311–320 of 418 posts
Fun fact: In some college towns, they can only have fraternity houses but not sorority houses, because they still have laws on the books that define a house of prostitution as any house with at least three unrelated women living there.
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Part of the problem is the law isn't designed for shared housing. 1/ If one roommate is disruptive (noise complaints, property damage, safety issues), landlords and other tenants have limited legal tools short of eviction of everyone. That blunt instrument makes it unattractive for landlords to allow multi-tenant arrangements. 2/ From a legal discriminatory standpoint, the law doesn't have much protections for people…
These are challenges for people sharing housing, but they're not the legal reason why letting out rooms is illegal. Prohibitions on multifamily housing are all rooted in racial animus. It's the entire reason we have single-family zoning (a related legal proscription), which emerged very shortly after the Buchanan v Warley decision that outlawed outright racial zoning. There's a long and well-documented history of thi…
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Indeed, they want the authority over the land without buying or otherwise having to expend finances to control the land.
That's not what I'm talking about at all. Zoning regulations should reflect the desires of a community, and there's no inherent reason they can't be more restrictive than yimbys would like.
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Some freedom? My house is my safe space, it's the place I go when I'm exhausted, when I'm sick, when the rest of the world sucks. I should have a very high degree of freedom over who is allowed to share that space with me and I shouldn't have to justify not allowing another person (stranger or not) to co-habitate.
If you want that degree of freedom, a boarding house or shared occupancy is not for you. Pay up for dedicated solo housing.
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If a group of tenants and the landlord all sign a "joint and several" lease for a house or multibedroom apartment, nobody can make changes until that lease agreement expires (at least not without the agreement of everyone on the lease). If it's an SRO lease where they are leasing just a single room and access to common areas then yes the landlord can lease rooms as he can find tenants for them.
Material point is that people are misapprehending the direction of control here. The tenants have zero control. The only people allowed to reside at the property, are people the landlord has allowed to do so. Those approved residents are not allowed to then decide to allow different people to reside at the property. Even new tenants sought out in an attempt to sublease, will have to be endorsed by the landlord. Not t…
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Certainly, but I'll also argue that single family zoning needs to go, and upzoning enabled anywhere reasonable. Do existing owners not like flophouses? Do they not like density? Do they not like any change at all? All of the above. Property owners are entitled to their property, they are not entitled to stop efforts around them to increase housing supply or density. (as someone who has acquired lots, rezoned, and hav…
> Property owners are entitled to their property, they are not entitled to stop efforts around them to increase housing supply or density. Property owners are absolutely entitled to their property but that also includes things like noise, sanitation, and crime. It's called an HOA or a master planned community and approximately 30% of the US population lives in one. Few people like HOAs but still engage in them despit…
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> The only reasonable way for them to be entitled to prevent density is for them to own the property and not build anything. Of course. > Well then those people should buy the land and keep it low density. Can't afford it? Too bad. Pro-housing folks aren't trying to force people to do something with their property, it's the other way around. Pro-housing people in my area absolutely are trying to force people to do th…
Barring restrictions is absolutely not “forcing” anyone to do anything. Take away all restrictions on my lot and I am still not forced to develop on it.
The article doesn't make this clear... is sharing a house illegal, or is it only illegal to separate leases for each room? Immediately post-college, I shared houses with other 20-somethings. It was always a single lease - 4 roommates listed, 4 beds, all of us responsible for the full amount of the rent. But, we were absolutely allowed to reside in the same home. Same thing in college - single lease for four people in…
> is sharing a house illegal, or is it only illegal to separate leases for each room? Too many unrelated people living in a housing unit is illegal. Here’s San Francisco’s version of this law which was used to shut down house sharing companies such as HubHaus; see definition of “family” https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/s... The article also mentioned dormitory-like “group housing” apartments…
The article doesn't make this clear... is sharing a house illegal, or is it only illegal to separate leases for each room? Immediately post-college, I shared houses with other 20-somethings. It was always a single lease - 4 roommates listed, 4 beds, all of us responsible for the full amount of the rent. But, we were absolutely allowed to reside in the same home. Same thing in college - single lease for four people in…
Part of the problem is the law isn't designed for shared housing. 1/ If one roommate is disruptive (noise complaints, property damage, safety issues), landlords and other tenants have limited legal tools short of eviction of everyone. That blunt instrument makes it unattractive for landlords to allow multi-tenant arrangements. 2/ From a legal discriminatory standpoint, the law doesn't have much protections for people…
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People pick housing based on current conditions and want it to never change. This is very understandable. Using force of law to maintain aesthetic levels and social class divides is where the perverse incentives set in. The US Supreme Court approved the earliest zoning laws based on health justification. The dicta in the court opinion cited cities as parasitically infringing on bucolic greenery. We now see the logica…
>People pick housing based on current conditions and want it to never change. Correct, people making what is for most the largest financial investment and commitment of their lives want to have control over what happens to it. When you have a 30 year mortgage on a piece of property that is many times your gross yearly income, you're kind of invested in the most literal sense of the word. It would be one thing if the…
Because the vision of quarter acre blocks from sea to sea is gut-wrenching and we would prefer to limit the bounds of human building so that some forests and wild lands remain.