by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

With the advancement of civil rights and the protection of human dignity and that sort of crap, one group remains subject to some rather brutal abuse.

Yup, while do-gooders have been buzzing around blabbing about every cause there could possibly be, be it animal rights, children's rights, workers' rights, non-smokers' rights - there's not a minute's rest for the earnest - nobody (that I could find anyway) has stood up for a sizeable minority in this city whose rights are pretty much nil.

I'm talking roommates, specifically tenants whose names are not on a lease.

If your signature isn't scribbled on that lease, you can anticipate being legally expelled when it's discovered how annoying you can be at home.

Thus every swig you take directly out of that juice jug could be your last under that roof. That cigarette burn you've been trying to hide will eventually get you launched out onto the pavement. Your latest squeeze - the one you find so charming and others find so irritating - will lead your boss (a.k.a. the roommate whose name is on the lease) to advise you to start flipping through the "van rentals" section of the Yellow Pages.

Montreal has one of North America's highest proportions of renters, as well as students. Ergo we've surely got one of the highest proportions of legally unprotected roommates as well.

The great moment of my first move from home - into an apartment on Mackay, where Daniel Richler had previously lived and left several interesting artefacts - was rendered a lot less enjoyable by the understanding that I'd eventually get the boot, although it was never clear why I suffered the expulsion gun to the temple. From then on I mostly lived alone, but for the weeks saddled with a roomie, I suffered such transgressions as having freebase cocaine cooked on my wrought-iron skillet, getting briefly strangled in an escalating proprietary dispute over bacon, and, surprisingly most painful of all, being spoken to in a highly condescending manner.

In these roommate conflicts the law is on the side of the leaseholder. They have all the rights. If you're a roommate without a name on lease, paranoia might be a wise option. The rental board has no legal mandate to even entertain your grievance if your signature isn't on the lease. You might try civil or small claims court, but don't expect anything but cocked eyebrows unless you have documentation.

If you're moving into a place and nobody's offering to sign onto a lease, then there's another route you should seriously consider, and I'm not referring to sucking up to the leaseholder by chattering about fashion or baseball stats or whatever insufferable activity floats his boat.

You need a contract. Get out a pen and paper and write out a written agreement with the leaseholder elaborating all of the relevant details of your arrangement - what rooms you're allowed to use, toothbrush policy, shower duration limits - whatever - and then sign one copy each and keep it in a safe place. The rental board and various tenants' associations offer pamphlets with examples of these contracts.

On the other hand, if you've got your name on the lease you might want to consider who you let into your quarters, because you don't want to be surrendering equality to a nightmare freak from hell. A friend was living at Laurier and Parc a few years back and ended up with a 60-year-old roommate from Washington, D.C., who claimed to have been a nurse in Vietnam and had to leave D.C. because her kids tried to shoot her in a drive-by, and soon enough she was wielding a knife on the roomies. Luckily her name wasn't on the lease.

Such stories are common. A rental board lawyer tells me about a temporary guest who took the tenant out for dinner a few times and then refused to leave, claiming to be a tenant by virtue of having shelled out for eats. Turns out he wasn't.

And that's the other important point: try to avoid moving in with a lunatic.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca