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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

#111

Post by boringg »

vidarh wrote: post #76
boringg wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or alternatively trying to not have an area run rampant with too many people living in a house causing fire risks. Or god forbid trying to plan a city for density, resources, school locations. Come on - zoning rules aren't some tool of repression. Sometimes they can be, but that isn't their raison d'etre.

If your housing pressure is so significant, or your poverty so extensive, that people are willing to live in unsafe, overcrowded situations, then trying to regulate that away is not very likely to improve things, but just push people into other negative situations, like illegal lets where they have little recourse to complain about problems without the risk of losing their home.

One example - and very a extreme one to prove a point and not a very compelling one at that.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#114

Post by cjs_ac »

mothballed wrote: post #109
cjs_ac wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the 1970s, it was usual for working class newlyweds would have to live with their parents until they were able to find housing. That's why second-rate comedians of the time like Les Dawson had so many mother-in-law jokes: there was an awful lot of resentment between young men and their mothers-in-law to exploit. There's nothing new about multiple families crowding into houses designed for just one family in this c…

In 1970 you could basically buy any non-city plot of land and build a shack on it without anyone bothering you. Think of the back to the land hippies in California just chopping down trees and starting their little communes -- they'd be utterly fucked if they did that now, some Karen would rat them out instantly to planning and zoning committee. In the late 60s/70s DIY builders were almost completely displaced by dev…

None of this is relevant to the discussion you've replied to, which is about the United Kingdom.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#115

Post by 2THFairy »

tormeh wrote: post #98
Traster wrote: post #73

I don't like this line of reasoning because it's largely just crystalizing a loss. We have this in the UK - houses of multiple occupancy. It's a great idea where you take a home that in the 1980s would house a family and split it into 5 flats where each person can rent 10-20 square metres each. I would much rather someone did something to address the fact that the average family in the UK can afford roughly 1/5th the…

Voters don't actually want house prices to come down. Voters, in aggregate, want rents to fall and prices to rise, roughly divided by renters vs owners. Somehow the homeowners almost always win against the renters in this political tug-of-war. Perhaps because rents are downstream of values, and so it's politically easier for owners to make the correct choices to advance their agenda than it is for renters, which have…

> Somehow the homeowners almost always win against the renters in this political tug-of-war.

Demographics. Homeowners skew old, which gives them a bunch of advantages in enacting their political power. Higher turnout, baby boom giving them numerical superiority, and the time advantage of being able to enact policy decades ago.

In the US, this is supplemented by matters of race, where because of past redlining policies, "pro-homeowner" policy (esp. suburban single-family-homes) in the last half-century has been a way to primarily benefit white people.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#116

Post by gryfft »

AlexandrB wrote: post #92
zuminator wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there's your answer right there. Communal living is discouraged because our capitalist society uses the fear of homelessness to force people onto the work treadmill. Either join the rat race or it's the streets for you. And now living rough is being made illegal as well, so it's labor camps.

> capitalist society uses the fear of homelessness to force people onto the work treadmill If we were living in pre-agrarian society you would either be on the "work treadmill" building/maintaining shelter and finding food or you would starve or freeze to death. Capitalism has nothing to do with it. Do you think animals spend most of their time looking for food because they're also operating under the capitalist syst…

> If we were living in pre-agrarian society you would either be on the "work treadmill" building/maintaining shelter and finding food or you would starve or freeze to death.

It is my understanding that anthropology has shown that the people of prehistoric times cared for their sick, elderly, and infirm.

> "From the very earliest times, we can see evidence that people who were unable to function were helped, looked after and given what care was available."

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/06/17/8788963...

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#117

Post by AlexandrB »

emseetech wrote: post #103
AlexandrB wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think everyone in this thread should read https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/you-call-that-compassio... Addiction requires some level of coercive intervention to address. No one wants to admit this point so we keep arguing about whether we want to leave addicts to die in the street or in a crowded crack den. Neither really solves the problem.

Is it bleeding hearts preventing this or the unwillingness to properly fund it?

I'm guessing both. I think a lot of people get the ick about forcibly incarcerating people who are addicts or suffering from severe mental health issues[1]. I know I did when I was younger. We've moved to a more voluntary model of "mental health outreach" and the like. But this requires folks with compromised thought processes to regularly make a rational decision to seek help.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deinstitutionalisation

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#118

Post by potato3732842 »

itake wrote: post #70
alistairSH wrote: post #34

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…

Forcing things to go through the full ass reaming of the "everything else" process rather than whatever less terrible process was written to make some "supported" thing streamlined enough to not cause uproar.

The purpose of the system is what it does. They don't want to make doing "bad" things easy so they let your only option be through the same absurd catch-all process.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#119

Post by 2THFairy »

AlexandrB wrote: post #75
red_rech wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The downside though is that these places will invariably turn into social crack houses, rather than the sunny smilely communal life ideals they are sold as. Ok, get rid of them, now the streets are social crack houses? What are we to do now? Perhaps the woodchipper?

I think everyone in this thread should read https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/you-call-that-compassio... Addiction requires some level of coercive intervention to address. No one wants to admit this point so we keep arguing about whether we want to leave addicts to die in the street or in a crowded crack den. Neither really solves the problem.

> No one wants to admit this point so we keep arguing about whether we want to leave addicts to die in the street or in a crowded crack den. Neither really solves the problem.

That is correct, yet at the same time: Society as a whole refuses to give these people even the kindness of a roof over their head.

They need better care, yes. But if people won't even agree that these people shouldn't freeze to death in winter (or overheat in summer), talk of funding better care is off the table.

Christ, Fox News had one of their guys outright suggest they be euthanized. The bar for discourse on homelessness is in hell right now.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#120

Post by mothballed »

cjs_ac wrote: post #114
mothballed wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1970 you could basically buy any non-city plot of land and build a shack on it without anyone bothering you. Think of the back to the land hippies in California just chopping down trees and starting their little communes -- they'd be utterly fucked if they did that now, some Karen would rat them out instantly to planning and zoning committee. In the late 60s/70s DIY builders were almost completely displaced by dev…

None of this is relevant to the discussion you've replied to, which is about the United Kingdom.

And in turn none of the discussion you've replied to is relevant by your standard, because the OG article discusses the United States.

Funny someone else is allowed to discuss UK in regards to an American article, but I'm not allowed to discuss America on a UK thread about an American article.

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