Roommate has too many long-term guests

15 years ago

I have lived with my roommate since January. We are both on a month-to-month situation with our building, with no lease. My roommate has a lot of friends in different cities and this has led to frequent long-term house guests who stay with us when visiting the city. When I say long-term, I mean usually about two weeks. I have been mostly fine with it up until now, and I feel that allowing a two-week guest to stay is extremely generous on my part. However her most recent house guest, who is here right now, intends to stay for SIX weeks. I found this out at the last minute, after it was too late to stop it from happening, but I let my roommate know that I was not happy about the situation.

Then, on top of that, this particular houseguest is sleeping in the living room instead of my roommate's bedroom, which is additionally inconvenient because I can't use the living room or kitchen area late at night since she is sleeping. I have asked my roommate to have her sleep in her bedroom instead; my roommate flat out refused, which makes me so angry--after I have been INCREDIBLY patient with her numerous houseguests and she won't be even a little flexible to make sure I'm comfortable? If she's not willing to bend, I'm inclined to say no to all future houseguests.

My question is, how do I prevent her from having them? If I say no what's to stop her from disrespecting my wishes and bringing them over anyway? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Comments (4)

lucy
15 years ago
I wouldn't say no to future guests, I'd say no to rooming with that person altogether! She is taking extreme advantage of your good nature and you need to be tough, either about telling her that her hostess days are over right now, or else that you're leaving (but wait til you have where to go and your valuable things are packed). She obviously does not have your interests at heart and I don't think you want to be used any longer - "asking" her for anything is pointless I think.
maxine_wells
Original Author
15 years ago
Thank you very much for your advice. The thing is, I really want to avoid moving out. I like my apartment and other than the guest situation, my roommate and I are pretty compatible. (I also don't want to deal with the hassle of moving.) Is there anything I can do to enforce at least a limit on visit durations?
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lucy
15 years ago
Only if you can set something up with her I guess, that she would be willing to sign or something, but without any lease, and from the sound of her reaction before, I wouldn't bet on anything. You should have set out some rules ahead of time of course, so you'd be within your rights to ask her to leave (if you have someone else to pay).
camlan
15 years ago
You have a few choices. You can stay and put up with the guests. You can leave--fortunately for you, you don't have a lease. Therefore, you can leave after giving the landlord 30 days notice.

Try talking to your roommate again. Stress the inconvenience to you of having the living room and kitchen be off limits when the guest is sleeping.

If it were me, I'd just keep using the living room and kitchen as if the guest weren't there (after determining that my roommmate was not budging on the issue). There's a limit as to how nice I would be to someone else's guest who was limiting my movement around my apartment for which I pay rent. If the guest complains, suggest that she sleep in roomie's room.

Or suggest that roomie pay a larger share of the rent for the weeks that guest is there--you can't use all of the apartment all of the time because of guest, so roomie makes it up to you financially.

You could also check with the landlord to see if there is a limit on the time a guest can stay. A lot of leases only permit guests for two weeks at a time. If this guest would cause problems with the landlord, that's another piece of ammo for you.