Our housemate is a very, very bad man. His deplorable friends wrecked our home. Should we evict him?
Four years ago we got a new tenant in the house I live in. This guy had a really sketchy history: bankruptcies; women accusing him of sexual assault; foul and violent language directed at women, minorities, people from other countries and handicapped people; lots of other stuff.
But a lot of my housemates said they wanted to just ignore it. They said he was against abortion and claimed to be a good businessman. There will be lots of responsible people around to make sure he doesn’t go off the rails, they said, and our lease agreement will protect us.
Before he moved in, we took a vote. Because we have this weird, longstanding rule that will take too long to explain, the choice of a new tenant isn’t based on majority rule, so, even though a lot more of us voted against this guy than for him, he became our new housemate.
We’ve had lots of problems over the past four years that I’m mostly going to skip over (except for the little kids held in the basement with their parents, then handed over to other families, but we all have agreed to forget that part). Anyway, last week was the last straw. This guy is mad about his lease being up on Jan. 20 (we finally decided to get a new housemate), so he encouraged a bunch of his pals to break in and take over the house so he could stay.
Now we’re debating whether to bring eviction proceedings or just wait till his lease is up. A lot of my friends are worried that if we bring eviction proceedings, his pals are going to get madder and come back and do more damage.
No matter how we get rid of him, I still have to share this house with the people who voted him in. Lots of people are telling me to let bygones be bygones and that we have to move on, but I’m having a hard time with that. My housemates still have a vote the next time we have a vacancy, and I’m not sure I trust their judgment enough to just move on like nothing happened.
What should my housemates and I do?