Five's a crowd
Question
I'm at university and live in a shared house with four bedrooms. At first it was just me and my mate living there, but about a month ago a couple more blokes moved in. This was totally fine in principle but they let one of their mates come and stay, apparently just for a few days.
It's now turned out he's staying permanently. Both my mate and I are really pissed off there's another person staying in the house. We have to wait for ages just to get in the bathroom, and cook and the worst of it is he's not paying any rent.
Our landlord is pretty useless but we really want to get this sorted out. Is there anything we can do? We're getting really fed up.
Answer
It can be really stressful sharing with people you haven't chosen to live with, especially when they're not even contributing to the costs of the house. But there are a few things you would need to think about before taking any action.
Firstly, it's important to work out what sort of tenancy you have. Are you joint tenants with the other housemates, or do you all have individual tenancy agreements? It can be very difficult clarifying this as the law related to joint tenancies is quite complicated. Your local Citizens Advice Bureau may be able to help you figure this out.
If you are joint tenants, then any action taken by the landlord to end the tenancy for your housemates would also end the tenancy for you. If you all have individual tenancies, the landlord could take action against some of you without it affecting the others.
In some circumstances you may not be tenants at all, you may be classed as 'licensees'. Licensees can include people who live in the same house as their landlord, or people who live in accommodation provided by universities. If you are classed as licensees it could be quite easy for the landlord to take action against your housemates, but you wouldn't have many rights yourself if the landlord decided it was all just too much effort to deal with.
Once you've found out what your housing status is there are only a limited number of options open to you.
You may have tried already, but if not, have you thought about trying to talk things over with your housemates? You may have to carry on living with these people so it might be best to try to sort things out between yourselves without involving the landlord. See if you can come to an agreement about their friend leaving after a specific time, or if you agree he can stay, that he contributes to household costs such as bills.
If you are going to talk to your housemates or, if you can't sort it out with them, your landlord, have a look at your tenancy agreement and see if it says anything about having guests or lodgers. If it does, you might be able to highlight that in your discussions. Similarly, your tenancy agreement (if you have one in writing) may say something about 'not causing a nuisance', which may be relevant if you feel their friend is causing a nuisance to you and your mate. But it's worth remembering there isn't any realistic method for actually forcing your landlord to take action on this point.
For more help and information take a look at Shelter's article about problems with housemates.
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Question answered by Shelter
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