Is it better to be evicted or abandon a lease?
My friend signed a 12-month lease at his apartment in October of last year. However, he lost his job shortly thereafter, and despite finding short-term employment for a while, he's falling behind on his rent and is now officially a month in arrears. We've already moved the majority of his stuff to a storage locker to brace for the inevitable, and he's crashing with me at the moment.
I thought about him possibly going into the leasing office, explaining his situation, and handing over his keys rather than going through the eviction process, since it's pretty unlikely at this point that he'll be able to get a job fast enough to catch up on his rent. It's an affordable housing community so I imagine they deal with this sort of thing on a regular basis.
Obviously this is a lesser of two evils situation but we're in pretty dire straits here. Any advice would be helpful.