Being roommates can be complicated, and things get even trickier when someone moves out, as made apparent in a BC legal fight over rent payments.
A situation in a four-bedroom house was the subject of a BC Civil Resolution Tribunal case.
In a decision posted online, James Douglas claimed that he was owed $2,900 because he paid the rent for a vacated room.
He believed that Christabelle Joseph, the respondent in the case, should’ve been responsible, claiming Joseph was the reason why the roommate left. Joseph responded to the claim by suggesting that Douglas was at fault for the unrented room and that she didn’t ask him to pay for it.
Initially, the home had four tenants, and the total rent was $3,020 per month. Each tenant paid a portion of that rent. In February of 2023, one of the tenants left, and the room was empty between March and July 2023. The rent for the empty room was $725 per month. According to the tribunal case, Douglas paid for the four months the room was empty.
Both parties blamed each other for the tenant’s eventual move-out and the room remaining vacant. Only the applicant provided proof of this, with an audio recording allegedly from the previous tenant with statements of conduct about the respondent. However, the tribunal didn’t find the evidence to be compelling.
“Because the applicant paid more than his share for March to June, the other co-tenants were unjustly enriched. They did not pay a share of the empty room’s rent, which was a debt under the RTB agreement,” the tribunal said in its decision.
The final decision may seem like common sense, as the tribunal found that each tenant was responsible for one-third of the rent of the empty room, or $966.66 each.
For that reason, the BC tribunal ordered Joseph to pay Douglas $1,134.38, which included the $966.66 in unpaid rent and the rest in tribunal fees.
Because the other tenant was not a party to the dispute, they were not ordered to pay Douglas their share.