A Subleasing Dispute Story

My son John, who is a college student, moved to Los Angeles this summer to work as a summer intern in post-production at IMAX. When he arrived in early June, a few days before his internship began, he was surprised to find that the university-owned apartment that he was subleasing from graduate student Madison* was extremely cluttered, not clean, disorganized, and crammed with old food and stuff. The photos that she had posted of the apartment when advertising it on Facebook looked nothing like what he walked into. She had also insisted on him paying total rent of $5340 in advance for a three month sublease and had refused to consider a sublease for just the term of his internship.

A picture is worth 1000 words. I told John to photograph and video the apartment as he found it, to contact University Housing, to find a cleaning service, and to hire a professional organizer to help him pack up Madison's stuff so that he could unpack his things. He sent me a few photos, and I thought I was going to get sick after viewing them. The state of the refrigerator and freezer along with the exploded food inside, the sheer volume of things dumped and piled high everywhere in the apartment, and the kitchen cabinet doors that had fallen off their hinges, really got me.

John spent hours working beside a cleaning lady and a professional organizer from Task Rabbit (who moonlights as an actor and was an extra in the movie Oppenheimer). Both of these wonderful people were true angels. Some of the stuff that covered every inch of the floor, cabinets, all surfaces and counters, the closet from top to bottom, and furniture was carefully packed into oversized boxes and labeled. The kitchen was deep cleaned and the pots and pans left out with old food still stuck on them were scrubbed. The boxes were neatly piled up into the center of the kitchen. John later stacked them in the living room. The maintenance department re-attached the broken cabinet doors. The housing contact said that it was policy to not get involved in disputes between a student and a sublessee. Madison chose to not reimburse John for the money that he paid for cleaning and organizing expenses nor did she have a friend pick up her boxes.

The other day I noticed that Madison had posted an ad on a Facebook off-campus housing page offering the apartment for sublease from August 15 to September 30, even though John has a sublease from June 5 through September 5. Wasn't it enough that she had left the apartment in a non-habitable state for him and deceived him about what the apartment actually looked like? Was someone going to show up at the apartment and start moving in while John was still living there? Was she trying to make more money by offering overlapping subleases?

As a parent, I wanted John to enjoy his internship and life in LA. without engaging in a back and forth with Madison. I was deeply disturbed that she would treat anyone this way and that Housing took little action to help. I had hoped that Housing would at least store Madison's boxes until the sublease ended. I am happy to report that John is having a fantastic summer working at IMAX and living in LA. As a mediator, I used to handle landlord/tenant disputes all the time in the Small Claims Division in D.C. Courts, Multi-Door Dispute Resolution. My job as a mediator is to empower my clients to identify the issues, brainstorm solutions, evaluate those solutions, and reach joint decisions. My job as a parent is also to empower my children and not to fix every problem that they encounter. I wanted to fix this problem for John but knew that I needed to let him handle it.

John ended up writing a short note to Madison and to Housing with my guidance outlining that he was aware she was attempting to double sublease and that this was not acceptable nor legal. Housing responded to him that they would not allow an overlapping sublease request. He still has three more weeks in LA before he returns to the East coast and I want him to continue to enjoy his internship and his LA adventures! (There is a funny story involved regarding when he met actor Glenn Powell, pictured above, in the bathroom of the Village movie theater at the premiere of Twisters in Westwood.)

*I've changed the name of the person John is subleasing from to protect her privacy.

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