Amid rising rents, moving in with friends can seem like a sensible choice—these students beg to differ

By Izabel Mensah

In her first year at Toronto Metropolitan University, professional music student Vera*, lives in Pitman Hall. She doesn’t know anyone at first but meets a few people who attended high school in the same school board as her. They start spending lots of time together, slowly introducing more people into a now-growing friend group.

Nearing the end of second semester, Vera needs a place to live off-campus for the following year—and so did one of her new friends. The logical choice, she says, was to move in with her.

“We didn’t really know each other very well but she needed someone to live with and me and another friend were like, ‘okay, screw it, let’s go’,” Vera says.

The third friend ends up backing out of the plan leaving just the two to move in together.  She and her friend begin their search for a new place in February of their first year. That’s when the issues start to arise. “Honestly, she had a way bigger budget than I did. So, everything was super bougie, and I was like, ‘lowkey, I can’t afford this’.” she says.

Vera’s budget was limited—a constant worry for her and her parents. Her friend, on the other hand, was able to live a bit more lavishly. Seemingly without the looming concern of “will I be able to afford this?” according to Vera. “It’s a weird situation when you’re with someone that can drop like $1,700 a month just on their own. So, I kind of felt like I got the short end of the stick when it came to that,” she says. 

Paired with what she says was an amazing realtor, they were able to secure an apartment at the corner of Jarvis and Gerrard streets—right next to campus. A decently nice place: two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a sizable living room. Vera managed to get the smaller room, fitting just within the range of her budget. Her roommate had the master suite, with an ensuite bathroom and two closets. “Super bougie, but the apartment itself was, everything I needed,” says Vera.

The dream of having her own apartment in the city was finally a reality. “At first, I thought it was super fun. Of course! Being 18 and having your own apartment in Toronto!” Vera says. “I dreamed about this my entire life, I knew I belonged here. I knew I wanted to be here.” 

Vera, carried away by the excitement of living on her own, didn’t take notice right away that her roommate wasn’t picking up the slack when it came to household chores.

“Like if it was dirty, I would just do it….I was just too blinded by the fact that I had that commodity,” she says. 

After the dust had settled, Vera realized her expectations of living downtown with her friend were less than what she hoped for. “When it came down to cleanliness…I just kind of did everything myself. But as time went on, I started to get annoyed…why am I the only one cleaning every week? Why am I cleaning your dishes out of the sink?”

As the months went on, things only deteriorated.

“I was always sweeping, mopping, even after she’d have friends over and they’d ‘pre’ at our place and there’d be alcohol everywhere—sticky on the floor. I’d have to clean it or it wouldn’t get done.”

People often romanticize the idea of living with a friend. TV series like, well, Friends display the whimsy of having a close friend who doubles as a perfect roommate.

Though many people don’t account for the reality of living with a friend—how boundaries in a friendship can overlap with the responsibilities of being a roommate and the limitations of said relationship. Many students who plan to live with their friends, plan only for an idealized version, ignoring whether they are actually compatible as roommates.

In a city with skyrocketing rents, rooming with a friend can feel like a smart financial decision. According to data from the City of Toronto, the current average market rent for a two bedroom unit sits between $1,588 and $1,985.

Living in Toronto is more than just ‘expensive’ by student standards. Budgeting, cutbacks or even picking up extra shifts can be barely enough to cover the cost to live comfortably downtown. That, on top of a university schedule with assignments, exams and deadlines, and the pressure becomes something that is too heavy for one student to shoulder alone. Which is why many students planning to live in the city look for like-minded and like-budgeted individuals to share the burden and create a sustainable housing arrangement. 

However, expectations of that arrangement don’t always match reality. 

Ben Deans, a spokesperson from the Toronto Centre Tenant Union, a non-profit community-based tenants’ union, wrote in an email to The Eyeopener outlining expectations is essential in any roommate relationship.

“There are a lot of expectations around: will roommates get along, how long are they each planning to live in the unit, finances and paying the rent, the quality of the building maintenance. There are lots of different ways that expectations can fail once students start living with friends,” the email reads. 

In Evelyn Carey’s first year studying biology at the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM), she lives in residence with three other girls. The apartment-style suite has four bedrooms, two bathrooms, a living room and a kitchen—a beautiful kitchen, Carey says.

Carey shares a bathroom with one of her roommates, who she says was “exploring her newfound freedom” and developed tendencies that were difficult to live around—at least from Carey’s perspective. “She would never like, pitch into anything like cleaning, cleaning supplies or just anything,” she says. The others noticed it too—but all in all, they had fun.

Carey loved living with her friends and the others in her dorm. As their time in the dorms was ending, the roommates thought it would be best to reapply to residence together—seeing how compatible they all were in the beginning. However, to get a different place in their second year, they needed a fourth person. 

“Someone from our residence from first year was like, ‘Hey I’m looking for someone to live with’,” Carey says. 

Soon, Carey learns that between her and the newest addition to their group, the two of them were not the best mix. “She was friendly enough but there were certain microaggressions that I was getting from her. I was like, ‘Hey, I’m just gonna push it off. I don’t really care that much’.”

“She needed a place to stay and we’re like, well, we need a fourth and it’s better than living with a stranger.”  

Carey says while she chose to look past her roommate’s behaviour, her two friends took the approach to mitigate and call her out on things they deemed as problematic.

Carey recalls how throughout her second year, she noticed a change in her roommate’s behaviour and their relationship. 

For a while they lived together on campus, until keeping up with the costs became too much for all of them to handle. Eventually, it was decided that together they would find a new place off campus. 

“We were all supposed to pitch into everything,” Carey says. “But I did all the searching like, I’m very much a type-A friend and they were all very much type-B.”

She knew the difference in management styles between her and her friends caused strife here and there—but they worked through it.

They were able to find a home that met just about their every need. With three of them on the upper level sharing a space and one downstairs maintaining a floor on her own. “There were four bedrooms, two bathrooms, two living rooms and a kitchen,” Carey says. “I chose the smallest room for the lowest amount of money.” 

 Blinded by the rose-tinted glasses of living in a big house with all her friends, and the chic, quirky feeling of it all, she overlooked some of the early disagreements she’d have with her roommates over minor details. “I kind of just kept pushing these things off,” Carey says.

Sometimes, it was little things like messiness or her roommate’s constant spending—piles of online shopping packages showing up in the apartment. Other times, the problem looms larger. Vera had to be mindful of her finances. Turning down offers to eat out or suggesting cheaper alternatives for transit. Making excuses to subtly reject her friend’s expensive activities. “There’s always that power dynamic there, when you’re with someone that you know has a lot more money than you,” she says. 

But when her roommate, to Vera’s surprise, one day adopted and brought back a cat for their apartment, she couldn’t handle it for much longer. “That pet ended up destroying all of our furniture and peeing on my bed and being a menace, and it was furniture that we both paid for and I never got compensation back,” Vera says. “Our whole apartment reeked, I just got so sick of it by the end of the year. I made up a lie to get out of it with her. ” 

Vera’s decision to move out of the apartment with her friend, creating an excuse to break the fall, was her way of mitigating the awkward tension that would spring between her and her friend. 

From Vera’s sudden responsibility to take care of a pet she didn’t want, to doing solitary chore work along with her friend’s overall lifestyle, Vera was over it.

Having a proper foundation in a friendship can change the way people get along as roommates.

“I think it was just because we didn’t have that [strong] foundation of friendship before,” she says.” 

It wasn’t that Vera disliked her as a friend but rather she knew their differences in cohabitation style were all too overwhelming. 

“I love her as a friend. I just don’t think I could live with her.”

*This source has chosen to remain anonymous for privacy reasons. The Eye has verified this source.