* * * * *
I rent a room in a 3 bedroom house that is owned by my parents, but it is in my name. It is not our family home, it is a house they bought nearly seven years ago when I was at the end of my first year of university. Put simply, the idea was that I would rent a room and be responsible for finding two other people to live with me and together the three combined rents would pay the mortgage taken out to pay for the house. This house has now gone on the market, as I've decided I don't enjoy living here anymore, and it's becoming more like a burden than a blessing. The new house I have found is one I will be renting from a private landlord, allowing me to keep separate my family situation and my living arrangement.
Living in this house has had its ups and downs, the ups being that I have had the freedom to decorate the house as I wish, and that I have had stability that I wouldn't get by renting privately. But the downside has been continually finding people to live with me. The house isn't in the part of Leeds typically favoured by students & young professionals, and whilst my room is lovely, the other two rooms aren't as great. The rent isn't extortionate, but it's not cheap, and bills are relatively high.
As the house is legally mine, I have had to handle a lot of the "landlord" responsibilities as well as also being a tenant and paying rent. Whenever a housemate claims housing benefit, it's me who has to fill in all the paperwork (and it's happened several times) and yet when I was out of work, I couldn't claim housing benefit because of the situation where I was renting from my parents/"owning my own house".
When one housemate let the bath overflow and water came through the ceiling, which then grew black mould all over it from the damp, it was me who had to clean it up when he wouldn't, even though I was effectively just a co-tenant.
* * * * *
I've had a number of good friends live here over the years and a lot of good times, but I've also had a few nightmare housemates...
Strike one
One housemate used to be a friend of mine, which made it harder when things broke down and I had to tell him I didn't want to extend his contract for another year. We'd got on well when I was younger, and enjoyed going out and drinking all the time. We'd stay up late, go out together, get drunk, have fun, and come home and carry on. I grew out of this, but he didn't. I'd been temporarily out of work, where as his unemployment continued. He lived almost completely nocturnally, which meant he had lights on all night, and he had two computers running 24hours a day. He'd go out clubbing and leave almost every light in the house on, and when I tried to suggest this was why our fuel bills were so high he said that wasn't it, that fuel was just expensive. (When he left, my next quarterly bill was over £100 lower even though it was at a colder time of year.) On the occasions he came out to feminist discos with me, he'd often hit on women and behave in an inappropriate sleazy fashion towards friends of mine leaving me embarrassed that I'd invited him out with me.
When I told him he couldn't carry on living there because I couldn't cope with living with someone like him, giving him plenty of notice to find somewhere else. He acted like I was a monster, and we lived out our last month together in awkward silence. He now lives with my sister, and whenever I go round he stays in his room, even if I'm there for Christmas dinner.
Strike Two
Then there was the housemate who came well recommended by a friend who has since admitted she would never live with him. He was also long term unemployed, and spent most of his time in his room. He refused to pay council tax as he didn't have a job, but wouldn't apply for council tax benefit as he said that was the landlord's (ie my) responsibility to sort out, which left me paying proportionally higher council tax because it clearly wasn't my responsibility to sort out, as I couldn't claim the benefit on his behalf.
When temping agencies rang up to discuss his situation (ringing up on my landline which he refused to contribute to, no less) presumably with a view to trying to find him work, he would be rude to them on the phone and then once the call had finished he would rant about how it was completely out of order for them to disturb him like that.
He would moan about having to go collect parcels from the sorting office, even though it was less than a mile from our house and he had plenty of time to go get them what with not having a job.
He also seemed to lack the social skills to know when a conversation had run it's course, meaning that you would often get trapped in conversations with him for literally hours unless you bluntly and forcefully excused yourself from the conversation. He was incredibly negative, and we didn't get on at all.
Halfway through a year long contract, I knew I couldn't live with him for another year, so I politely told him, with six months notice, that I wouldn't be renewing his contract and he would need to find somewhere else. He took this badly, claiming that he now had "another thing to worry about", presumably another thing on top of getting your rent paid, and not having to pay council tax, and being paid to sit around in your room listening to music. Boo fucking hoo.
Strike Three
Another housemate started off not as a housemate, but as the boyfriend of a housemate I got on really well with. He stayed over a lot, and we got on reasonably well, so eventually it was decided he should go on the contract with her and contribute properly to rent and bills. There were a few things I didn't like about him, like his tendancy to control and manipulate my housemate/his girlfriend by sulking when he didn't get his way, or kicking off when he was upset so that she compromised her position for an easier life, but I figured that was their relationship and not my problem. That was a misjudment on my part, because it soon became my problem. Controlling men will try and control anyone in their life where they think they can get away with it
The day his new contract began, his behaviour got a lot worse. I came home from work to find he had emptied the entire contents of my garage (which he didn't rent as part of his tenancy agreement). He was sat on the roof of his car, overseeing the contents of my garage, which was now piled up all over my lawn. As I walked up the street to the house (on my way from work), he shouted out to me that he was wondering when I was going to be home, as we needed to "sort all this shit out". He started going through the items one at a time, suggesting things we could get rid of. This was my stuff, a rocking horse I had when I was a child, a bicycle that had great sentimental value but couldn't be ridden since someone had kicked the front wheel in. Bits of wood and paint from when various work had been done on the house. The sort of stuff that you keep in a garage basically, but that crucially was not his to move around or get rid of.
I tried to explain that he was out of order, calmly at first, but when he wouldn't listen, getting more upset and agitated. He then told me I should go inside to have a cup of tea and calm down, so I told him to put the stuff back and left him to it. A short while passed, and it started to drizzle at which point he got cross because no one was helping him put the stuff back in the garage. His girlfriend agreed with me that he was completely out of order, and 'had a word with him' but it seemed to have little effect.
The second incident with him came about because my bike that I used for riding everywhere needed some work doing to the back wheel, something to do with the sprocket. I hadn't had chance to sort it out immediately, as the bike repair shop was a way away from my house so I was waiting til I had a day off. On my day off, I went into the garage to get the part of my bike that needed fixing to take to the shop, only to find that he had moved it. I tried to ring him to ask him what he had done with, but it rang out and then went to answerphone. So I went to the shop and bought a new part instead of fixing the old one, and returned fully pissed off. When I challenged him about it, and explained that it wasn't his bike to touch and that he had massively inconvenienced me, and that I tried to call him to ask where it was before having to give up a new part, he told me his phone hadn't rung. I repeated that I *had* rung him, at which point he asked aggressively if I "was I calling him a liar". I snapped. It wasn't just the bike, or the garage, it was those two things as symptoms of his desire to control people around him, of his disregard for other peoples feelings or possessions.
He also owed me over £300 in bills, as all the bills in were in my name and came out of my account, and had to be paid on time. He had been claiming he didn't have the money as he had been out of work for a while (and he was self employed.)
I told him I didn't want him to live there anymore, and that I was giving him a month's notice (as I could do legally as per his contract.) At this point he stopped making eye contact and acted like he was very engrossed in his computer and said "fine, whatever you want, I don't care". He moved out a week later and his girlfriend went with him, and I still have concerns about their relationship, and the control he has. I tried to discuss them with her before they left but she didn't want to hear me. Fortunately, I did get my money back before he left.
* * * * *
These three men ultimately made me feel uncomfortable in my own home. The stress of having to keep finding new people to move in, and the risk that it could dissolve into another one of these situations made me realise that any benefits I got from living here were not worth it. It's not like a situation where if you rent a house with a group of friends, and things don't work out, you can leave. This was my house, and what started off being stability ended up being something I felt shackled too. So I spoke to my parents, and we decided to put the house on the market. It was decided that once this house sold, they would buy somewhere for my brother and his girlfriend to live in.
And then, as a temporary measure, and because he needed somewhere to live and I had a spare room, and because our parents effectively own the house, my younger brother moved in less than a month ago. Slowly at first, and then all at once, things became very unpleasant, as I will explain in my next post.
No comments:
Post a Comment