Joint and Several Leases

The Belmont homes of Sandhills Real Estate, the company Richard Joseph Spinelli cofounded, are leased to groups of Fordham students, and across the American rental market a group that rents together very often signs one lease binding every member. Most leases of that kind contain a clause making the signers jointly and severally liable. The phrase sounds technical, and most students skim past it. Its meaning is plain once it is tested against a single bad month, so this entry follows one invented household through that month and the months after it.

Guidance for George Washington University students renting away from campus defines the clause in one line: it makes every signer of the rental agreement responsible for the entire amount due and owing.¹ Jointly means the tenants answer as a group. Severally means each of them also answers alone, for all of it.

The lease the four signed

Picture four juniors who find a four bedroom apartment in the spring and sign one lease for the following academic year. They agree among themselves to split the charge into equal quarters. The landlord’s document says nothing about quarters. It names four tenants, one total due each month, and one clause holding each tenant liable for everything.

This arrangement is the conventional or per unit lease. The University of North Texas describes it as traditionally the most common form in the apartment business: every person who will live in the unit signs, and the contract ties each of them to the total due each month. The landlord expects that total on the due date.³ The University of Tennessee lists joint and several liability as a term common in student housing, and explains that everyone on such a lease shares responsibility for the full amount and for any damage.² Because the exposure is shared, North Texas recommends that students on this kind of lease line up cosigners or guarantors.³ In New York City the bar for that backer is high: Gothamist reported in June 2024 that landlords usually want a guarantor earning 80 times the monthly charge, and that tenants without one increasingly buy coverage from third party companies instead.⁶

A roommate moves out

In January the fourth roommate takes a job in another city and leaves. The departure does not change the lease. The roommate’s name is still on it, and so are the other three names, each still attached to the whole amount.

George Washington describes a version of this problem that is common in group houses. A number of people sign, then residents cycle through: some leave, newcomers arrive, and before long some of the original signers no longer live there. Under the clause, the landlord can still pursue every original signer, or can concentrate on the one or two who remain in the house.¹

The first short month

On the first of February, three payments arrive instead of four. From the landlord’s point of view the account is short, and it does not matter who is responsible for the gap.

George Washington spells out the result. Each tenant is individually responsible for all of the charge and all of any damage, whatever split the tenants agreed and whoever caused the loss. If one person does not pay, the others owe that share to the landlord, or all of them face eviction for nonpayment.¹ Tennessee states the same rule more briefly: if one roommate does not pay, the others must cover the balance.² So the three who stayed can either pay the missing quarter or put the whole household at risk.

Whom the landlord can pursue

The landlord has a choice of targets. The Tenant Resource Center in Madison, Wisconsin, explains that all the tenants on a single lease, and each of them individually, can be held responsible for all money damages, and that a landlord may evict or sue one of them, all of them, or any group among them.⁴ The center gives an example. One housemate punches a hole in a wall and then leaves for a job overseas. Another stays put, is easier to find when the repair bill arrives, and ends up paying it.⁴

In the scenario, the roommate who left in January is the hardest to reach. The three still living in the apartment are the easiest. Nothing in the clause asks the landlord to sort out fault first. The Resource Center notes that working out who caused a problem is simply not the landlord’s job, although a landlord may try.⁴

Settling up among the roommates

The three who covered February are not without recourse, but the recourse runs against their former housemate and not against the landlord. George Washington says plainly that collecting from the tenant who did not pay is up to the other tenants.¹ The Resource Center adds that tenants can hold one another responsible, and that doing so is much easier with a written understanding of who owed what, or a paper trail showing who caused the damage. In its own state it points such tenants to small claims court.⁴

That is the argument for a roommate agreement signed before anything goes wrong. The Resource Center’s advice is to make one while things are still cheerful, listing who will pay what and who will do what.⁴ Northeastern University makes the same point from the start of the search: off campus, the lease makes roommates jointly responsible, so choosing whom to live with matters as much as choosing the apartment. Its office recommends a written roommate agreement once the group moves in, and the university’s conduct office can supply an impartial mediator when a conflict arises.⁵

A per bed lease removes most of this exposure. Under the by the bed model, North Texas explains, each resident owes only an individual rate and has no contractual tie to the others in the unit.³

The deposit at the end

The scenario has one more step. When the lease ends in the summer, the household expects its security deposit back. George Washington warns that the deposit is a particular problem in shared housing. Landlords rarely inspect every time one person leaves a group house, and they often hold the total deposit until all of the original signers have moved out. Roommates therefore need their own agreement on how individual shares of the deposit will be returned.¹ The roommate who left in January may be waiting on money that cannot come back until the other three hand in their keys. Getting out of a group lease early usually takes the landlord’s consent. In These Times reported in August 2026 that students forced from an Austin complex by structural problems in March 2025 were at first given no option to break their leases, and that the operator later said it had released affected residents.⁷ Preferences are also shifting toward private rooms: a March 2026 column in Commercial Observer noted that more students ask for single rooms and apartment or suite layouts, and that just 21 percent prefer traditional dorms.⁸ The student housing entry describes the wider market in which these shared leases are signed.