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Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

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Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#151

Post by FuriouslyAdrift »

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…

During college, myself and friends did the math and found buying a crappy house 20 miles away was vastly cheaper than renting so we did that.

I was the one that actually 'owned' the house. No one paid rent to me, but I was reimbursed for all utilities, food, etc. My only expense was the mortgage.

Since no one paid rent, it wasn't a 'boarding house.'

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#152

Post by portaouflop »

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #151
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…

During college, myself and friends did the math and found buying a crappy house 20 miles away was vastly cheaper than renting so we did that. I was the one that actually 'owned' the house. No one paid rent to me, but I was reimbursed for all utilities, food, etc. My only expense was the mortgage. Since no one paid rent, it wasn't a 'boarding house.'

Insane to be able to buy a house in college - I could barely afford rent in a crappy shared flat

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#153

Post by paulcole »

dkarl wrote: post #65

For a few weeks I was looking to rent a bedroom to use as an office, because my wife works at home and takes a lot of in-person meetings in our house, and also to help with work-life separation. I reached out to a few people who were advertising for roommates, proposing to pay significantly less in rent, with limits on the hours I could access the space and how I could use it (no sleeping over, no cooking in the kitc…

> I wonder, is this kind of arrangement common

No.

They want $X per month, they don't want significantly less than $X per month.

In Portland, Oregon, a private single-person WeWork office is around $600/month. There are almost no roommate situations that are going to be available for that price.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#154

Post by potato3732842 »

2THFairy wrote: post #115
tormeh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 policie…

You're forgetting the most important one. Having a bunch of your money tied up in an illiquid asset that is subject to all manner of government micromanagement gives you a huge incentive to see to it that the government doesn't get progressively more shitty toward you than it already is.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#155

Post by wat10000 »

deadbabe wrote: post #55
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).

Aesthetics matter. You grow food in the front yards, pretty soon front yards will look like shit, then the homes look like shit, and then your life feels like shit.

Every time I see a farm I think, this is so ugly, it would be so much nicer to look at if it were a suburb with manicured laws instead.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#156

Post by reactordev »

sokoloff wrote: post #102
reactordev wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought the entire goal was to get to a point where you're checked out? Retirement. The issue is income hasn't kept up with inflation and definitely not the rents required for older gen folks to survive on their own. Perspective: My mother owned a home in a wealthy area of Virginia, her mortgage was $1200/mo for 30 years. When she sold it (for double what she paid for it) she thought she was rich. Then came the ass…

If she only doubled her money in 30 years, that’s only 2.3% CAGR, probably less than general inflation over that time period. Most housing, especially in wealthy areas, has appreciated significantly more rapidly.

I don't disagree but when my father passed, she took out some equity to pay his medical bills as well when she inherited the house. Life has a way of getting in the way.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#157

Post by potato3732842 »

mothballed wrote: post #82
AnotherGoodName wrote: post #32

Where are these types of places illegal in reality? I know of single room rentals available in pretty much every major metro in the world. Shared common bathroom and kitchen. I also know of one in plenty of subletting of multi-bedroom apartments. I have never heard of enforcement against this. It also doesn’t bring rents down as much as claimed.

If it's illegal you're in a situation where the landlord likes money and the tenants like not being homeless. In a house where 4th amendment rights are strongest. In practice I think it's about impossible to enforce. Code enforcement or police would need a warrant to enter, and in most jurisdictions the complaints are public record far enough ahead of time anyone with the slightest bit of foresight would get ahead of…

>In practice I think it's about impossible to enforce. Code enforcement or police would need a warrant to enter

If they have a suspicion and they feel inclined to go after you they'll just go hard enforcing all manner of other shit they don't need to go inside to enforce agains the landlord. It doesn't matter that the things they're trying to enforce may very well be bullshit that couldn't stand in court if challenged, it's cheaper to comply than to fight it.

Code enforcement and other civil and administrative areas of law where the .gov can issue fines on the same order or larger than many criminal penalties while giving the accused none of the rights of criminal trial are a massive, massive, massive, I can't say it enough, massive, end run around constitutional rights.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#159

Post by mothballed »

potato3732842 wrote: post #157
mothballed wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's illegal you're in a situation where the landlord likes money and the tenants like not being homeless. In a house where 4th amendment rights are strongest. In practice I think it's about impossible to enforce. Code enforcement or police would need a warrant to enter, and in most jurisdictions the complaints are public record far enough ahead of time anyone with the slightest bit of foresight would get ahead of…

>In practice I think it's about impossible to enforce. Code enforcement or police would need a warrant to enter If they have a suspicion and they feel inclined to go after you they'll just go hard enforcing all manner of other shit they don't need to go inside to enforce agains the landlord. It doesn't matter that the things they're trying to enforce may very well be bullshit that couldn't stand in court if challenge…

I don't doubt it happens, just personally going off of what I discovered when perusing the public records in my county. There were a bunch of properties that had a bunch of code complaints followed by inspector noting (paraphrasing) "arrived, gates locked, no one let me in, cannot see from road, case closed as unable to substantiate."
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