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Situation: I have been sharing a 3 bedroom town-home with 2 other guys since last 4 weeks. I have my own room with lock. The person who is officially on the lease (landlord?) is in the 2nd bedroom.
I have had a feeling that he = landlord?) enters my room in my absence, so yesterday I used Webcam Monitor on my laptop and recorded whole day of activity. I saw that he entered my room - checked out all drawers, closet - etc etc and then left.
He did not steal anything, neither did he go through any documents (atleast not this time - maybe he did earlier or will do in future - who knows).
My question is - what should I do with this guy? Should I report to Police? Would Police give any importance to this - or do police need something to be "Stolen" to fix this guy.
I am new to New York - is this a normal thing here?
Hmm..that is definitely not a normal thing. I dunno why he feels the need to go thru your stuff...it could be something as harmless as just a really nosy/rude roommate, or something more sinister, like he is looking for items to steal, etc. Unless he owns the building he is not the LL, he is just the guy who is on the lease and is your roommate.
So you have 2 options:
1-Simply change the lock so you are the only one with access. He may not like this though.
2- I would approach him about it and talk to him. Tell him you have him on several instances on camera breaking into your room and going thru your stuff. Why is he doing this? The sticky problem here is that if you are not directly on the lease, and he is, he can do what he wants with you..i.e. throw you out..so use caution when approaching him about it.
I don't think I would tolerate it, and it needs to be stopped NOW.
Definitely no crime under Tenant rights. Legally the only partitioning is the rent under the law. He can only charge you a fair proportion of the rent but the space is considered communal under the law. Out and out theft is of course another matter. Is he sniffing underwear? that's the usual Modus Operandi. I don't know, check with the other subletters maybe?
Move out immediately. Nothing else to think about once you've seen that.
Hell yeah. You only have ONE day of activity on camera-who knows what he the other times. I don't know if you paid a deposit but I would confront him and attempt to get that money back-then I would pack up and ship out. How scary! I've been thinking about getting a roommate too...
Situation: I have been sharing a 3 bedroom town-home with 2 other guys since last 4 weeks. I have my own room with lock. The person who is officially on the lease (landlord?) is in the 2nd bedroom.
I have had a feeling that he = landlord?)
Do you mean the guy snooping in your stuff is just the person the lease is under? I wouldn't consider him to be the landlord.
I would GTFO as soon as possible though. I would do 2 things rather swiftly here.
1) Pack up all your crap and be ready to move ASAP.
2) Contact the landlord and explain the situation and volunteer to send him the video and explain that you want OUT of the apartment immediately. With any luck, you can get your portion of the sec. deposit back if you paid one to the actual landlord and not the guy breaking into your room.
Even if you loose out on your portion of the sec. deposit assuming that you paid that to somebody, at least your property or your identity isn't getting stolen, or in an even worse case scenario he is sniffing your underwear, or could attack you!
If you are not on the actual lease most likely the real landlord can't really do anything about you leaving, he also can't force this guy to pay you back on a sec. deposit either.
I ran into a situation with a previous roommate in Chicago where I found a new job out of state and told him that I would be moving out in 30 days. I was NOT on the lease, but unfortunately I paid my roommate half the security deposit instead of giving that to the landlord. I spoke to my landlord about the situation and he said since I wasn't on the lease, everything was up to me and my roommate to work out when I left. Well he ended up screwing me over on the security deposit. I agreed to subtract 15 days worth of prorated rent from my security deposit ( I notified him on the 15th of the month but paid that month's rent already). He never actively sought a new roommate from what I could tell (didn't see a craigslist or other listing for the apt) and didn't return my phone calls or letters when I tried to contact him alter for my sec. deposit. In the end losing $175 pissed me off, but I wasn't penalized by breaking the lease with my landlord.
Last edited by Further North; 10-14-2010 at 02:03 AM..
You should watch out. If this roommate engages in homosexual sex while in your room this could lead to big trouble for you. If you share the footage of the fellatio or sodomy the world will make you into the ultimate pariah for constricting his sexual adventures and shaming him. You will be 100% wrong and he will be 100% right in the court of public opinion.
A landlord, or anyone else digging thru my space... would have a huge problem on his (its) hands if it was me in this situation.
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