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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

#131

Post by xphos »

potato3732842 wrote: post #59
xphos wrote: post #19

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 SR…

>if SROs with regulations could exist Regulations are why they don't exist. Once you pile on everyone's additions to the bike shed it's an economic non starter.

Yes for a reason, perhaps we got the regulations wrong and they need to be looked at. I don't think its an economic non-starter just a complex issue. SROs existed before precisely because they were economically viable. Ultimately we need to reform zoning (in the US) significantly because it has major issues related to local power having inverted incentives to solving zoning and housing concerns at the state level

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#133

Post by stackskipton »

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?

Little of Column A and Little of Column B.

I have family member suffering from extreme mental illness. He is likely on the streets somewhere, we don't know where because we had no choice but to abandon him to save ourselves. United States makes it extremely difficult to force treatment for someone who can't be making these decisions on their own ever. He ended up in this cycle. Mental Health Episode, Drugs, Law Enforcement interactions trying to get drugs (Robbing people), some minor help, slightly better, stops medications because side effects, repeat.

Funding it is always crazy expensive and in United States with crappy social safety net, it's really hard to find funding and politically, people don't want to fund it because "I'm barely affording rent and you want to raise my taxes to pay for them? Hell no."

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#134

Post by zozbot234 »

alistairSH wrote: post #124
Taek wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The amount of people in a boarding house or shared occupancy is low enough that they can easily be all mutually trusted friends or acquaintances to one another. Why should people be forced by law to admit strangers that they might not be fully comfortable with into that kind of tightly-knit arrangement?

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#135

Post by cjs_ac »

mothballed wrote: post #120
cjs_ac wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The discussion was prompted by an article on sharehouses being banned in US cities, which prompted comparison to HMOs in the UK. One of those comparisons suggested that HMOs are a recent phenomenon and are a cause in the shortage of family homes in the UK. I replied to this by arguing that a shortage of family homes was also present in the 1970s, and that overcrowded housing for working families has been common throughout British history. You've replied to this with your personal experiences about building a home in the 1970s and dealing with building regulations.

The discussion about the effects of UK HMOs on wider housing availability is indeed a peripheral discussion of limited interest to most. Your comment, while of interest to me, was only tangentially related to my comment. I'm not arguing that you shouldn't have written it - as I said, I found it interesting - I'm just pointing out that it doesn't flow well from what came before it.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#136

Post by sznio »

imgabe wrote: post #49
xphos wrote: post #19

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 SR…

> people living in them should just try not being to poor to have real housing Yes, unironically, they should. And most would be trying to do exactly that. I don’t know why some people treat economic status as some immutable property outside of your control. People move up and down in economic status all the time. And most people move up as they get older and get more work experience and higher paying jobs. Having a…

>People move up and down in economic status all the time.

Entropy. The fact that change happens doesn't prove that we control it.

Your wealth and health are randomized when you're born. What you do later has miniscule influence.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#137

Post by [deleted] »

cjs_ac wrote: post #135
mothballed wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The discussion was prompted by an article on sharehouses being banned in US cities, which prompted comparison to HMOs in the UK. One of those comparisons suggested that HMOs are a recent phenomenon and are a cause in the shortage of family homes in the UK. I replied to this by arguing that a shortage of family homes was also present in the 1970s, and that overcrowded housing for working families has been common throu…

[deleted]

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#138

Post by philipwhiuk »

nradov wrote: post #88
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…

The UK has also had extremely high immigration rates since the 1980s. Whether that's good or bad policy isn't my place to say, but it certainly places extreme pressure on the housing market. https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/lo...

> Whether that's good or bad policy isn't my place to say

Right, you're just dragging in migration to the discussion, which is entirely a side issue, purely out of the goodness of your heart.

From your link:

> The UK has experienced broadly similar levels of migration compared to other high-income countries, on average, over the past few decades

That doesn't make it sound like the UK is an outlier, contrary to the implication of your statement.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#139

Post by alistairSH »

zozbot234 wrote: post #134
alistairSH wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want that degree of freedom, a boarding house or shared occupancy is not for you. Pay up for dedicated solo housing.

The amount of people in a boarding house or shared occupancy is low enough that they can easily be all mutually trusted friends or acquaintances to one another. Why should people be forced by law to admit strangers that they might not be fully comfortable with into that kind of tightly-knit arrangement?

In a true boarding house, the landlord/owner controls who lives there - each room is rented individually. Individual tenants have zero control over who lives in the next room.

But, yes, if you have a typical shared home, where 4 people get together and rent a home at once, yes, you do have that control (and should have it).

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#140

Post by danny_codes »

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…

Or fix both.

Housing in UK/US seems to suffer from simultaneous under-and over- regulation. We over-regulate urban infill housing, and over-regulate the types of housing you can build. We under-regulate landowner profits by letting them keep land rents.

A holistic fix would address both causes of failure in the housing market.

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