I live in a 2 bed, 2 bath apartment with 2 other roommates. I share a room with roommate A and roommate B has her own room. Roommate A and I are both male, college students in CA. Roommate B took over our previous roommate's lease beginning of March this year. Roommate B is a lady in her 40s. We didn't really have a choice as it was difficult finding a replacement during the school year and my previous roommate did not care too much and was ready to leave.
Roommate B hasn't paid rent ever since she moved in and turns out to be crazy. Initially, she lied about having COVID when we asked her about her unpaid rent. We started to politely remind her to pay rent and she started acting violently towards us - cursing, throwing stuff, constantly lying, etc. She claims that roommate A has been harassing her when all he did was to ask her to pay rent. She claims she made a harassment report on Roommate A and will press charges if we try to speak to her. We tried filing restraining order on her at the court, which didn't work.
Three of us are all on the lease and the apartment complex is managed by a management company. We signed a18 month lease so we still have one more year of lease term. Roommate A's parent is our guarantor on the lease.
I feel like only option we have is to terminate the lease early. If we want to terminate our lease, we will have to pay two months of rent. Because roommate B hasn't paid her portion of the rent for past two months, roommate A and I will have to split roommate B's two months of rent and additional two months of rent, which will be around 5k for each of us. I am a broke college student who doesn't have this money and my family can't help out. We also do not want to do something that will impact roommate A's parent, who is the guarantor on the lease.
What can I do in this situation? What is the best path forward? Can anyone give me any helpful information here?
tl;dr: A crazy roommate moved in to take over our previous romance's lease and hasn't paid rent. What can I do do in this situation?
Submitted April 17, 2023 at 12:39AM by jiyeon96 https://ift.tt/jD9ZAKs
