Background: I moved into the apartment (in Chicago, IL) with the lease-holder (whom I was subleasing from) and another roommate. The other roommate decided to leave and so the lease-holder and I went through interviews to find a roommate that would be willing and agree to help cleaning and picking up, dishes, garbage, pitch in with community things (toilet paper, paper towels, cleaning supplies, etc). While we were interviewing, the leaseholder and I were very particular, upfront and honest and told the possible roommates that if they didn’t intend to help out or follow the rules, then we didn’t want to live with them. Well, this girl agreed to everything that we presented and we asked her if she had anything for us. We decided to have her move in. Apparently, my leaseholder never had her sign a lease. Then the leaseholder decided to move in with her boyfriend and so I took over as leaseholder.

I hadn’t been happy for a while because although I work full-time, commute 3-4 hours a day, go to the chiropractor 3-4x a week and go to the gym, I was always stuck cleaning up after this girl and the leaseholder was never home because she stayed at her boyfriends. Our apartment is an old place that requires a lot of sweeping and vacuuming because it gets very dusty, etc. My schedule is jam-packed as you can see and then to come home from a long day at 8-9pm at night and then I have to worry about picking up and cleaning up after someone is hardly fair. In my opinion she did not live up to her end of the bargain and all that she agreed to.

I am not a clean freak, but I feel that community areas should be kept and nice while your bedroom can be as messy as you would like. Not to mention this girl had boxes laying in our dining room in the way for 4 months! When I took over as leaseholder, I drew up a lease for her and the other new roommate (taking the lease-holders room). The newest roommate signed the lease right away and the other girl blew me off multiple times. I really wanted to ask her to leave and move-out, but I didn’t want to worry about yet another roommate interview and worrying if they will live up to their end of the bargain or not. But, I was getting extremely frustrated and even communicated that to her and confronted her in an adult manner (talking) my feelings. The fact that even after she agreed from the start and I was upfront and confronted her and discussed it with her, she still didn’t help out and I felt very disrespected.

Then, my sister decided she was going to move to the city and ended up finding a job, so since this girl didn’t sign a lease and my sister needed a place and I was frustrated and didn’t enjoy my living situation, I told this girl she had 35+ days to move out and had to be out by Dec. 1. The only weekend of this month that was convenient for this girl to move out happened to be the weekend of Nov. 13-15. She told me 3 days before that she was moving out and now expects a ½ month reimbursement for leaving early when my sister, the new roommate, isn’t moving in until Dec. 1.

Do I owe her that money? I gave her the full deposit back and she technically can have access to the apartment since I allowed her 30 days (without her signing a lease), but I don’t feel it is my fault nor my responsibility to reimburse her because her schedule didn’t allow for her to move out any other weekend. What do I tell her? Am I wrong?