Hi there, I am not quite sure how to move forward with this situation. Any advice on this terrible situation would be welcome. There is a lot to unpack here, so I will leave a short tldr at the end.
I will do my best to explain and also answer any extra info questions in the comments.
A month ago, our old roommate’s job changed and she suddenly needed out of the lease as she could no longer pay. She offered up her brother as a replacement roommate and told us that he is a local dragqueen needing roommates. We will call him Prince.
Prince is 23 and M
I am 29 and F
My partner is 22 and M.
From the get go; there were some red flags that I wrote off as being just coincidence. For example he was late to our first meeting by 4 hours because he overslept.
We needed a roommate though and felt this was the best last minute solution. At this time, I had been going through a serious depression where it was difficult to feed and bathe myself much less clean the clutter that had recently accumulated. I planned on getting an organizer to help me but there were not available immediately. Because I did not think anyone would move in with us with how the apartment was (it was not horrid or hoarder level I was just depressed) my partner and I agreed this was the best last minute solution.
The problems started to immediately rise starting with not talking to us about a move in date, not even applying to get on the lease before moving in and misleading us about this, expecting me to drive him everywhere as he has no car, not helping with chores, being late on every utility bill, trying to pay all bills in cash day of the due date despite the landlord requiring us to pay digitally, playing victim anytime I attempted to maturely talk issues out with him and more.
While there’s many stories I can tell you during this time, I am trying to keep this short so I will share one or two.
The week he moved in, my grandfather unexpectedly passed away. He was a good man who I was very close with as he taught me how to paint and it hit me very hard. Because of his passing, I had to use the money I planned on getting an organizer/cleaner to travel to his funeral/burial. As I was venting my frustration with the state of the house(as I am usually a clean person) – Prince offers to clean and organize it for me. He tells me word for word that “I don’t need to spend that much money on an organizer, I can do it!” To me; I thought and believed he was offering to do this out of the kindness of his heart because he saw how I was struggling with my depression and loss. He never once mentioned being paid.
Fast forward to 1AM; I am out of town staying at my mother’s and trying to sleep for my grandfather funeral and burial the next day. Prince starts texting me and my partner, asking us how much we are going to pay him for the organizing work he already started……. He asked for 350 dollars citing how the companies that do it, do it for much much more. I am in shock and text I will not be communicating until I get home. I ask my partner to handle it and he says he will.
When we get home, the kitchen is a mess and he has completely reorganized the bathroom; living room and my office. My partner agrees to pay him 350 for what he did and to finish the kitchen. He never did finish the kitchen. Several of my things go missing even though I asked him not to throw anything away unless he asks me. All of my emergency feminine products go missing from their special cubby in the bathroom. The products included 2 boxes of emergency pregnancy tests, emergency azo for utis, 3 boxes of monistat (1 one day, 2 three day) and some fluconazle. He threw them away and lied about it at first. Then fished out of the trash 1 box of tests and 1 ministry claiming that’s all there was. I knew what there was because i checked before i left for the trip, having thought stress had gotten me sick (it was a false alarm). It cost me around 80 to replace everything.
From this point on, the tension and issued started to grow.
Here are some things he did:
would repeatedly clean my office and reorganize things in the dead of night while I slept. He would take before and after pictures and claim that he was ‘pulling his weight’ with chores anytime we asked him to help out. We paid him to clean my office once. Chores of the house include dishes, taking trash out, taking trash to curb, sweeping, vacuuming, making sure laundry is done, cleaning kitchen after cooking, cleaning bathroom and toilet etc. We did all of this. He did none.
repeatedly call me things like “Ms Maam’, ‘honey’, ‘girlie’, ‘baby’ and ‘sweetheart’ while I am asking him to please pay his bills on time (they were 15 days late) and to pay me digitally and not cash as I front all bills with my account. In drag culture it is common to use terms of endearment in a casual setting. And I am okay with that. However he was never in drag while we were having this serious and adult conversation which made it very demeaning and rude and – sexist. I expressed the boundary several times during this argument and was met with backsass and being accused of being as abusive as his family…
repeatedly guilt trips us and then later ‘love bombs’ by buying my partner and I random snacks or being nice to me after doing things like accusing me of being abusive to him.
got angry and upset that we set a boundary to have no one over past 12am to 7am as we are sleeping unless the guest is sleeping as well. Several times he kept us up by playing loud music and sewing during the am hours of the night… (sewing machine is really loud).
refuses to come out or his room to verbally speak with me, instead prefers to passive aggressively text me.
regularly accusing me of starting drama when i try to resolve issues with him peacefully.
-complains that he can’t get a part time job because he doesn’t want to use the bus or use his bike to bike to a workplace. (There are shops and fast food places hiring within 6 biking minutes of us. I checked). He uses the fact that I won’t drive him anywhere with our ONE car as an excuse to not pay his bills on time.
There’s more but I feel this paints the picture of what we have been going through.
The past few weeks, I have felt like I have adopted a 23 year old manchild with no grip on reality. He is a local and popular drag queen and he does make money form gigs but from the 2 months he has lived with us, I would say he only has like 3 paying gigs a month. The rest of the time… no idea what he does. Social media posts, commissions and tailoring. I respect he has a hustle but he isn’t making enough to sustain himself. I’ve tried to help him by talking with him about how realistic his situation is.
Because of all this, my partner and i do not want to continue rooming with him.
At the beginning or April a blessing in disguise came in the form of our living room floor caving in: a major repair. They would need to move us out to fix it which is a violation of our lease. We had known about this issue for a few months but it hadn’t been this bad. We also informed Prince of the issue and informed him we may try to get the lease mutually broken. At the time, before all these things happened, we agreed to look for another place if that happened. However we no longer want to. We applied to do a termination of lease by mutual agreement and our current landlord agreed. They told us we had til may 1st to move.. we told Prince this.
On April 2nd we decided to look into buying our own house or to rent. I queued up a bunch of houses to tour via a realtor and signed up for 1 renter property to look at as a plan b. We informed Prince we were thinking of buying a house and told him he should look for other roommates as it would be unfair to him to keep him in limbo while we figured things out.
This resulted In a huge temper tantrum of similar caliber as described above.
On April 5th, we viewed the renters property and we fell in love. I won’t go into detail but it is a holy grail of renting properties with an owner as opposed to a leasing company. We signed the lease that day and we were told the move in date is April 19th.
While it is a 2 bedroom, we want the extra bedroom as an office and guest bedroom for friends and family. We decided to tell him and asked if he could verbally sit down with us that night. He said 8:30. We said okay. He pushed us off til 12am and we went to bed. He did the same Saturday.
Sunday, I decided to just tell him. Which he got mad at me for because he had just found out that his father (whom he claims is abusive and homophobic) needs to get heart bypass surgery. He was angry that I told him we were moving April 19th because he wanted time to figure that out.
By this time it was April 7th and I didn’t want to wait any longer because I didn’t want to be accused of waiting til the last minute. I also let him know that since the power and water accounts are in my name, ill be transferring them the day we move and he can set up his own in the interim if he wants. He claimed what I was doing was ‘illegal’ and then threatened to sue me. I told him he is the one who moved in without being on the lease and that I am not his landlord- so I am not liable. (I checked with my lawyer too, I am not in trouble of being sued.)
Ever since then he’s been doing nothing but guilt tripping me and complaining about how he can’t find anyone. I sent him 6 listings of places in a reasonable price range (600 to 800 a month) for a room already furnished. He let me know he was talking to them but didn’t ‘like them’. Right now he pays 515 for rent alone as it’d split between me, my partner and him. I know that he made 750 from a gig last month for just 1 gig. So it is entirely doable for him, especially if he gets a part time job somewhere. But, he doesn’t seem to want to have to do that.
As it stands, I feel I’ve tried everything in my power to help him find someone else to room with. I feel like he isn’t my responsibility and it isn’t my fault that he chose to room with us before getting on the lease and before he had any flow of constant income. In fact; he mislead us and assured us that there is no issues with his income. He blamed his 15+ days rent being late due to him dropping his iPhone twice and shattering it because he didn’t want to pay 3 dollars more for a screen protector.
While I understand that it is a lot of money to repair, he himself claims his phone is his livelihood.. So its beyond me why he didn’t have it in a case to begin with.
Anyway; I am tangenting. Sorry.
Last night he was crying to me again about how he can’t find anywhere. I suggested he reach out to friends to ask for a place to sleep for a few days while he looks for a room to be in. He claims him reaching out to us is just that. I don’t understand it at all. He’s only known us for a month and a half and acts like we are his only ‘friends’. He’s had ppl over; so I know that’s not the case.
Between his gas lighting, his temper tantrums, lack of common sense, lack of realistic thinking, love bombing, and guilt tripping… I don’t want to let him sleep on our couch, not Even one night.
He has asked us to loan him money for a down-payment. He has suggested that he can’t afford 600+ for a room to rent. I told him that if that was the case then he wasn’t ready to be financially independent yet. He took this as an insult. It’s callous to day it but I’m not sure anyone in his life has bothered to tell him that reality. Maybe he needs to hear it idk.
I feel like he may not even realize that he practices these malicious behaviors. I am not sure he’s aware at all. I constantly feel like he projects me as some sort of mother figure, and I just do NOT want to be his mommy. I am in a place in my life where I am so stressed that this drama has actively affected my health.
I don’t really know what to do. He has procrastinated to where he now has 3-4 days until April 19th and he still hasn’t signed a new lease or found a new place to live.
Did I mention he doesn’t have his license and is also relying on us to help him move because he can’t rent a uhaul due to not having a license..???
I feel like I am justified in not wanting him to come with me to my new place because I am not his mom… but I also feel bad that I may contribute to him potentially becoming homeless. I don’t want him to become that but I don’t trust him to live with me anymore.
There are many more arguments and stories but this is long enough. I will keep yall updated what happens on moving day or if anything else happens.
I’m sorry if this has been a little chaotic, so much has gone on and this is the first time I’ve had time to sit down and write about it.
TLDR:
Ex-Rommate’s brother, ‘Prince’, moved in as a replacement. From the start, many issues arose: Missed bill deadlines, invasions of privacy, demeaning behavior, rudeness, moving in before being on the lease, victim syndrome, accusations of abuse and other serious things, etc. Despite efforts to resolve conflicts, problems persisted leading to tensions and even a threat to sue me. A major repair was needed which prompted us to terminate our lease by mutual agreement with the landlord. My partner and I found a new apartment and don’t want to room with Prince anymore despite previous assurances we would. Prince procrastinated finding a new place and isn’t financially stable. I’m struggling with guilt over not letting him stay with us because it will likely lead to Prince becoming homeless… but I also do not feel safe nor trust him to be a responsible adult anymore.