So, there are 5 total residents in my apartment. I simply joined an ongoing lease, so I have no idea how long the apartment has been in "our" possession (meaning a long line of college boys). It has at least been 4 years, and all the current residents have been here for less than that. Knowing how long it has been, and knowing that the maintenance and upkeep has largely been left up to college boys, we joined with the full knowledge of not getting our $900 deposit back. That's $180 from each of us.
A year ago, I adopted two kittens. They have been an absolute dream. They've never peed outside of the litter box, and they don't scratch the furniture, carpet, or walls. The deposit for them was $600, which was of course completely footed by me. If there are any issues in the apartment, they are 100% not the cause. My other housemates agree with this.
The problem: I have now provided a total of $780/$1,500 or 52% of the deposit. That means that if we decide to split the returned deposit by percentage contributed, I will tank most of the losses. Whatever loss they incur from the damage, I pay about 5x that. For example, if we got back $500 total, I would get 52% or $260, while they would each get $60. I would lose $520 while they lose $120 each.
This feels unfair because all of us know the cats have dealt 0 damage to the apartment. But it also feels unfair to say, you guys get $0 and I keep $600.
I am obviously biased and I have a really hard time looking at this objectively. All I can think about is losing all that money, so I want to hold onto as much as I can. But I want to be fair. What do you guys think is the fairest way to split this?
July 23, 2018 at 05:26AM
