Tenants share advice for dealing with bad roommates

Caitlin Carr woke up one morning and noticed her wallet was missing.

She had left it on her bedside table, where she always did, and the door was closed.

It was the fall of 2019, and the 20-year-old culinary graduate from Prince Edward Island had just moved in with a new roommate two weeks before.

Carr knocked on the man's door. There was no answer. She pushed the door open. The smell of body odour and urine was thick. A pair of bolt cutters and a hammer lay next to the doorway. On the windowsill, Carr could see several of her engraved kitchen knives from culinary school that had previously gone missing. A wallet on the bed contained currency from the Bahamas that had been given to her as a present from classmates.

NO RECOURSE

Carr had found the roommate on Kijiji.com, an online classified website. When she met him, he told her he'd been in the military and was on welfare.

The first rent cheque he gave Carr bounced immediately.

Over the two weeks he lived with her, more and more things started going missing, but she was reluctant to blame her new roommate.

“I took his word. I didn't assume he did anything,” Carr said.

“I was trying to give him the benefit of the doubt, but he was kind of weirding me out.”

One morning, Carr found her mini fridge plugged into the corner of her roommate's room. When she opened it, several empty methadone bottles fell out and she could see containers of urine.

“I'm not one to judge, everyone experiments. I would have been OK if they were upfront and told me, but there were four empty bottles, that's just weird.”

Still, it wasn't until her wallet went missing that she called the police.

She ran into more trouble there. The police informed her that because he was subletting, she did not have the legal right to evict him.

“All I could do was ask him to leave at the end of the month and hope he left,” said Carr.

Carr asked him to move out, but by the end of the month, all he had done was moved his belongings into the hallway of the apartment.

She called her landlord and got in touch with the man's father. His belongings sat in the hallway for two weeks before she was finally rid of him.

“After that, I would pretty much only live with people close in my life,” said Carr.

BURGLAR IN THE HOUSE

Cole Brady, a 25-year-old from Newfoundland, has had several bad experiences finding roommates online in St. John's.

“I've had almost exclusively bad roommates,” said Brady.

One roommate was a woman who stole $40 in change over two days which she said was for the bus.

“It was our first experience outsourcing a roommate. It was kind of the same feeling as having a burglar come walk into your house,” he said.

Brady's second roommate was a roofer. He would come home covered in tar and leave residue behind on all the doorknobs and taps.

The man also had two dogs and never did the dishes.

“There are times when you don't do the dishes for a week, I get that, I've worked 12-hour shifts," said Brady. "But when it gets to a month, two months, that's starting to become an issue.”

ONLINE RISKS

Flossie Mbiriri, a journalism student at Holland College in P.E.I., also ran into trouble while looking for a place to stay for school.

Originally from Nairobi, Kenya, Mbiriri saw an apartment advertised in January 2021 that was close to campus. The ad said the space was being shared by a couple.

“The pictures looked nice, within walking distance,” Mbiriri said.

Mbiriri agreed to take the apartment, but when she arrived, more people were living in the space than advertised.

“There were shoes all over the hallway, more than 10 pairs. I had never smelled anything like it,” Mbiriri said.

Mbiriri looked at the room and saw the bed and dresser included in the deal were well used. She stayed one night and told the woman who rented her the room she would be moving out.

The woman demanded Mbiriri pay the full month's rent.

“The average cost of a hotel room in Charlottetown is about $100 a night, so I told her I would pay for the night that I stayed. That's the filthiest room I have ever paid for.”

Brady said it's important to establish a friendship with the person before you move in.

“It's important to learn what you're getting into. Don't go in blind and make sure you set your expectations."

Mbiriri's advice is simple: make sure you see the apartment before you agree to move in.

“Meet your roommate. Have that initial meeting but see the room before you agree. That was a mistake I made. It was a naive experience I would not repeat.”

Carr said it's a good idea to meet a family member of potential roommates and get as much background as possible on anyone with whom you're going to share a home.

“Don't put them on your lease. There are a bunch of complete strangers willing to pay," she said. "Meet their family. You might scare people off, but getting a criminal record check would have really helped me.”