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hi guys. I'll warn you now this is going to get long, but I've already spent hours looking up what I could on google and just am wondering if anyone has any advice that might take this all into consideration.... I know city-data isn't a legal forum, but I'm trying to get all the advice I can right now.
okay, so, two months ago (beginning of September) I moved to Chicago from Alabama for grad school, and I moved in with a couple, B and K, and their roommate, H. We're in a three bedroom apartment. B (dude) is the leaseholder, dating K (a girl--this being important), and H (dude) and I are subleasing from B on a month to month basis (no lease, just an oral agreement).
I don't really see H much, I didn't get to talk to him much before I moved in--in fact I barely got to talk to him at all during the roommate interview.
Two weeks after I move in (September 16), I ask if he'd drive me to the UPS store so I can return a big package (in return for dinner, of course). while leaving the diner, he pulls out in front of someone, and immediately starts cursing and calling them a N-word. I tell him he can't say that word around me, that it makes me uncomfortable, and he keeps using it. Then he tells me that around March, he was driving around in Chicago somewhere, stopped and asked for directions, and a group of black guys pulled him out of the car, beat the crap out of him, and stole his vehicle. Horrible, right? But I'm already suspicious because of the amount of details he's leaving out here, and the fact that he's talking about how if he had his steel toes, he could've beaten the **** out of him, and he's bringing up his DUI and parole officers and so on.
Of course, the next day (Sept 17th), B and K found a bottle of methadone prescribed to H sitting out in the living room, and this gives me an opportunity to ask about H's spring incident. They said he had been driving around in the middle of the night with $300 cash, that H never gave them all the details, and they just suspected him of buying pot (H smoked off and on in his room, even though all three of us had asked him to stop multiple times before he did).
At this point I'm really nervous around this guy, because I know methadone is quite serious, but I'd also only been living there a few weeks and it wasn't really my problem then. We (B/K/myself) have a talk with him, H says he's on it for pain, but goes to methadone clinics to fake a heroin addiction because it's cheaper, since he's unemployed and insurance-less. Things are okay for a while. H still makes K and I fairly nervous, but he rarely comes out of his room so it doesn't seem to be a big deal....we just think he's dumb.
Between Sep. 17th and October 15th, there's a few small(er) problems; K has to go to sleep early on some nights, B and K are having a little couple tiff, H has been loud in the kitchen when K goes to sleep early, etc, etc. October 15th, H asks to borrow my phone to contact some people, and then FLIPS OUT when he can't get instantly hold of them--he starts screaming, cursing, etc. He's done a weeks' worth of work for someone under the table, and had been told to come back and pick up his paycheck later. Stupid in the first place, yes, but guess what? Turns out H had dialed the wrong number. After he realizes this, he gives me my phone back and starts talking about how he's had to threaten to follow people home and beat the **** out of them to get paid before. I tell him that's not cool, and he tells me that people should know better than to mess with him. This starts to come up a LOT over the next two weeks.... At this point I'm more than just slightly nervous around him; this incident scared the hell out of me for how easily he flew off the handle. I've dealt with plenty of people with anger issues, but nothing like this guy has.
We have a house meeting the 17th, where we discuss these things, and how H's screaming made me and K really nervous. He starts talking about his past and abused history and talks about how his his father would beat him and his mother, but that his mother messed with his father's mind (some serious 'blame the victim' insinuation here on H's part). He says when he says things like that though he's just kidding. Note...he never apologizes. He's never apologized for *any* of these things he's done.
On the night of October 26th, K has to go to sleep early and asks that people not be in the kitchen late (her and B's bedroom is directly next to the kitchen). H, of course, comes in late and starts causing noise. K opens the door and asks him to be quiet, and before I know it, H has started raising his voice (which from him is quite terrifying) and cursing at K, calling her a b*tch and just keeps repeating "all I was trying to do is ____" (no apologies or anything for waking her up). This is where I come out of my room, since I am used to having to mediate and calm down people with anger problems. K has pushed the dining room table between her and H and she is already visibly shaken; H is leaning over the table towards her, still yelling. K goes back in her room, crying, before H pushes the table back; I tell H he can't start shouting like that and ask what happened. H gives me the run down of "all I was trying to do is ____" and when I try again to tell him that he can't start raising his voice in the middle of the night like that, he starts to get up into MY personal space and telling me that "all he was trying to do is ____" and again with the "people should know better than to mess with me." B at this point has walked off from the situation, but at this point I'm terrified. H keeps repeating how he's in control, but his adrenaline was just getting out of control, mixed in with phrases of "you can't mess with someone who's been abused" and so on. He's started getting really close and raising his voice to me while saying these things. I tried to remain calm, but I was shaking (hands and voice), and in fact told H so. Again he keeps talking about how we can't mess with a person like him. At this point I just tell him I can't handle any more, go into my room, and lock the door and just end up in a panic attack. I mean, I've never had someone act so unapologetic and so obviously in denial about their anger and that people are getting scared, and I come from a background of living in a family with anger problems too.
I don't get to sleep until late, and by this time B and K and myself already know that H is going to have to move. During this whole time, B has also been disturbed by H, but has been trying to stay as impersonal as possible with H in talking to him, to try to make things easier for all of us. Various difficulties with the timing of telling him, but by Nov 1st B has told H he has 30 days to move. From my room, I can hear H arguing with B, raising his voice, trying to say K and I are just being manipulative whiners--not that we're genuinely scared and nervous being around him. We avoid being home as much as possible, we don't even cook in the kitchen because we're afraid of running into H. He won't even acknowledge that him saying things like "people should know better than to mess with me" (coupled with his sprinkled mentions of parole officers, fights, etc) come off as veiled threats. After a while though H says, yes, he will move.
So we've all kept crossed fingers but it's obvious H is starting to crack. He's always been loud and noisy...wears his steel toe boots constantly inside, throws things around and rearranges things in his room for hours almost daily, slams his door so hard that the floor of the apartment shakes...but now he's started to randomly scream "F*CK!" and so forth at the top of his lungs--afternoon, midnight, whenever--and he talks to himself more than ever (and he flat out talks to himself for an hour at a time, talking about how we're posers and we can't do these things to him and how he's the victim, etc etc). H keeps doing things like knocking on the bathroom door when either K and I use it (not when he needs to use it--we think he's just trying to freak us out), screaming "boo" at K when she comes out of her room, and so on. One of the biggest problems we have though is half of the time he's totally lucid and...not bat**** crazy, the other half of the time he's throwing things around, screaming, freaking us out....
So...here's the finale (I told you this was long). Thursday night, H leaves in his car for a long time--maybe 10 hours. We're all surprised, since he never leaves the apartment and doesn't seem to have any friends or anything. Around 1am, I'm still awake and I can hear H has come home and goes to his room and starts screaming and throwing things. At this point it's pretty normal behavior...even if it's causing us all to lose sleep. At 6.30am, he starts screaming again and such. When I wake back up at 9am to leave for class, he's passed out in his room with the door open (for the first time ever--no one has seen even a sliver of his room since he moved in in January). I leave for class. At 3, I get a message from K saying that H started screaming at the bedroom door to her, something about him losing his car and how she has to help him. She tells him to leave her alone, that he's scaring her, and he continues screaming. She is freaked out enough she leaves the house in her PJs, crying, as soon as H wanders away. I call her when I get the message, and she tells me something about H maybe having been arrested? maybe his car was impounded? but that's he's mad enough that I shouldn't go home. (B has let me know that H thinks K and I are solely responsible for the reason H is having to move....) I'm stressed enough by having to deal with this guy that just having this information makes me panic at school--and I almost never have panic attacks, maybe one a year, and here I've had two in two weeks from this. I find someone to stay with for the night, have a non-stressful night sleep for the first time in weeks, and meet up with B and K outside of the apartment Saturday morning.
So Friday night B has told H he needs to leave ASAP, because we all feel like our safety's being threatened at this point. (H has made more "people should know not to mess with me" statements, including telling B such things like "this kind of treatment is how people get shot") B has somehow managed to track down H's mom, who tells B that H is *not* harmless and that he has a history of drug abuse. H says he'll rent a van and a storage unit to get his stuff out Saturday afternoon, and that he's already got a place to stay for Sunday night. B goes to work, K and I go off to leave H space and time to get his stuff out. We get home at 10pm, and H hasn't done so much as even call the storage place, or packed up anything. All we can do is cross our fingers and hope. Sunday morning though, H has woken me up with his screaming at 5am, 6am, 7am--and I normally sleep like the dead (was borderline narcoleptic for a while). I haven't slept well in weeks, I feel sick and tense and sore all the time, and I know K is the same way.
Today H spent all day trying to find his car with his dad (which he sometimes says is stolen, sometime says is lost--we now know there was some incident Thursday night where he passed out at a stop-sign and a cop was involved?), while B and K are gone to a family event, thinking H would be getting his stuff together and out today. When B and K got home (before I did), H and H's dad were here, and now H is trying to tell us he doesn't know when he's going to go. (In his talking to himself, he talks about getting lawyers and fighting us over it.)
B works in security, and has tried talking to the cops at his job about what we can do about the threatening behavior, and has been told that we should've called them each time there was an incident, but since there's not a documented history there's not much we can do until something happens.
All I can find online is that B might be able to serve some sort of 10-day notice, but it seems there are lots of fees and stuff involved and we're already getting stretched covering H's share of the rent until someone else can move in. Frankly, we're all already strung to the breaking point and don't know if we can handle another week and a half... he just keeps getting worse and worse, but we don't think we can leave him and trust him to get out since it's obvious he's making excuse after excuse (plus, we're kind of worried that he might try to destroy our things if we're all gone too long).
Is there any way we can get him gone immediately?
Even now I can hear H throwing things around, cursing, stomping around loud enough that the whole floor is shaking.
I just want to be able to sleep and not worry that a racist, violent, methadone-addicted sociopath is going to totally go bat****. :|
Last edited by april h l; 11-16-2009 at 01:12 AM..
Reason: wording
Roommates suck only slightly less than second degree burns or AIDS. The reason younger people are the only ones willing to live with roommates isn't because of the financial savings; it's because everyone else already learned that lesson once before. If the kook has no lease, say adios. It's going to take a spine, you might have a confrontation but it sounds like something that needs to be done. Welcome to the real world. You can't always be everyones buddy and sometimes, there is no 'friendly' way to do what needs to be done.
If the kook has a lease, well, you may learn a hard lesson about why it's very, very, VERY important to carefully screen the people you choose to share a home with.
he's not on the lease, but, from what I've found on chicago housing law, since he's lived here more than 30 days and pays month to month, we might have to formal evict him. I'm not sure if that applies though since we personally live with him?
also...
we've already had confrontations with him (B has, anyway, since he's the only other dude here), almost on a daily basis. We're not worried about doing it the 'friendly' way; he knows he sure as **** isn't welcome here, and that he needs to be out ASAP. we're trying to find the legal way to force him out though, especially since a lot of the stuff H's pulled borders (maybe is?) harassment/domestic disturbance/etc...
and yeah, this dude sucks waaaaay more than 2nd degree burns. :|
You're not on the lease!?! You signed nothing?
Get out now!
AND, get a new phone and number so this crazy bunch can't find you.
Can't you move into student housing or did you already graduate?
I'm sorry, I know you warned folks about this being a long post, but I still couldn't get through all that. perhaps you'd get a few more responses if you summarized the novel into a few brief sentences?
I agree w/ what everyone else said, if you aren't on the lease, move out ASAP. doesn't sound like a good situation (from the brief speed skimming I did). I can't think of any excuse to stay there. I wouldn't even go through the hassle of talking to him and kicking him out, just move out yourself and let the others deal w/ him. in the future, either look more carefully for roommates (trust me, I know from personal experience how tough it can be looking for roommates from out of state, but you're here now), or secure your own place and do your own search. after several bad roommate situations, I ended up doing the latter which left me in full control in terms of who I picked and when I wanted them out
I tried to condense it, but I figured I needed to have everything documented anyway, so it'd be useful if we have to turn something over. I figured it'd be useful for any advice on where our rights are, legally, but it won't let me edit it down now anyway.
I'd looked into moving, but there's no way *I* could get out in less than 30 days anyway, and B and K are totally fine roommates and I like them rather well--we _all_ need him gone, which is why I was looking into advice for _us_. We've even got someone else moving in December, but if we can't get H gone....
edited to add: but yeah. I do feel you on the 'too long; didn't read' front. skim as needed.
Last edited by april h l; 11-16-2009 at 10:56 AM..
Reason: edit to add:
It's very very foolish and dangerous for you to stay there, even if you are successful in getting H out. Even if he leaves, he knows where you live. He's a very unstable, dangerous person, and you need to get away from him and not let him know where you are. My advice to you is to get out of that apartment today if you can. Stay with a friend for a few days until you can find a new place to live.
Your situation is entirely different from that of B and K, because they have to deal with the lease and you don't. I understand that you like them and you want to help them too, but your own personal security has to come first. There's no good reason that I can think of for you to stay there any longer.
is the landlord involved at all? why are you pursuing this legally? I can understand you not wanting to screw the other roommates over, but really, I would still get out of there ASAP. as the lease holder, they're in charge of handling this mess. why stress yourself out if you aren't legally on the hook? why can't you get out in less than 30 days? there's not really anything holding you there legally since you aren't on the lease. if money is a concern, find a couch to sleep on for a bit until you get on your feet
from some experience I've heard from landlords regarding deadbeat tenants, it can be very hard kicking someone out who doesn't really want to leave. I've heard LLs talk about tenants who don't pay rent for months yet continue to live in the house, causing havoc. I can't imagine how much harder it is for a roommate to kick out another roommate that apparently doesn't want to leave. it sounds like a long, legal mess ahead. I don't suppose you could offer him money to move out ASAP?
again, sucks for the other two, but I would bail out ASAP and save myself the misery. no reason to stay there, as far as I can see (always look out for numero uno: yourself)
I tried to condense it, but I figured I needed to have everything documented anyway, so it'd be useful if we have to turn something over. I figured it'd be useful for any advice on where our rights are, legally, but it won't let me edit it down now anyway.
I'd looked into moving, but there's no way *I* could get out in less than 30 days anyway, and B and K are totally fine roommates and I like them rather well--we _all_ need him gone, which is why I was looking into advice for _us_. We've even got someone else moving in December, but if we can't get H gone....
edited to add: but yeah. I do feel you on the 'too long; didn't read' front. skim as needed.
OK, if what you posted is an accurate account of what you're dealing with, to hell with your 30-day notice. GET OUT NOW. If your arrangement is with a tenant and not the actual property landlord, chances are he has scant legal grounds to come after you if you don't give 30 days notice, esp. if he's subleasing without the landlord's knowledge or consent, but I'm too lazy to verify what the law is. Even if I'm wrong and/or your arrangement is with the actual landlord and not a tenant, it sounds like it would be worth eating 30 days worth of rent to get the fk out; think of it as the cost of a lesson learned.
To me it doesn't matter if the other two are nice and if all of you want him out. You're in a volatile and possibly dangerous situation and you need to get out of it now. I'd want to get as far away from this mope as possible, as soon as possible. He doesn't sound like the type who will take being kicked out very well, and I wouldn't want my person or my belongings anywhere near him when he gets booted because you never know what/who he'll want to take with him as he goes.
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k out; think of it as the cost of a lesson learned.
