Boston- international tenant broke lease

I signed a 1 year apartment lease with 2 other roommates for a room in Boston, MA. After I went on vacation for the holidays, I came back to find that one of my roommate has left the U.S. and does not intend to return, and she did this without giving us any notice whatsoever. This is complicated because she is an international graduate student. This is a university-run apartment and we contacted the dean. This student paid a refundable tuition to the university, but we want her to be liable for her share of the rent since we have been vigorously advertising her vacant room to no avail. The dean said that her tuition could not be touched. Are there any open legal avenues we can take against her, considering her international status? She was also a slob and left her room a complete mess, so it was a deterrent to potential tenants we showed the place to. We bagged all her stuff and kept it at a corner now, but we want to throw it out. Would we be held responsible for any legal repercussions if we throw it out? The dean said give it a week and then do whatever, but we want to be safe. Also, we and the dean have been unable to reach her (of course she will not answer any messages).

Send notices to her (in any manner possible) that you need her to remove her belongings immediately. Document your attempts to contact her! This will protect you later should she return and want to sue you for the value of her belongings once you dispose of them. Since she has gone overseas, there is little you can do to hold her accountable for the rent. Keep her belongings safe for 30 days (they can be stored in a closet if need be, so long as they are stored somewhere safe). Document this also. MA has no statute on abandoned belongings so 30 days would be a reasonable amount of time to hold them for her. A week would probably not be considered a reasonable amount of time. If you can get her to sign off on allowing you to dispose of the things or to state that she has completely vacated the unit, you should not have to hold them any longer. But lacking that, storing them safely for a month and showing attempts to contact her should be sufficient to prove later that you did the right thing.

I take it you did not have a deposit from this roommate? If you did, you can charge it for the rent for storage and breaking the lease. Make sure to send an itemized statement within 30 days to a forwarding address or to her last known address. Keep the letter unopened if it returns to you for proof that you tried to mail it to her.

This situation got worse. My roommate and I had previously written our rental checks to her so she could write a single check to the housing office. She decided to keep the last month's payment that we gave to her and hid all the overdue notices from us until she left and we finally got the new messages. Are we basically "sorry out of luck"?

Contact the housing office immediately and explain the situation. You will have to pay the rent that is due to them that the former roommate stole. But you want them to know that you just became aware of the problem and will cooperate fully with them in this. They may work out a payment plan with you to get caught up. Show them proof that you paid your rent to the roommate and apologize that your rent has not been paid through no fault of your own. Hopefully this will keep you from getting evicted for non-payment. I'm afraid if the former roommate has left the country, there is little to no chance that you will be able to sue her for the money she owes you. I'm sorry. Throroughly screen any future roommates for credit worthiness and stability and make the rent payments yourself.

Is there absolutely nothing I can do about this person? Is there any way to get some notification in case she tries to use her visa to re-enter the US and then serve her with a lawsuit? She has committed theft against us. Also, my roommate is from the same home country as this thief. Can she go after her by legal means in her home country since she is from there (she has the thief's home information as well)?

Also, we heard back from the dean of the university. They are essentially turning a blind eye to the issue and told us to consult a lawyer to consider any possible legal actions if we elect to go that route

I wish there were more that you can do. I can't say if your roomate could pursue this in court in his/her home country. It would depend on their laws. But there is little to nothing you can do here. Sorry. Beware accepting roommates who are not stable, have insufficient credit and rental history here, or don't have references or a guarantor to vouch for them.