Imagine renting a house with some friends while you’re in college. If you were home for the holidays and found out that your landlord was planning to do construction while you were out of town, would you be okay with that or upset?

In this story, one young woman is particularly upset because she was planning to go back to campus before the construction will be finished. Now, it’s up to her to decide if the landlord can continue with the construction project or not.

She’s not sure if she made the right decision.

Let’s read all about it.

AITA for refusing to stay at my parent’s house while our landlord works on surprise construction

Context: I (21F) live in a rental house with roommates Lily (20F) and Raegan (21F).

The air ducts to Raegan’s room weren’t working right, but she has a heater that the landlord bought in her room to keep her warm (we live in the Midwest).

I live about 6 hours away from my parents, and I don’t have a car, so getting back and forth for the holidays is a pain.

Uh-oh!

So we all recently went home for the holidays, when we got a surprise text from our landlord saying that we couldn’t come back to the house for about 2 weeks because he was going to insulate the vents.

We all panicked and started looking into legal measures before we found out that Lily had given him the okay to do it, and forgot to tell the rest of us.

Lily had also gave her and Raegan’s schedules for break, but she didn’t give him mine, as it was up in the air at the time.

Ultimately construction would have lasted until the 2nd, and I was planning on coming back on the 29th.

Neither options sounds great.

We tell this to our landlord to try and convince him to postpone or expedite the work being done on the house.

However he says that he can either do the work to fix the vents and we could find somewhere else to stay for a few days, or he would postpone the construction and take away Raegan’s space heater because it was a “fire hazard” (even though he himself bought it a month prior specifically because her room was cold).

We don’t really think he would actually take away the heater though, as it sometimes gets really cold where we live.

Needless to say, all of us were very stressed out at this point, but Lily and Raegan decided to let me choose if he could continue work or not, as I was coming back into town first.

I feel bad for Raegan.

I wasn’t comfortable with staying with my parents for any longer, as we don’t usually get along that well, but I could stay with a friend for 1-2 days, if that would help out (I don’t have money for a hotel right now).

I suggested that if he could speed it up, then he could do it.

But then Raegan got upset because if he couldn’t do it then he might take away her heater.

She’s not sure she made the right decision.

I ended up telling our landlord that he could continue to work if he promised to get it done by the 31st (Meaning I would stay with my friend for a couple nights, but I’m not comfortable staying much longer, as I wouldn’t have a bed to sleep in), but otherwise he would have to stop the construction.

He hasn’t responded yet, and I’m really worried.

It wasn’t an easy choice to make, and I’ve definitely cried over it, and I can’t help but feel like a jerk.

Did I make the right decision?

Since it’s Raegan’s room that’s the issue, maybe Raegan should be making this decision.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

She needs to check into her legal rights.

Maybe she should talk to a lawyer.

Another person thinks the landlord owes her a place to stay.

Everyone thinks the landlord needs to provide a place for her to stay.

She shouldn’t have to make this decision.

If you thought that was an interesting story, check out what happened when a family gave their in-laws a free place to stay in exchange for babysitting, but things changed when they don’t hold up their end of the bargain.