Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates • Hacker News Board

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#161

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 3:50 PM UTC

tw04 wrote: post #148

tptacek wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>There's a long and well-documented history of this, all the way down to regulations targeting multi-generational households (Black and Latino families are more likely to have a grandparent or aunt living alongside a younger family). That really doesn't track with the laws actually written. Every single city I've lived in with restrictions on number of unrelated tenants, simultaneously has an exception that there are…

[deleted]

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#162

Post by SoftTalker » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 3:51 PM UTC

joelwilliamson wrote: post #126

mattkrause wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My impression is that boarding house usually includes some services (cleaning, maintenance, food) from the owner or an employee who lives on the premises.

The “board” in a boarding house is food. There can be other services as well, but food is definitely required to be a boarding house.

Yes, the situation with shared common areas and private bedrooms individually leased is more typically called "single room occupancy" (SRO) and is often prohibited by local rental codes.

Where I live there is discussion about allowing it in some neighborhoods, with the requirement that the property owner is also resident in the house.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#163

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 3:52 PM UTC

danaris wrote: post #150

tw04 wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There's a long and well-documented history of this, all the way down to regulations targeting multi-generational households (Black and Latino families are more likely to have a grandparent or aunt living alongside a younger family). That really doesn't track with the laws actually written. Every single city I've lived in with restrictions on number of unrelated tenants, simultaneously has an exception that there are…

Or they're targeting polyamory.

tptacek nailed it with regards to it being historically racial, but I've also seen, to your point, animosity towards anything that isn't a "traditional" or nuclear family. Fear of the different and unknown is a powerful motivator of the people who bring these complaints. Also animosity towards poverty and the belief or perception of material increases in crime and/or traffic.

(property owner, many units, yimby, have to interface with the citizenry at zoning meetings, etc)

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#164

Post by bilbo0s » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 3:53 PM UTC

alistairSH wrote: post #139

zozbot234 wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Actually, if they rent the home, then they still don't have that control. The landlord does. S/he is free to put someone you don't like in the upstairs unit. Or even in the 5th bedroom of the house if it's a room letting type situation.

No matter what. You rent? Yeah, sorry. The landlord makes the rules.

The hypothetical foursome would need to purchase their property. At that point, they would be able to control for who could live there.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#165

Post by spogbiper » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 3:55 PM UTC

portaouflop wrote: post #152

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

mortgage payments are often cheaper than rent payments

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#166

Post by nradov » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 3:56 PM UTC

philipwhiuk wrote: post #138

nradov wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 im…

Assume positive intent. I flagged your comment because you made a false and scurrilous insinuation about my intentions. I'm not a UK citizen or resident and don't care about their immigration policy one way or another. But a high immigration rate will obviously increase housing demand: this is basic macroeconomics and trivially true.

The UK net immigration rate has been high relative to other countries worldwide, especially in recent years. It is an outlier on that basis. I'm not sure why you would limit the comparison to only high-income countries.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#167

Post by glitchc » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 3:56 PM UTC

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.'

How did you qualify for a mortgage without income?

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#168

Post by zdragnar » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 3:57 PM UTC

portaouflop wrote: post #152

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The monthly mortgage payment on a house in many rural areas in the US is far less than shared rent in dense cities.

A friend of mine was making $20 an hour at a part time manufacturing job while he had classes, and full time plus overtime during breaks. It would have been plenty for a down payment on such a house, if he'd wanted to, but he put the money towards tuition to limit school loans instead. This was 20 years ago, give or take, so very much not the norm, but definitely possible.

To add: I think a minimum down payment for the mortgage probably would have been in the $4 or $5,000 range.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#169

Post by SoftTalker » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 3:59 PM UTC

bilbo0s wrote: post #164

alistairSH wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

Actually, if they rent the home, then they still don't have that control. The landlord does. S/he is free to put someone you don't like in the upstairs unit. Or even in the 5th bedroom of the house if it's a room letting type situation. No matter what. You rent? Yeah, sorry. The landlord makes the rules. The hypothetical foursome would need to purchase their property. At that point, they would be able to control for…

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.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#170

Post by mothballed » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 4:01 PM UTC

glitchc wrote: post #167

FuriouslyAdrift wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.'

How did you qualify for a mortgage without income?

A lot of people have forgotten that between like 2004-2007 you could get a mortgage if you had a pulse.