappears with no way of contacting them. Seeing as they knew exactly where Rachel lived and there was never, nor will there ever be, a clause in which they would pay out due to a tenant’s mental health (which is what he appears to believe) I do not see how he could possibly jump to this conclusion. A person’s mental health isn’t even assessed before you rent a place and it probably never will be, nor should it be, as that could potentially be very discriminatory.

He told mum that he works in law enforcement (he doesn’t, he is a security person, mostly working out of the country) and that he knew categorically that we weren’t allowed to send that letter. We had checked with two different people who work with law whether the letter was ok before it was sent and had been advised by a lawyer to send the damn thing in the first place, but mum decided against bringing that up, reasoning that it would have made him even more aggressive than he already was. To top things off, he then accused me of over-charging Rachel for all of the bills. Remember those December bills she promised to pay and then never did? Yeah! Despite the fact that when I told her how much they would be, I screen shot the email bills and took pictures of the paper bills, I was apparently overcharging her for them! Apparently, she had not seen a single bill since she moved in. The paper bills were kept in a folder that she bought and labelled with her own hand and kept on top of that ruddy fridge her parents bought. The only bill to be emailed was the electricity bill which I would have been happy to forward to her at any time should she ask and did on more than one occasion. (Don’t forget I screenshot a picture of the damn thing over to her!)

Back to the legal advice. Scour through your bank statements and let us make sure this has no grounds. Of course, it didn’t. Not only have I kept every single bill (paper and online) I found out that in fact, for the few months she was actually there and paying bills, she underpaid me by over £300. I can attribute most of this to her having bought stuff for the flat and my paying her half of the bills instead of bouncing money around but still, that's a lot of money considering she was only there for three months.

Rachel’s dad decided through the course of his unwanted ‘visit’ to my mum that neither us (which was something!) nor they should have to pay these remaining rent arrears. So after shouting at mum, he then went to shout at the estate agent. Cue eye roll. He convinced the estate agent that they had not ever had any correspondence from them and that this was unfairly sprung on them. They assured me that they had contacted Rachel and her mum several times so clearly one of them was wrong, and I don’t know who. All I know is that the only result of Rachel’s dad’s visit to the estate agent was that the date that we had to pay by got put back by 21 days.

Now what? They clearly weren’t going to pay, and we shouldn’t have to. We went back to legal advice. We had two options. Either pay ourselves and go through all of this again in order to sue Rachel for the costs or try to come to some sort of arrangement with them. There was no guarantee that if we sued that we would win but she thought there was a decent chance we would at least get the rental arrears back if not everything else. Also to factor into this decision is the fact that by this point it is nearly August. We had been living with this thing hanging over us for eight months. Both my mum and I wanted it over. As sick as it made us, we talked to the estate agent. We told him that should they agree to pay half, we would pay the other half. I say we at this point because I was living in a flat I could not afford. I was working full time whilst doing overtime all the way through the summer without a day off as well as selling off as many possessions as possible and I still could barely afford to live. I was having to eat stale bread, 15p packet soups and going out for a meal or going to the cinema in my summer holidays was a luxury I simply couldn’t afford. I was being kept awake at night by the bills that were piling up that I couldn’t pay. So, when I say ‘we’ would go halves, I really mean my poor, lovely, absolute queen of a mother. That same mother who had paid for the deposit on my flat, paid for my first year at college because I couldn’t get any government funding for it and who has just last week, leant me money for a new car after I was in an accident and my old car got totalled, may it rest in peace.

We told the estate agent to only offer the half and half offer at the last minute. We had lost hope that they would pay it all at this point, but we still had to try. We got a phone call from the agent a mere 24 hours before the deadline. They wouldn’t pay it all, but they would go half and half. We had estate agent’s sympathy that we had to go through this, and he couldn’t believe anyone least of all someone who was supposed to be a friend, would do this. Again, some comfort that was. It was with a lot of bitter resentment that I accompanied mum to the bank to make the transfer.

I had upheld my part of the bargain, paid my rent every month on time, kept up communications with the estate agents, paid the entirety of every bill since December, been called a liar over said bills, been forced to live in a flat I cannot afford, gone hungry to ensure that the dog could eat, been so stressed I was becoming forgetful, had been behind on my assignments for college which affected my marks, and above all else, I had lost my best friend.

We went back to college in October and not only was Rachel (who had decided that she had missed so much the previous year that she would defer it) there, she walked up to where I was standing with friends as if nothing had happened. She had been on a holiday with her mother over the summer. How lovely. I do not know what I would have done without my friends on that day. It was the first time I had seen Rachel since before Christmas and she acted, to quote my friend, with utter disrespect and disregard for other people’s feelings. It was clear she said, that Rachel was still sure that she had done not a single thing wrong.

The moral of this story is never, EVER, no matter how well you know and/or love them, go into a rental agreement with a joint contract between you and a friend or friends and/or partner. ALWAYS make sure you have individual contracts drawn up, so each party is culpable only for their part of the rent. If the contract offered is a single contract, it can be built into individual contracts, you just have to ask! I may have had a little too much faith in my friend, but I hear of stories like this all the time. Please learn from my mistakes and do not get yourselves into my position, I wouldn’t wish this on anybody else. Well, maybe Rachel…

Regards,

Laura

A.K.A The (not so) Happy Herper x