Moving in with someone, especially when you’re college age, is a field of land mines.

Even if they’re good friends, you have no idea if they’ll be actual slobs in their day-to-day lives.

And if they’re complete strangers?

Well I hope you crossed your fingers nice and proper.

This is a story of pure frustration, caught in the middle of a real ugly house rented by a bunch of animals.

Roommates don’t respect my boundaries, I get them evicted in less than a day.

My freshman year of college I went through a long process with my school to be able to live off campus as a freshman (normally this is not allowed, but they made an exception due to circumstances).

I moved in on a lease takeover as a girl to an all-boy apartment. It was a 4 bedroom apartment that individually leased each room but 2 rooms shared 1 bath and all shared a kitchen, living room and laundry room.

This place is was GROSS when I moved in, but I cleaned it up and got it livable enough.

I grew up with brothers and had no problem with dudes as long as they were decently respectful. Plus I had the kitchen to myself.

I’m also an engineering student and asked them if they had their friends over to let me know beforehand or keep the music below bed-rattling.

Think those requests went heeded?

Turns out, this exact apartment was known as the party apartment and I would soon find out why. I was working 8-12 hour shifts at retail and then going to school full time. I come home at 11 pm exhausted to blasting music and so many people they are streaming out the front door.

I WAS PI***D.

Luckily each room locks with a deadbolt and I remembered to lock mine before I left for work. There were easily 50 people there.

As a 20 year old who just wanted to sleep, I did the only rationale thing I could do. I packed an overnight bag, locked my room and called a friend with an SOS and slept there.

I find out LATER that one of my roommates was dealing, only 3 people were of legal drinking age and 1 girl was 14?!?!

The gf of one of my roommates was still in HS and invited all of her friends who invited more people.

The cops busted the party but luckily didn’t card anyone so no one was arrested.

So things have escalated for her, clearly.

This went from kids partying, to actual police-worthy things going on in there.

Now I felt like I could still reasonably deal with this. Then they started to use my things in the kitchen, steal my food and the last straw was when they dented my kitchen knives that I had just purchased. Brand new knives that now had knicks in the blade like they sword fought with them.

Mind you, I communicated all of my grievances that weren’t super minor (like using my laundry soap) with them and asked that my boundaries be respected. Their guests would throw up and poop in the toilet.

They would try to enter my room to use my bed while I was sleeping. The gf of one even ended up coming into my room to stare at me (i woke up) when I forgot to lock my door to tell me 4 people were coming over. My food and my items were still being taken and damaged and I grew tired of it all.

I attempted to befriend the various roommates in an effort to get them to be more courteous, but the information I got was even better. Remember how I was a lease takeover? Yeah our apartment not only required the necessary paperwork, they also required a lease takeover FEE.

I find out that my roommates are FRIENDS of the people on the lease. Their friends upgraded to a different apartment complex and didn’t want to pay that fee. My roommates hadn’t paid the takeover fee or signed any paperwork putting them on the lease. So the original lease holder wasn’t living there. I keep this information for later.

So the partying dies down a bit, thankfully. Then she gets to customizing her room a little.

A few weeks pass and the parties are smaller, but still happening. Then one day I am discussing painting my room due to the marks on the walls from the previous tenants. Our apartment allowed you to paint if it was 1) approved first or 2) you painted it back before move-out.

The maintenance guys were super sweet and let me pick a custom color for my room (a pretty light-sky-blue), bought it for me, and helped me paint my room. My roommates find out I painted and ask about it, not knowing what would happen later.

They didn’t paint their room, they spray painted it. Not with any vulgar or even gang symbols but spray painted it. The parties continued but now they let their guests sign the walls in various sharpies. This was the moment I realized was the time. I ended up taking pictures of the room on Snapchat and saved them to my camera roll.

Spray paint… in a bedroom…

That has to be insanely dangerous to breathe in!

I knew that my apartment complex wouldn’t do anything about the parties and could even blame me for the underage kids. Plus the items I stored in the common areas were fair game according to legal terms about a shared space.

I first speak with the building manager about the parties. I was right, there isn’t anything I can do but call the cops. I can complain all I want about the condition of the house my roommates cause and the theft and damage of my belongings and they won’t do anything.

They didn’t even seem bothered when I spoke to them about 2/4 of us living there not being on the lease (the other 1 that was on my side was chill and I didn’t have a problem with). As long as rent was paid on time, it seemed they weren’t going to do anything. After all this, I pull out my camera roll and tell this nice lady to scroll as long as she wants as I took about 15 pictures on just the 1 room. She gets mad and starts babbling on and on about “gang graffiti” and she won’t have it.

I knew there were no gang symbols whatsoever on the walls, just dumb kids but it didn’t look good. I didn’t correct her and reminded her that the rooms in question were the ones were they weren’t even legal tenants here.

The brown stuff was about to hit the fan.

I locked as much as I could remember to grab of my things from the kitchen in my bedroom beforehand and was headed straight to work so I didn’t get to see the devastation as 2 office workers evict them in HOURS. They weren’t the legal tenants and had clearly stayed over the 7 day guest limit. They had to pack up as much as they could and were out by the time I got home from my shift 10 hours later.

I got a lot of hateful and threatening messages from the gf of one of them. I don’t remember the exact words as this was a few years ago (2016) and I didn’t save it for more than a year. I did save them once she started threatening me with stalking and physical harm.

I stayed polite and neutral in my responses in case I would need to take them to court. They did get one small revenge in that I remembered to lock up my pots, but in my hurry I forgot the lids. They stole my lids to all cookware—even my crockpot. They also took all my food they could grab and put it in the now-topless crockpot with ALL of my spices too and left it on. I’m not sure what liquid was used and I don’t ever want to know.

But I ended up paying the rent of a 1 bedroom for 4 bedrooms when the last roommates lease ended a few months later (the rooms were leased individually). Also the now-former roommates’ friends that WERE on the lease had to come in clean and re-paint the walls white.

Think they learned their lesson ever letting friends just willy-nilly take over an apartment they were still on the hook for??

Do you know what happens when you put water-based white paint over red and black colored permanent marker? He eventually hired a guy to make it look right. I heard it took 9+ layers in some areas and others were entirely spackled (that’s not right but it was a special paint that wouldn’t let the ink from the marker bleed through) over and was super thick.

I felt bad for the original lease holders as they were now stuck with the damages, had to repaint and still had to pay rent on this apartment. I had met with and was cool with them. Even tried helping one guy paint a bunch and told him I had no beef with him. I apologized the way things worked out and he wasn’t happy with me but also didn’t blame me.

I reason it with they knew they were breaking the terms of their lease and exactly who their friends were when they didn’t transfer the lease. If they hadn’t repainted the room the way they did, the complex manager wouldn’t have done ANYTHING.

Look. OP could have attempted to do a little more due diligence before she moved in.

But we don’t know that backstory. The landlord might have told her the current tenants were perfect for all we know.

WOW. I think everyone grew up a little more after this.

Myself included.

Let’s see what folks had to say!

One commenter had some great advice for the rest of us on how to remove markers.

Another person remembers how incredibly difficult it is to remove spray paint / graffiti.

One Redditor notes how in their state, messing around with landlords is a bad idea.

While this person just asked the question on all our minds.

It’s a jungle out there, folks.

If you liked that post, check out this story about a customer who insists that their credit card works, and finds out that isn’t the case.