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Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

marginalrevolution.com

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Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#11

Post by [deleted] »

profsummergig wrote: post #3
bell-cot wrote: post #2

Zoning rules are awesome tools, for improving your own situation at the uncompensated expense of others. And what decent person would ever want to object, if 95% of the victims are both "not like us", and members of lower classes?

2nd order effects. One moment you allow multiple unrelated people to share a house. Next moment they're living 5 to a room and there are 8 cars parked in their front yard. My peeve is about banning of growing food in your front yard in many states. So much available land going waste growing grass (that is not even fed to cows).

[deleted]

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#12

Post by plasticchris »

pavel_lishin wrote: post #6
profsummergig wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2nd order effects. One moment you allow multiple unrelated people to share a house. Next moment they're living 5 to a room and there are 8 cars parked in their front yard. My peeve is about banning of growing food in your front yard in many states. So much available land going waste growing grass (that is not even fed to cows).

One moment you allow growing food in your front yard. Next moment, you've got a rat infestation living 5 to a burrow and 8 of them are moving into your house. My pet peeve is yet some other thing that might have downsides.

Everyone has a different peeve, and they all conflict. That’s why population density correlates with regulation.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#15

Post by echelon »

bell-cot wrote: post #2

Zoning rules are awesome tools, for improving your own situation at the uncompensated expense of others. And what decent person would ever want to object, if 95% of the victims are both "not like us", and members of lower classes?

Zoning rules can be useful, but if they produce negative externalities then they should be taxed.

Want to only allow single-family residences?

Fine, but pay the city taxes on that privilege. Then use those funds to offset the negative externality.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#16

Post by mnw21cam »

cjs_ac wrote: post #5

In the UK, these are called Houses in Multiple Occupation. They are regulated, licensed and inspected to ensure that they're not dangerous. https://www.gov.uk/renting-out-a-property/houses-in-multiple...

Moreover, we have tax breaks encouraging a home owner to rent out a spare room or two. (Though if the home owner is living in the house, the renter's rights are much less and there isn't the same level of regulation as if the owner is remote.)

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#18

Post by rjdj377dhabsn »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #10

While these are great on paper, I think the part that needs solving is how to stop them from becoming dens of people who have checked out (voluntarily or not) of life/society. Getting a place to live in for $350/mo would be absolutely game changing for low income (and even middle income) people trying to build wealth. The downside though is that these places will invariably turn into social crack houses, rather than…

Do we really want the government to dictate how people live their lives?

If someone wants to waste his life away, sitting around doing drugs, that should be up to him.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#19

Post by xphos »

I find the comments on the site that it would have no economic demand laughable. Everything has demand the question is at what cost. If an SRO could cost 500$ a month in NYC people would jump on it.

And don't get me wrong SROs were not happy places, people living in them should just try not being to poor to have real housing (sarcasm). I think homeless issues would not be solved but at least partially mitigated if SROs with regulations could exist. I think we need to look serious at whether people living and shitting on the streets is more or less dignified than SROs

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