“Joint several liability in a group house, is this fair?”

Photo by PoPville flickr user brunofish

“I understand that in general with joint several liability in a group house lease agreement, the landlord can hold any or all of the tenants responsible for unpaid rent.

In our current situation, 3 of us are moving out of a 4-bedroom house, leaving the 4th responsible for filling the rooms. We’ve been helping to fill the rooms, but it looks like some may not get filled with viable tenants by the end of the month. The landlord already said he’d be holding the remaining tenant responsible if that’s the case. Is there any recourse here?

Everything I read about joint and several liability deals with cases of other tenants not paying rent, not cases of multiple roommates who’d been on a month-to-month basis leaving. It just seems unreasonable to expect someone to be responsible for filling 3 rooms regardless of circumstances. Any help would be appreciated.”

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