Letters to the Editor
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Wear a breastplate!
Here's what I've learned from conflicts that I've been involved in: most people fight dirty. When you stand up for yourself in a way that interferes with their will. they call you names, distort the truth, tell outright lies to and about you, and often feel totally justified in doing so because they've put you in some category of otherness like "fucking weirdo" or "bastard" that means they no longer have to consider you as a human being. Instead of retaliating, I think it's best to use the legitimate weapons at your disposal, such as the roommate agreement Cary suggested, or the landlord, or the cops, and if by fighting dirty they end up 'winning', then just get out of there. I'd take my losses an move house, as I did myself recently.
I read somewhere, and I can't remember where, that if my enemy attacks me and I retaliate, it's as if they fired an arrow at me that I caught and plunged into my own heart. If they attack me and I get angry but don't retaliate, it's as if they fired an arrow that bounced off my breastplate and went back into my enemy's heart. And if my enemy attacks me and I don't get angry at all, it's as if they fired an arrow and it went straight into their own heart. I'm not enough of a saint to achieve the third one, but I do my best to rise to the second.
It can be hard to forgive people who've won an unjust victory over you, and it's in such situations that religious ways of looking at things start to make sense to me again. Anyway, your situation hasn't yet escalated to the extent I'm envisaging here, and here's hoping it won't.