Hello
You Sunk My Battleship? My Roommate Finally Backed Down
It started like a game of Battleship — only instead of plastic pegs and a game board, it was emails, tenant laws, and rising tension in a rental townhouse. The landlord fired the shot: a notice to vacate due to major renovations. According to the letter, we had 90 days to pack up and leave so the unit could be gutted and upgraded.
My roommate? He took it as a declaration of war.
“This is illegal!” he shouted from the kitchen, waving the notice like a flag. “They can’t just kick us out for renovations. This is our place.”
I knew we were in trouble.
What followed was a full-blown campaign. He was digging up tenancy laws, calling housing hotlines, and printing out articles like he was preparing for court. His bedroom became the war room, plastered with sticky notes and screenshots. He even drafted a scathing email to the landlord, cc’ing everybody for dramatic effect.
I tried to talk him down.
“Look,” I said, “the renovations sound real. They’re redoing the electrical, tearing out the kitchen, and ripping up the floors. We can’t live here through that.”
He wasn’t convinced. “This is a landlord trick! They just want us out so they can hike the rent.”
And maybe he was right — partially. But the landlord had followed all the legal steps. The notice was proper. The renovations were legitimate. And most importantly, we weren’t in a rent-controlled unit. He didn’t have the leverage he thought we did.
Then came the turning point — the final peg in his battleship.
He brought all his documents to a local tenants’ clinic, hoping for backup. But after a 30-minute consult, the lawyer told him bluntly: “You can’t fight this one. It’s legal. You’ll waste your time and money trying.”
Silence.
That night, he came home, dropped the folder on the table, and said, “Well… I guess I’ve been sunk.”
The war was over.
No courtroom drama. No final standoff. Just two tired roommates who realized sometimes, the best move is to retreat with dignity — and a moving truck.
In the end, the landlord and his team didn’t sink his ship. Reality did.