Remember the days of Three’s Company, when the only way a man could convince the landlord to let him stay in an apartment with two single women was by pretending to be gay? Even when I first moved to New York in the mid-’90s, more than a few landlords told me I could only have male roommates and that female overnight guests were frowned upon. But times are changing and most people just expect their landlord to butt out, so long as they aren’t knocking down walls or installing hot tubs in the bathroom. But there are still some people out there that don’t want any unwed hanky-panky going on under their roof.
This is the question being posed on Reddit, by someone who says that after his girlfriend spent the night for the first time, his landlord “came down and told both of us separately that I was not allowed to have her stay over.”
His story is complicated by the fact that he’s not living in a completely separate apartment from his landlord’s house, but instead is paying rent for a bedroom, den, and cooking area, with a bathroom that he shares.
“I have my own door leading outside and there’s no reason for her to be down here other than the freezer,” he writes.
Tenant laws vary by location (this person happens to live in Alberta, Canada) so it’s hard to get into legal questions of whether or not this person’s landlord should have a say in the matter.
So instead, we just wanted to ask the Consumerist Hive Mind for its opinion on whether landlords should be able to have some say in who stays the night at your rented apartment.
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You know, I don’t know what area of the country this is, but I don’t know how a landlord can afford to be that picky about who lives in the apartment. I mean, these days people aren’t moving too much and they are losing their jobs. At least two people living in an apartment would mean the rent might still be able to be paid if one lost their job. I have a friend, he has a job, his wife is a stay at home mom and they have a little girl. This one place said they were going to hold out on finding someone with two incomes before they rented to him. I would have said “Go f*** yourself” and found a different place… but that’s just me.
They need to read their lease (imagine that!). If it says nothing about
the “regulation” of visitors, then NO they can’t say a word. Now if that
visitor turns to be a nightmare, causes damage or problems, etc, it WILL reflect on
you as a tenant, regardless of what your lease says.
Hows about you buy your own house, then you do whatever you want?
Today, owning a house is a “lifestyle”, not an investment. It used to be
an investment but no longer. The enormous amount of money that you
put into a house on a mortgage would be better off being carefully invested
by a reputable retirement organization like MetLife, TIAA-CREF or Fidelity.
The housing market is permanently broken now for a least a couple of
generations, then it may recover. Many states allow you to deduct a
substantial amount if not all of your rent from your gross income.
if you and your girlfriend or boyfriend want to play ‘house’ – do it on your own dime and you won’t have to worry about anyone’s permission but if you want to pretend like you’re still living at home in a bedroom … suck it up
It depends on the city and state laws but depending on where you live you might have common law law rules. Most people think think its discrimination in Chicago that we can’t let a poor single mother movie into a studio with 5 kids and herself when the city itself posts occupancy laws.