Can my female roommate sublet to a guy without my approval?
DU & others – we’re not here to judge almostmanda’s qualms. Be helpful or be quiet. I second cortex’s suggestion. Get in touch with the subleaser ASAP and let him know he’s moving into a hostile environment. If the building is really as empty as you say, he’ll have plenty of other options and will choose one of those if he’s smart. At that point, you will have pissed off your current roommate, but that’s your choice. It will be her responsibility to pay her lease through August. Chances are she’ll find another female roommate sometime before then, or perhaps she’ll find another male subleaser and won’t let you speak to him beforehand… it could play out a couple of ways. You could also consider compensating her for part of the period. Sounds like she wants to be somewhere else and if you have a personal problem with an opposite-sex roommate (which many folks do not) then it’s also not unreasonable for you to pay something to serve that preference.
If this is a college town, you’ll be completely fucking your roommate over if you reject it outright since finding someone to sublet over the summer is hard. For anyone who says you owe your roommate something, and should be bending over backwards to help her find a sublessee, they are just purely wrong. She signed the lease for a specific term and now she wants out. When you entered into the lease you (presumably) were comfortable with her as a roommate and in turn it is HER responsibility to find a female replacement who you are also comfortable with. This is the work that she will have to do to be allowed out of the lease before the specified expiration. Even if it hard work, if she wants out…she’d better be prepared to do it.
If this is a college town, you’ll be completely fucking your roommate over if you reject it outright since finding someone to sublet over the summer is hard. Not necessarily true-a great many students may be coming just for summer session or internships over the summer. They don’t have dorms open for these students and they are on their own to find housing for that short 10 weeks or so. The first place the look is a student housing apt type complex and ask to sublet. It’s NOT the OP’s responsibility to find someone for her roommate. The room mate has made the decision to leave early and has the option of finding an equally suitable replacement for herself OR paying out her lease. If the management of the complex has a policy of assigning same sex room mates for tenants, then changing that policy for your own convenience is wrong.
Honestly, a much better first step is discussing this with your roommate, not us. Tell her you don’t feel comfortable with the proposed situation. Also, it would be helpful to read your lease; I’m pretty sure the last lease I signed had something on sub-leasing. If that discussion doesn’t go well it’s time to talk to your apartment management. Tell them your roommate wants to sublease to a man you don’t know and you are absolutely not comfortable with the situation and are in fact quite concerned about it. I think if you frame the issue in terms of your safety, even if that’s only the subtext of the conversation, they would be hard pressed to force you to live in that situation.
