Breaking house rules allows the host to cancel a guest without penalty.
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Quite understandable. Your safety is high priority. If possible, I think it’s a good idea to have some friends, family or neighbors “on call” who would be willing to show up if necessary, bonus if they are large men who look like someone you wouldn’t want to mess with, even if in reality they are gentle people who wouldn’t physically hurt anyone.
I have a friend who’s an old man now, but in his youth had friends who were drug dealers. They used to call him when they had to go collect money from someone who they anticipated having a hard time with. He was a short, stocky Italian guy who looked like he could be a hitman for the mafia, even though he wasn’t a violent person at all. They’d tell him, “You don’t have to do anything but stand there looking dangerous”.
I’m (well, was as I now have LTR here) an in-home host and it’s me (65yr old woman) and a cat. I don’t have a problem facing down anyone - even the drunken American expat with the lovely Italian wife. He was belligerent and aggressive. Then again, that’s me… I can understand where people feel that confrontation is scary, especially as women. But as @jaquo wrote - this is YOUR business, your company, and your home. You get to walk over, unplug the music and tell everyone it’s time to go to bed.
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I am also a senior woman homesharing. While I’ve had no issues with guests that necessitated some heavy confrontation, I don’t have a problem being assertive with people who cross boundaries.
But confronting one or two guests in one’s home seems a bit different than confronting a dozen drunken partying people in the middle of the night. Also, when a guest is in your home, you have some sense of whether they are a belligerent jerk or someone who’ll apologize and quickly change their behavior, so you can tailor your approach. With a house full of partiers, you really don’t know anything about how dangerous a confrontation might be.
I think that:
“You get to walk over, unplug the music and tell everyone it’s time to go to bed.”
is a good thing to keep in mind. It isn’t necessary to think of it as a “confrontation”, which can make the host feel reticent and fearful. It’s more a matter of “You can’t do that here- party’s over, folks”. If people are going to act like disrespectful teenagers, they can be treated as such.
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Also, you only need to ‘confront’ the guest who booked the place. THEY are responsible for their actions and are responsible for stopping whatever activity is disallowed.
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