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“Hold fast throughout the vetting process to your requirements for references, vaccination card, and proof of employment,” Caprice Lawless advises.
“Hold fast throughout the vetting process to your requirements for references, vaccination card, and proof of employment,” Caprice Lawless advises.
“Hold fast throughout the vetting process to your requirements for references, vaccination card, and proof of employment,” Caprice Lawless advises.
Renting rooms in your house is normally a joy. Rarely is it harrowing. During a dozen years of renting rooms to a series of 35 housemates I have had only one truly scary renter, and one whose undisclosed addiction caused trouble. I attribute those rare instances to my shortcomings in the vetting process when I was either hurting for money, grieving from the latest of four deaths in my family, or recovering from knee-replacement surgery. I was not careful enough, did not ask enough questions, and did not require proof of employment. It left me feeling as if I were hanging on by a thread. This is why I rent rooms exclusively to workers now. That way, I have evidence they are capable of holding a job. Normally, as well, the employer has conducted rudimentary background check I cannot afford to underwrite. Also, even though some housemates stay for years, I keep all on month-to-month leases so I have leverage to remove a troublesome lodger if need be. Note the verb I use is remove, not ask. When things get dicey, remind yourself that your house is your business, that you are in charge, and that someone is now threatening your business. A party host can ask a guest to leave. A homeowner can remove a lodger.
Hold fast, throughout the vetting process, to your requirements for references, vaccination card, and proof of employment. You may have to forego a month’s rent until you find the right lodger who works nearby. Weigh that loss against the cost of troublesome episodes such as the two I am going to briefly describe here. Of course, holding down a job is not a sure sign of housemate heaven, but the few times I have rented to non-workers were catastrophes. The only useful thing about those terrible episodes is that through my sharing them, I might spare you similar worry.
Audrey: When to file a Notice to Vacate
Audrey (not her real name) is a middle-aged woman whose friend offered to pay her rent for her “until she gets on her feet.” Audrey has two college degrees and was ostensibly taking online-training to bring her nursing skills up to speed. Within two weeks it was obvious Audrey was addicted to opiates. Her room remained the same mess it was the day she moved in, and she seldom left it. She slept almost all day, leaving only rarely to pick up some food or go to the drugstore. All night, while still lying in bed, she watched movies, ate, and read magazines. She seldom bothered with emptying the trash, taking dirty dishes to the kitchen, washing bedding or her clothes. She kept her windows shut and kept several fans going night and day. I was understandably worried about bugs, mice, and the expensive mattress being ruined. One day after she left the house I snapped a few photographs of her disastrous bedroom as I prepared to write a 30-day notice requiring her departure.
Online property-management sources and well-meaning friends will advise you on how to have a little conversation with the person breaking the house rules, point out one or two misbehaviors, and then, Viola! You will both find yourselves in a real-life episode of Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood, equilibrium restored. Such advice assumes you are conversing with a logical person. The last thing you want to attempt is a logical conversation with someone whose mental illness/addiction prevents logic altogether. You don’t want to inadvertently initiate a conflict. When a mentally healthy person disregards a rule, you can have a brief discussion and the problem is usually addressed. With a person who is mentally ill, though, such discussion is pointless. At least that is my take-away from 20 years of teaching college students. I had to draw the boundary and set out the one and only action Audrey could take; move out. Also, I had to put the blame on myself. It is best to avoid initiating an open-ended conversations with people whose default strategies include questioning altogether any rules they might be breaking, and/or to create distracting conflicts with those imposing said rules.
“I realize this may be inconvenient for you, but it turns out I need more space than I thought I did,” I said in my two-sentence, dated, photocopied, written note that I handed to her. “Per the lease, I’m going to need you to leave within 30 days.”
When she heard of it, the wealthy friend pushed back, threatening to take me to court. I knew that was ridiculous, but, just to be safe, I filed a formal Notice to Vacate through the sheriff’s office, sending copies to both Audrey and her patron via certified mail. Doing so escalated the issue from my end, but her threat gave me no recourse. Even so, on moving day, her patron (who handled the entire move) told me she was going to leave behind in the bedroom several big boxes of things until she found a new place for Audrey. I countered, reminding her that everything had to be out by the end of the day, per the Notice to Vacate. With smoke coming from her ears, the long-suffering friend stomped as she loaded into her SUV the rest of Audrey’s things and was gone. I received a text from Audrey within an hour listing her new address as that of her patron’s. Audrey is a project, not a lodger. Her patron/enabler had hoped she could pass that all-consuming drug rehabilitation project onto me. It’s a tragic situation, multiplied across the friends and families of more than two million Americans who are addicted to pain killers. My mistake was in allowing an adult incapable of holding a job to move into my house.
Mallory: When to call the police
Mallory (not her real name) was dressed to the nines when she stepped out of her beautiful car to see the room for rent. “Oh, I’m a happy-go-lucky empty nester!” she chirped. “I’m retired now and all I have to do is find something fun to do with my time!” Since she was retired, I could not ask for a pay stub (I should have asked for a bank statement, in retrospect, or some paperwork that showed a steady income stream). She said she had worked as a beautician previously, and that she loved people. She had the other housemate and I in stitches already as we chatted with her, so I skipped asking for references. Also, at the time I was down to my last dollar and still recovering from knee replacement surgery. Alas, hindsight doesn’t need the cheap eyeglasses I pick up at the drug store.
It only took a few days for her leopard spots to begin to show. The organic bathroom cleaner was giving her a headache, she said. The kitchen did not meet her standards, so she put a hot plate in her room and began to prepare meals atop her bedroom dresser. She started sending me texts, tattling on things the other housemates supposedly did to offend her. She wore only a tank top and capri leggings, even though it was February and outside temperatures were well below freezing. Every night Mallory would leave both her bedroom windows wide open to blizzard-driven snowflakes or flaky people passing by. “I’m just hot all the time,” was her reply when I reminded her of the house rule to keep the windows closed at night. She told me her being so warm was likely related to the head injury she suffered in a car accident the previous year. Her odd behavior continued. We just avoided her. Then things got worse.
Suddenly one evening I noticed that she had taken all the knives out of the knife drawer and turned them upside down, sharp side up. Any one of us might have reached into that drawer and inadvertently sliced open a hand. That was the last straw! Immediately I made a hurried call to a local locksmith. Then I announced to my housemates that a locksmith was coming by to put locking doorknobs on all the bedroom doors, ostensibly to add value to the room-renting enterprise. The next morning, I handed Mallory a written, 30-day notice to move out. Similar to the strategy I had used with Audrey, I explained that it was my own fault for not recognizing how much space I needed.
For the next three days she harassed me with dozens of texts, phone calls, and long, handwritten notes riddled with gibberish that she would leave in the kitchen, each demanding to know why she had to leave. My responses were always the same: “I just need space.” Yet she would not let it go. I was glad I had put locks on the doors when she began beating on my door one morning, yelling at the top of her lungs, demanding that I come out into the kitchen and explain why she had to move out. My cat jumped off my bed and dashed under it. I was terrified.
I called the police. Within minutes three patrol cars arrived. Before I knew it, six police officers were standing in my dining room, while a seventh officer remained in a patrol car parked in front of my house. After bringing her out from her bedroom and into the dining room, the officers explained to her that she had to follow the terms of the lease, and that she could not continue to harass me. They encouraged her to move out as soon as possible. They took notes, listing the day she said she agreed to leave, and the amount I agreed to reimburse her for any unused rent and her damage deposit (provided all was undamaged). They explained that I was to call an officer to supervise her exit. I did not know yet why dispatch had sent so many officers to my address.
I don’t think any of us slept the three nights until she was gone. I moved his litter box to my room and left my cat locked in my room whenever I had to leave the house. Each day until she left, an officer would call to check on my safety. I was appreciative of the extra security from law enforcement. I called the police the morning she moved out, as instructed. The officer arrived within minutes, stood by my door to usher her out, and then stayed at my house another half hour in case she returned. Directly afterward, I paid my handyman to change the lock on the front door.
A week later, an undercover police officer came to my door, showed me his badge and ID, and asked to talk to me about Mallory. It turns out she has a long record with the local police. She moves in with people, steals jewelry, and hassles them in all sorts of ways. He wanted to know if we had any jewelry missing. It was a moot point; none here own jewelry or much of value other than our cell phones and laptops, and all were accounted for. Her police record was the reason so many officers had responded to the call, and why they had supervised her exit. He told me some people with closed-head injuries can be unreasonable and aggressive, and that Mallory’s police record reflected that pattern.
“Hold fast throughout the vetting process to your requirements for references, vaccination card, and proof of employment,” Caprice Lawless advises.
If you search online for tips to evict troublesome tenants, you find well-meaning advice for landlords who have houses they own across town, or for property management firms who oversee large apartment buildings. You’ll find some advice targeted for 20-somethings who need to deal with a cranky friend in the apartment they all share. Very little of it pertains to the homeowner renting rooms to adults or gives any legal advice along those lines. Locally, for example, the Wasco County Sheriff’s Office website recommends consulting an attorney for any landlord/tenant disputes. Insofar as possible, you want to avoid needing to call an attorney, to summon the police, or to endure any of the disturbing scenarios like those I experienced with these two renters. You don’t want disturbing people in your house who pose a danger to you, your other housemates, your pets and your property. It is one thing to read about people addicted to opiates or the aggressive behavior of people with closed-head injuries. It is another thing altogether to attempt sleep knowing one of them is on the other side of your bedroom wall. Not that full employment is any measure of mental health, but, by and large, those who work 40 hours a week, perforce, are more reliable. Limit your rental market to the working adult who lives in your vicinity.
By turning your house into a place for lodgers to live, you are entering a business poised along the frayed edge of America’s social fabric. None of the following situations escalated, but I did have to give a 30-day notice to the housemate who took up smoking in our non-smoking house and another to the barista who drank so much on her days off that the neighbors found her wandering around downtown, not knowing who she was or where she lived. The rest of the 31 lodgers have left, one by one, of their own accord. Each has opened my mind in a different way.
An otherwise kind, quiet woman lived here for a few years who was paid by the state to look after her chronically ill relative living in a nearby city. Every Friday night, via her cell phone, she morphed into a harpy who conducted a profanity-laced argument several hours long that featured shouting and loud sobbing. (I would text her after a half hour of it, asking her to take the call out in the garage, which she always did).
A grad student/waitress had lived here for several months when she suddenly disappeared for a week. Calls to her cell phone went unanswered. She had left her bedroom light on, her car parked in front of the house, and her laptop open in the middle of her bed. I called her employer and they had not seen her either. I was getting ready to phone the police out of concern for her whereabouts, when a call came in from a nearby hospital. My renter had tried to kill herself and so was under lockdown in the psych ward.
A sweet animal lover who worked at the zoo stayed in my basement for a few years. She was a hoarder who owned two cats (this was before my no-pets rule). She told me, as she gave me her notice, that she had found a new place, but was “going to leave a few things behind for the next person.” I had been through a second knee replacement surgery, and so had not been down any stairs anywhere for nearly a year. I told her I would need to assess the basement situation before she moved away. A friend came by to help me down the stairs while the lodger was at work. Long story short, I kept her full damage deposit to pay handymen to roll up and discard all the ruined carpets, dismantle and remove the massive, ugly shelving she had assembled along one wall, and to bring mountains of trash out of the basement. The debris filled a three-cubic-yard container that I then paid a dump truck driver to haul away.
The next basement renter was a cool chef. During our interview he mentioned he owned a pot plant. Since growing marijuana is legal, I did not give it much thought. I pictured something the size of a geranium, sitting on the sunny windowsill downstairs. Nothing prepared me for the refrigerator-sized monster housed in its own purple, glowing greenhouse that hummed night and day in his kitchen.
The process of making room is instructive, to be sure. It forces you to imagine (and then enforce) boundaries for what and whom you are making room for in your house. I need the rental income. Beyond that, though, I stay at this for whatever it can teach me, however it might open me to the human experience. What can one house with a few extra square feet offer the raw, ragged edge of America’s enormous housing crisis? A few feet of room mean nothing in a world of struggle. However, for those who find their way to you, the affordable room you make for them may mean the world.
“How Do I: Evict a Tenant.” Wasco County Sheriff’s Department. https://www.co.wasco.or.us/departments/sheriff/civil_process/how_do_i.php
“How to Get Renters Out of Your House.” Rent Prep, Aug. 2022. https://rentprep.com/blog/evictions/how-to-get-rid-of-tenants-without-eviction/
“Residential Eviction Forms.” Self-Help Information for Residents of Coos & Curry County Circuit Courts.” Oregon Judicial Branch, Oregon State Courts. https://www.courts.oregon.gov/courts/coos/help/Pages/residential-eviction.aspx
“Nearly One in Three People Know Someone Addicted to Opioids; More than Half of Millennials Believe It Is Easy to Get Illegal Opioids.” American Psychiatric Association, May 7, 2018. https://www.psychiatry.org/newsroom/news-releases/nearly-one-in-three-people-know-someone-addicted-to-opioids-more-than-half-of-millennials-believe-it-is-easy-to-get-illegal-opioids
“Aggressive Behavior After Brain Injury.” Flint Rehab, Oct. 17, 2022. https://www.flintrehab.com/aggressive-behavior-after-brain-injury/#:~:text=Aggressive%20behavior%20after%20brain%20injury%20is%20often%20a%20direct%20result,day-to
Disclaimer:The information provided in this column does not, and is not intended to, constitute legal advice. The information herein and links to other websites are to provide readers with general information. Please contact your attorney for legal advice with respect to any particular issue. Views expressed herein are those of the writer, not those of the publication.
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