Hi all,
I looked through the threads to try to find something about this and I couldn't find anything.
I'm currently living in a sublet in Meyrin, paying 1800/mo (shared with my boyfriend) for 1 bedroom in a two-bedroom apartment with a huge living room and decent kitchen, shower, washing machine, etc. The bedroom is big enough for the two of us, but it's really far from Unige, where we are both students. The other bedroom is being rented out by a single guy, so that's his space in the apartment. He pays 1500/mo for his room.
Here's the catch: the person we are renting from lives in the living room. So, for 1800/mo, we only have access to our bedroom, the kitchen, and washing facilities.
This would be fine and all--if we hadn't seen her rent contract from the owners of the apartment saying the total rent is 2200/mo. We needed a copy of her rent to send to the OCP for our residence permits, so of course we saw it.
This can't possibly be legal. She's definitely not paying a cent of rent even though she's employed. She also has a friend who has an address here but only stays here occasionally, sleep-over style. I don't know what her deal is, whether she's employed or paying rent or whatever. None of that seems legal either.
I feel terrible because she's obviously making a profit off of us, and we're just students, we're not employed, and neither of us are Swiss/EU, even though we've been honest about our rent and paid every month on time with no gripes or problems. I've seen offers for the exact same set up of two bedrooms, one big and one small, minus the living room being occupied, in buildings in the exact same part of Meyrin, for 1200/mo. The fact that she treats us like her replacement children for her son, who went back to live in the States, and not like equal adults, is neither here nor there.
So, I am wondering if anyone has any advice on how to deal with it. She's lawyered up as well; her rent contract was dealt with by a local lawyer and she said the owners of the apartment know she's subletting, but I doubt they know for how much. I also doubt her employer knows how much she's charging us; they wouldn't need to pay her at all if they knew she was pocketing 1100/mo. In case it matters, she's not Swiss, she has a passport and citizenship from a Southeast Asian country I won't disclose unless you PM me.
Any advice on how to deal with this, preferably through legal means, would be helpful. I read on some threads about how subletting is illegal unless it's worked out with the regie, so I'm not expecting us to have much by way of rights, especially since she has a lawyer. Our only option right now is to move, but for non-Swiss/EU without a guarantor, I don't need to reiterate how hard it's going to be to find a new place. I think I just don't want this to happen to someone else.
Thanks for reading this, and for any advice offered.
