Q-I applied for an apartment and was accepted for tenancy. About the time I was moving in, my boyfriend and I decided that he would share the apartment with me. I told the landlord about it and my boyfriend offered to sign the lease.
The landlord rejected the plan and told me he would not allow my boyfriend to move in because only I had applied for the lease. He said the last time he allowed an unmarried couple to move into an apartment, they were involved in several domestic disputes that caused big disturbances in the building.
As a result, the landlord doesn’t want to take a chance by allowing my boyfriend to occupy the apartment with me. Can he do this?
A-Probably not. However, you’ll need to consider the circumstances of the lease.
First, you should check to see if the lease prohibits you from allowing someone else to occupy the apartment with you. Most residential leases contain some provision regarding this issue.
Sometimes it’s nothing more than a statement prohibiting more occupants than allowed by law. But in many cases the provision is more specific and restrictive, prohibiting occupancy by anyone other than the tenant.
If there is a specific prohibition against occupancy by anyone other than the tenant, the landlord would have to get a court to enforce the provision if you and your boyfriend decided to move in. A judge would be likely to consider the circumstances under which the boyfriend moved in.
If it became clear to the judge that you and your boyfriend always had intended for him to move in with you, then the court might conclude that the information you provided on your lease application was false and that you intended to deceive the landlord by withholding this information during his evaluation period.
The judge might ask, for instance, whether your boyfriend has a separate apartment and whether his lease was expiring about the same time you were taking your apartment. From such circumstances, the judge might conclude that because the boyfriend had to move someplace, he intended to move in with you before you signed the lease.
Your boyfriend’s credit and tenancy records might also come into question. If either is unsatisfactory, the judge might conclude that you purposely left the boyfriend’s name off the lease application because you feared you would not get the apartment.
Assuming that that is not the case and that your boyfriend’s occupancy was truly an afterthought, then the judge is unlikely to enforce the prohibition in the lease unless it is clear that the apartment is too small or that his occupancy will unreasonably burden the facilities of the apartment or building.
It appears that the landlord’s efforts to block your boyfriend’s occupancy are due to his own prejudices and not to any effort to protect his property or other tenants of the building.
And if the landlord is barring the occupancy because of your marital status, he’s breaking the law. This is a legally proscribed form of discrimination.
A landlord is required to consider applications from two unmarried persons on the same basis as he would a married couple.
If your combined incomes would qualify for the apartment (which they obviously would, since you alone qualified) and assuming there are no blemishes on the boyfriend’s credit or rental records, the landlord cannot withhold the apartment from you or prevent your boyfriend from moving in.
If the landlord is unwilling to reconsider his position, you may want to seek the help of state or federal governmental offices that monitor and prosecute cases of housing discrimination.
Depending on where you live, your municipal government also may have a department that handles housing discrimination cases.
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Robert A. Boron, a Chicago attorney who specializes in leasing matters, writes about landlord and tenant issues for the Tribune. Questions to him can be addressed to Rental Q&A, Your Place section, Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, Ill. 60611. Sorry, but he cannot make personal replies.
