DD’s nightmare flatmate.

[Timble]

Hi all,
do you know if landlords or agents have a responsibility to protect tenants?
do tenants have any rights at all?

my DD is in her third year. Living with three lovely girls and one who they are all terrified of.
she has locked them all out, refusing to let them in (I wasn’t told until the next day and told DD she should have rang the police at the time). She’s rude, threatening. Makes a lot of noise in the middle of the night. She keeps calling the girls racist (there has been no racist comments towards this girl aside from this girl constantly calling them ‘stupid white girls’ or similar. She messages the girls regularly to tell them to stay out of her way or they’ll regret it. To shut up and be quiet or she’ll make them. (No loud noises, they’re all in their third year and studying hard/on placements). All the other girls now want to move out as they can’t face living with her anymore. I just can’t believe we have to pay and even though they’ve reported this girl to the estate agents and they’ve had meetings nothing has changed. They believe this girl has been kicked out of uni and hasn’t paid rent but they don’t have proof.

my DD is 20 and she manages most issues herself/with the other flatmates but currently she’s had enough and needs help.
I guess it’s not really an AIBU but can we refuse to pay last terms rent or we pay and chalk this up to a horrendous experience? No idea where dd will live if she moves out!!

thank you xx

You honestly don’t have to reply to my post if you’ve lost patience. I apologise for not having a perfectly crystal clear answer to my dds problems. I’m seeking advice. I’m worried about my daughter. Also how is it ridiculous to be scared of someone but to equally be scared of antagonising them by calling the police? She’s not ok this girl. The police won’t remove her so then what? She’s super pissed off and they’re supposed to just hope she doesn’t do anything worse? She threatened them after just speaking to the estate agents! Dd is staying elsewhere at the moment but should have been going back, she’s scared to go back and the rest of them can’t take it any more.

Are friends allowed to stay, like mum and dad? When the girls are away could 2 sets of parents go down for the weekend? Just sight seeing but to quietly give her the sense she too is being watched, until the end of term?

You’ve done nothing but snark throughout the thread. Obnoxious!

Feel for your dd OP sounds like this girl is spoiling for a fight. It’s so hard to know how to deal with this kind of bullying, mostly these things resolve themselves by someone leaving the situation which doesn’t seem to be possible in this case. Have they got any tough mates who can hang around a bit? Make her think twice, safety in numbers iyswim.

I think they are allowed to have people stay over for 2 nights at a time. I’d find it difficult to keep my cool I have to say. I feel like I need to write a big old list of everything mentioned on this thread and see where to go from here. I feel overwhelmed with no idea where to start!

As they are adults in legal, if not MN, terms I doubt the University will deal with the OP, it has to be her daughter and the others who take action.

I've already posted, but join you in refuting accusations that these girls should be able to manage this. I've had a couple of nightmare flatmates over the years and it's very upsetting and intimidating. As they seem to have individual contracts with the LL it's on the LL to take action, but I think you, the parents, need to intervene and meet with the LL at the estate agents. Maybe with DDs as well. Be clear, LL has to evict without notice or accept that yours all move without notice. Don't take on worries about who might move in, that's not in you to resolve , and agents will be responsible for future issues as you've put them on notice.

The landlord could be taken to court if they haven't established legal grounds for eviction.

It sounds like these could be achieved on the grounds of antisocial behaviour but there is still quite a lengthy process to that (worth collecting all the evidence though) and it would certainly run beyond the time the OP's daughter is staying there if she is leaving in June.

its about £5k per student, they didn’t have that extra to pay for an empty room.

Have all the parents got together at the flat to talk to this girl?

I missed a whole page of this poster constantly being snarky. Looking for any slight thing I’d said as if I’m slipping up on some mad lie? Genuinely don’t understand some people! It’s as if my post had to be perfect otherwise it’s a lie?

No, I may consider this but would that be seen as intimidation from us?

OP I work as a consultant psychiatrist and would not dream of diagnosing somebody over the Internet. But given the description of this girl’s erratic behaviour, talking to herself and this age group, there is a chance that this could be an acute serious mental illness starting, possibly first episode psychosis with or without drug misuse.

I really think her case should be reported to student welfare. For her own health. And also it needs to be reported to police even just to log it. If the girls say that they have been threatened and want advice, hopefully a sensible police officer will not then contact the girl but try and give the others some advice and guidance. Your daughter and the others are victims here and need to contact the police.

It is always worth logging these kinds of incidents officially should anything happen in the future. Including the comments about race.

I asked before, but maybe you missed my question, what placements are these girls doing?

Thank you to everyone for taking the time to offer advice and suggestions and also for asking questions to things I hadn’t yet thought of!! So very helpful. I’m still not 100% sure what to do first but I’ve written lots of notes from this post and hopefully I can get somewhere with the situation. Sorry to those few posters who seemed to genuinely want to be rude to me or catch me out in a lie (mostly just that one poster on page 5) I hope someone gives you a hug, you definitely need one.

Thank you, I appreciate the information. That makes a lot of sense. Though she was quite rude when she first moved in the general consensus was ‘it’s ok if she doesn’t want to be friends’ but her behaviour has gotten stranger over time.

Sorry I missed your last question. The other four are doing the same course. I’m sure this post is already outing but I don’t want to say what exactly (healthcare related). Believe it or not the other girl is doing social work degree (not sure if she is still a student though)

It would probably stop the behaviour. It isn’t intimidation unless you are intimidating but I would genuinely want to witness what was going on for myself. She would be unlikely to escalate anything - unless she is genuinely unwell in which case you could take action.

Have you considered that they antagonised her. If the three were friends and she an outsider (different ethnicity as well) she might well have felt intimidated by them - they outnumber her. You portray them as “quiet” and her as dangerous and threatening, although you don’t really show us the threats. She locked them out for an hour while she was laughing on the other side of the door. Laughing. They’re students! They play pranks.

You describe her as a layabout who doesn’t go into college anymore. And when she did she looked the daggers at them. Big deal! When they asked her out for a drink before she moved in she possibly felt that they were checking her out rather than getting to know her and make friends when she moved in. Everything you have told us is how they see her. And they don’t know her at all because they decided she was “aggressive” before she even moved in after their lovely fourth friend let them down. She spoiled their plans. However there is a reason that the landlord hasn’t taken their complaints seriously. I advise you to go and see this “monster” for yourself.

The reason I asked, is that the course organisers really need to know. She will be dealing with vulnerable people and from a safeguarding perspective this information is really important.

Absolutely they should go together to student services.

It sounds like you are reading a different thread to everyone else. The OP has given several examples of threatening texts and behaviour. This behaviour is far from normal for students. I have had three at university, and I know about students. This woman’s behaviour is not a prank.

The crucial missing detail would be, whose name(s) would be on the lease/contract?

So sorry your DD and you are going through this OP. It sounds horrific for you both.

Just posting to say that we had a sociopathic neighbour who directly threatened my DH over the phone. It was similar sort of "You're going to get what's coming to you" type threat. DH is normally laid back so I was surprised when he told me he'd called the police. But they did take it seriously. (We'd had some criminal damage a few months previously which we strongly suspected, but couldn't prove was the neighbour.)

You've had some good advice and I hope you get some help from the uni and/or police. (Surely the police will be mindful of the situation and you can at least log incidents with them?) Good luck.

My DD was in a situation where a flatmate was violent to another flatmate a s the only way the landlord/estate agent could evict her was if someone in the flat reported it to the police. The girls were so scared in case of repercussions but all three of them reported the offender. The EA said legally he had to give her a week notice but she did move out beforehand.

I never checked the details of what we were being told, I'm just telling you what happened in that situation so it might be worth looking into what conditions and EA can quickly evict someone .

yes ok I’ve made it all up, the other 4 are actually awful to her and her sitting on the toilet with the door open, not letting them in the kitchen when she’s cooking, locking them out, sending messages about how they better watch out and if they even breathe next to her they’ll regret it is all just a prank, high jinks. I think she provably is an absolute sweetheart and they just don’t get her sense of humour.
Of course I’m being absolutely sarcastic because your post was just insane.

i don’t think she goes into
uni anymore. No idea if fees related or failing the year?

Sorry you had to go through that!