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Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

marginalrevolution.com

231–240 of 418 posts

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#231
post #226

We have this system in the U.K. largely and it hasn’t really fixed the problem, because now even these house shares are incredibly expensive. In London you can be looking at well over £1000 per month for a bedroom and access to a shared kitchen and bathroom. Licensing is required for what are here called HMOs (houses in multiple occupation) to make sure that properties are safe. But increasing the remit of licensing…

I dont think we have restrictions here (SF Bay area) and a room in a shared apt/house is in many areas even more expensive ($1500-2000).

The most expensive real estate on the planet is in the bay area, and as with any dense urban area, it's all about what the market will support.

Forced open bidding would make one big difference in pricing. But those high salaries just make everything more expensive.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#232

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…

> The article doesn't make this clear... is sharing a house illegal

Sharing a house with too many people is illegal in many jurisdictions, yes. E.g., https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/urban-development/sf-housing...

(Note that this focusses on a rule on the number of legally-unrelated people that can legally live in a unit, but it also mentions in passing a separate restriction on the total number of people who can live in a unit irrespective of family relationships.)

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#233
post #70

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…

> Part of the problem is the law isn't designed for shared housing

That’s part of the problem, but this article is actually about explicit legal limits on sharing, not merely that sharing, where allowed, isn’t always legally convenient.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#234
post #98
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…

> Voters, in aggregate, want rents to fall and prices to rise, roughly divided by renters vs owners

I assure you, a lot of people in the UK want house prices to fall too. There are too many renters who don't want to be renting, and the proportion is increasing. They wish they could buy instead, but can't either because of price, inability to save enough for a down-payment as fast as prices rise (while large rent rises impede their saving or even drain it, and incomes rise more slowly than prices), or inability to obtain a mortgage despite a history of consistently paying more than a mortgage in rent. For the latter category, who can afford a mortgage but can't get one, and are already paying more in rent, their main problem isn't income or price, it's the tighter restrictions on mortgage availability since the 2008 financial crises. But they would still like lower prices.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#235

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.

In the Netherlands from what I've seen (at least around Amsterdam) it's almost always forbidden for houses to be rented out to a group of flatmates (e.g. students), some people go so far as to fake relationships to imply they're a couple instead. I'm not sure if this an actual law but housing listings often imply its forbidden in the neighborhood, they're looking for couples and families with kids.

> In the Netherlands from what I've seen (at least around Amsterdam) it's almost always forbidden for houses to be rented out to a group of flatmates (e.g. students), some people go so far as to fake relationships to imply they're a couple instead.

The landlord believes that their property and their relationships with the neighbours of the property will be less likely to destroyed by letting the property to older/respected/settled down members of society. Common practice in most of UK as well.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#236
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…

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

Why aren't they? Because what appears to have been an obvious point to everyone else isn't you you:

My point is, across multiple states, and various cities, I've never run across an instance without a family carve-out. I even went through the trouble of picking random large cities throughout the US and literally every one of them has a carve out. Unless you can provide some data otherwise, why is your comment relevant to this discussion? What value were you trying to add?

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#237
post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> 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. Of course they're entitled to stop efforts to cha…

There's nothing intrinsically racist about having lot size preferences, but the lot sizes we have in most 20th century vintage zoning codes are in fact racist by design. Minimum lot sizes were a way of keeping Black families from crossing borders from redlined ghettoes into white neighborhoods or suburbs, by preventing people from subdividing lots into smaller, more affordable houses.

Meanwhile: it's perfectly understandable that people don't want to see change in their neighborhood, or that they buy a property in the expectation that everything good about it will remain. But that's not a reasonable constraint for the law to operate under. You do not in fact have a strict right to control things that happen outside the borders of your own lot.

Some community restrictions are reasonable. We broadly agree that it's not OK for someone to open a tannery in the middle of a suburban residential block. Others are not; for instance, neighbors several blocks over will argue that they have a right not to endure extra traffic when our local hospital, the largest employer and best hospital in the region, plans a small addition.

The most important phenomenon here is hyperlocalism. The immediate neighbors of new proposed residential developments will reliably oppose it. They'll also make up the overwhelming majority of those who show up for public comment, because normal people don't turn out to support new apartment buildings built across town. But if you accept that resistance as a given right, you're essentially saying nothing will ever get built.

The muni I'm in has managed to go from 70,000 residents to 50,000 by consistently applying this strategy, so it's not even accurate to say it's about "change", so much as it is about strangling out as many residents as possible to achieve a targeted demography.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#238
post #129
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most homeless have "mental issues". On a good day they will try, but they have bad days often enough. Sometimes mental issues are caused by 'hard drug' use, but there are plenty of other causes. Society has not found a good answer to these people (many of the things tried have been worse than living on the streets - despite a few freezing to death) Some of the homeless could live in a roommate situation. Others are "…

I appreciate not being defeatist just because people might be homeless because of drugs or mental issues. I agree that there is a good chance they might destroy a room but I think SROs as a step up from shelters would be respected by like 80% of the people in that situation at that point you can start to price in and adjust the costs of things. Common area's can be managed reducing the overall risk not to zero but ev…

My town has built several "transition" apartment buildings for the homeless to give them a "stable" place to live while they in theory get their lives together. They quickly became shitholes, residents destroyed the apartments and especially the common areas/hallways/elevators. They also let any number of acquaintances into the buildings and the apartments, further contributing to the destruction. Half the units are uninhabitable as a result.

If they had to pay rent they would at least be filtering for people who have enough stability/responsibility to have some kind of job or income.

"Just give them housing" does not work for people who have no idea how or desire to live in a house.

Living/loitering/begging/shitting on the streets should not be permitted. Institutionalization may be needed if addictions or severe mental health issues are involved. But expectations need to be higher. Sympathy for and tolerance of antisocial behavior have been utter failures.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Housing (or at least shelter) is infact widely available. The problem is that you can't do drugs or drink in these places.

https://endhomelessness.org/state-of-homelessness/

> The homelessness response system added 60,143 shelter beds in 2024, but with over 600,000 people entering homelessness for the first time each year, this is deeply inadequate.

> In 61 percent of states and territories, growth in demand outpaced growth in available beds, meaning that they had less capacity to shelter people in 2024 than in 2023.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#240
post #173
post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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?

Imagine someone running on a long conveyor belt. The belt is just fast enough that they can keep up with it, but any small mistake, hesitation, or fall means they are dragged behind. On that conveyor belt falling behind is the default state. To stay in one place one must do the right things at all times and also be lucky enough that no bad things happen to you.

This is the experience of many. The speed of the conveyor belt is why people can easily imagine falling behind (thats the diffult state!) while moving ahead is almost impossible. (It doesn’t mean that you can’t do it. From time to time someone finds a jetpack and propels themselves onto places where the conveyor belt is working slightly differently, but thats not going to be the experience of everyone.)

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