Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates • Hacker News Board

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#171

Post by SoftTalker » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #163

danaris wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm sure in some/many cases there were racial motivations but also SROs that have many unrelated people in individual rooms often become seen as flophouses and are seen as undesirable by other property owners. So they are often prohibited at least in single-family zoned areas.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#172

Post by jjk166 » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 4:04 PM UTC

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...

UK's population has gone up 16% since 1980. Average UK home price, adjusted for inflation, has gone up 104% in the same time period.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#173

Post by imgabe » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 4:05 PM UTC

sznio wrote: post #136

imgabe wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Do you think you could deliberately become poorer if you wanted to? If you do, why do you think you couldn't deliberately become richer?

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#174

Post by kyleblarson » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 4:06 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

If this was pre 2008 you could get a mortgage if you could fog a mirror.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#175

Post by toomuchtodo » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 4:08 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #171

toomuchtodo wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm sure in some/many cases there were racial motivations but also SROs that have many unrelated people in individual rooms often become seen as flophouses and are seen as undesirable by other property owners. So they are often prohibited at least in single-family zoned areas.

Certainly, but I'll also argue that single family zoning needs to go, and upzoning enabled anywhere reasonable. Do existing owners not like flophouses? Do they not like density? Do they not like any change at all? All of the above. Property owners are entitled to their property, they are not entitled to stop efforts around them to increase housing supply or density.

(as someone who has acquired lots, rezoned, and have contracted to have multifamily built in such areas)

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#176

Post by bsghirt » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 4:09 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…

Why are the cities that you happen to have lived in a relevant data set here?

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#177

Post by caycep » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 4:09 PM UTC

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…

I vaguely remember a group of friends in college, at one point they were notified by the town that their shared house technically qualified as a brothel; some compromises were made, I think something like putting up more room dividers or something, that satisfied the powers that be

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#178

Post by bsghirt » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 4:10 PM UTC

dec0dedab0de wrote: post #141

TimorousBestie wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Probably an unpopular opinion, but why is this a problem? Because it makes it relatively more difficult for minorities to obtain housing, see sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45348212 > The classic example would be a "female only" household that doesn't allow men for real or perceived safety reasons. There are also cultures/religions where cohabitation with those of the opposite sex is taboo. Th…

The solution to the “female only” or the religiously observant household is for the renters/buyers to self-select and organize themselves. I don’t see why the landlord/seller needs to mandate it. I think it's because the only two options being presented are a group of people signing one lease with one landlord. Or a group of people individually signing leases with the landlord. So basically, the problem is for people…

You can't find a group of people to share a lease with, but you want to live in a residence which excludes people by race or gender? Sounds like a you problem.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#179

Post by epistasis » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 4:10 PM UTC

caycep wrote: post #177

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…

I vaguely remember a group of friends in college, at one point they were notified by the town that their shared house technically qualified as a brothel; some compromises were made, I think something like putting up more room dividers or something, that satisfied the powers that be

That's so funny because it would seem that dividers would assist in the supposed disallowed use here...

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#180

Post by SoftTalker » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 4:13 PM UTC

toomuchtodo wrote: post #175

SoftTalker wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm sure in some/many cases there were racial motivations but also SROs that have many unrelated people in individual rooms often become seen as flophouses and are seen as undesirable by other property owners. So they are often prohibited at least in single-family zoned areas.

Certainly, but I'll also argue that single family zoning needs to go, and upzoning enabled anywhere reasonable. Do existing owners not like flophouses? Do they not like density? Do they not like any change at all? All of the above. Property owners are entitled to their property, they are not entitled to stop efforts around them to increase housing supply or density. (as someone who has acquired lots, rezoned, and hav…

I do agree that one contributor to the housing crisis in many areas is the lack of SRO and boarding houses, which used to be much more common at least in urban areas. Those are all largely gone now, and they used to be common entry-level housing options for young singles.

If I owned a house would I object to the neighbor taking in a boarder or two? No, but I could see being unhappy about them moving out and turning the house into an SRO rental, especially if those tenants created a nuisance in the neighborhood. Same as a problematic Air BnB.

I think a good compromise might be allowing SRO/boarding if the owner also lives in the house. That is what my town is discussing for at least some residential neighborhoods.

SROs should also be more often allowed in already multifamily/high density residental areas.