Shutterstock

When a roommate stops paying his rent, cleaning up, or contributing to utilities, it is important to act fast, or things can get out of hand.

What would you do if one of your roommates kept falling further behind on what he owed and never helped with the apartment anymore?

That is the situation that the people in this story were in, but rather than dealing with it directly, they renewed the lease for another year, and now they want the bad roommate gone anyway.

They really put themselves in a bad position. Read through the full story below and see what you think they should do.

He owes us over 10k and is damaging the apartment.

I (30F) want my close friend (33M) to leave, but we signed a lease.

They have lived together for a long time.

I (30F) have 2 roommates, Maria (26F) and Alen (33M). I have been friends with Maria for 9 years and Alen for 5.

We have been living together for 3 years. The issues have been around for about 2 or more years, but became more apparent in the current apartment.

A roommate can’t just choose not to pay his rent.

Last year we moved into our dream apartment. I make the most out of all of us, so I have the utilities and rent taken out of my accounts to avoid any possible late fees or missed payments.

I don’t make a lot of money, just more than minimum wage. From the beginning of our lease, Alen mentioned to me that he couldn’t pay the deposit and rent right away because he had agreed to pay for part of his sister’s wedding.

When it comes to money, you should never make an assumption.

Given they had paid rent for our 2 other previous apartments and assuming he meant a month or two, I agreed they could pay me later.

Six months later and excuses like medical bills, Christmas presents, and car repairs, and he still had not paid for any rent, deposit or utilities for the new apartment.

This has gone on way to long.

Meanwhile, he wasn’t contributing to household chores, spending all day every day playing video games and ordering take out.

I thought he was in an intense depressive episode and isolating. I really struggled to bring up the topic of paying their fair share and paying back what they owe me, due to their mental state, during those 6 months.

Do not renew the lease with this person.

After some stern talking he started paying rent, but still wasn’t paying utilities.

When time to re-sign the lease came along, I wondered if telling Maria about the money Alan owed me was a good idea.

What were they thinking?

I asked a few friends and they either said not to or they didn’t know what was best. We didn’t speak about it and re-signed the lease.

Soon after, I learned he owed both of us thousands of dollars. Maria a few thousand and me more than 5k.

And, to make matters worse…

To top it all off, he has also done very serious damage to the door frames in his room.

These are vintage, original with the house door frames that can’t be cheap to repair.

We only found out about the damage because Maria saw it by accident.

They let themselves be taken advantage of.

So we have low hopes for our deposit.

We were clearly taken advantage of, whether on purpose or not.

While Alen is clearly the bad guy in this story, the other two roommates were absolute fools. They not only let it get to the point where they were owed thousands, but then they renewed the lease again. What a huge mistake.

Let’s see what the people in the comments have to say about this.

Take the guy to court.

Make it make sense.

Yup, they are in a very bad spot.

This commenter is exactly right.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about a neighbor who was angry after coming home to a surprise hole in their fence.

What were they thinking?

They are in a bad situation, but they really did it to themselves. No matter what issues the guy has going on in his life, he has to pay his rent.

At this point, they need to do what they can to minimize any future issues that he will cause.