Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates • Hacker News Board

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#301

Post by standardUser » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 7:05 PM UTC

zer00eyz wrote: post #266

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…

> Voters don't actually want house prices to come down. You have this wrong. > Somehow the homeowners almost always win against the renters First lets look at homeownership rates: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/RSAHORUSQ156S Home ownership is a functionally unmovable number staying around 63% Home owners are in the majority. Do you know what one of the biggest predictors of voting is? It is home ownership and loc…

> Voters don't actually want house prices to come down. >> You have this wrong.

But you don't refute this, if anything you make the case that, since the majority are homeowners, they would of course want ever-increasing home values. And it's common knowledge that homeowners assume/depend on rising values as part of their purchasing decision.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#302

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 7:07 PM UTC

bpt3 wrote: post #295

toomuchtodo wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, they want the authority over the land without buying or otherwise having to expend finances to control the land.

That's not what I'm talking about at all. Zoning regulations should reflect the desires of a community, and there's no inherent reason they can't be more restrictive than yimbys would like.

[deleted]

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#303

Post by stocksinsmocks » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 7:07 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #123

itake wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

I’m pretty sure the law has a lot more to do with existing property owners trying to preserve the value of their own property, than it has to do with lobbyists hating Democrat party bloc voters for literally no reason at all.

Though the latter story does get out the ol’ vote. I guess working class people with a mortgage are the Kulaks now.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#304

Post by brewdad » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 7:33 PM UTC

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 can understand why they wouldn't cut you a deal. It would be virtually impossible for them to rent that space the other 16 hours a day. They want to capture its full value.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#305

Post by stego-tech » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 7:35 PM UTC

lazide wrote: post #269

stego-tech wrote: post #265

This has been a continued bugbear on my housing hunt for years, now. So many townhomes, condos, townships, and communities arbitrarily limiting who I can share my space with, even as a full-time owner-occupant of that space. It’s particularly brutal for the LGBTQ+ community because so many of us find our happiness in “found families” which often aren’t related by blood or marriage and thus can be evicted or fined by…

Hmm, can you give some locations? At least in CA, I saw limits on max number of adults, but never any specification of the relationships of the adults. That was a pretty liberal area though. It was mostly to stop the ‘10 adults to a house’ type situations that overwhelms street parking, sewage systems, etc. when everyone is doing it.

This is in MA. Several townships still have laws on the books about occupant relations and limits, and all but one condo complex I’ve looked at units in had language in their covenants about occupant relations. Realtors countered that these sections aren’t actively enforced anymore, or that the Supreme Judicial Court issued a ruling saying they’re null and void, and that was sometimes (but not always) true. Even so, their existence alone creates the potential for lawfare that a new homeowner just cannot afford, and so we had to pass on them due to that risk assessment.

That’s what I’d like more people to understand: even if those rules or laws aren’t enforced now, doesn’t mean they can’t be enforced later when the regime changes its priorities.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#306

Post by basisword » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 7:37 PM UTC

dkarl wrote: post #257

basisword wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems like the person renting it out would just be throwing away a large sum of money for very little benefit.

I think the benefit is significant. Based on my vivid memories of having roommates, not sharing cooking facilities and having guaranteed quiet and privacy in the evenings are pretty huge. Also having to share space in the bathroom with another person's toiletries, towels, and mess. People forgo lots of income in order to avoid living with roommates because of these issues, so I think it's plausible that they would co…

Interesting! I guess it depends on the person. I can see your perspective but for me having someone there part of the time would just be an inconvenience without the benefit of cooking together or socialising together. You're offering the lower risk option (in terms of the potential of getting a bad roommate) so while that probably works for some people most of the ads I see for roommates are looking someone to spend some time with too.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#307

Post by imgabe » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 7:38 PM UTC

krisoft wrote: post #240

imgabe wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 conveyo…

In reality, you choose the speed of the conveyor belt. You choose what expenses you take on and therefore how much you need to make each month. To a large part, you can slow the belt down if you like. Options like boarding houses would allow people to slow it down even more precisely if they wanted without falling off entirely.

> 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.

"do the right things" is really not that hard. It mostly involves not doing things like getting arrested, getting addicted to drugs, or otherwise making bad choices. It's not some crazy delicate balancing act that you're making it out to be.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#308

Post by smegma2 » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 7:40 PM UTC

olalonde wrote: post #106

yonran wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> is sharing a house illegal, or is it only illegal to separate leases for each room? Too many unrelated people living in a housing unit is illegal. Here’s San Francisco’s version of this law which was used to shut down house sharing companies such as HubHaus; see definition of “family” https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/s... The article also mentioned dormitory-like “group housing” apartments…

Meanwhile, people build tiny homes to "solve homelessness"... https://www.youtube.com/shorts/yJsWjulAonc

Why the scare quotes? What else is supposed to be done when every other remedy is either illegal or too expensive!

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#309

Post by ratelimitsteve » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 7:46 PM UTC

oceanplexian wrote: post #261

toomuchtodo wrote: post #175

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…

> Property owners are entitled to their property, they are not entitled to stop efforts around them to increase housing supply or density. Property owners are absolutely entitled to their property but that also includes things like noise, sanitation, and crime. It's called an HOA or a master planned community and approximately 30% of the US population lives in one. Few people like HOAs but still engage in them despit…

it's called an HOA or a master planned community and its a voluntary agreement between homeowners, not something any one homeowner is entitled to over the protestations of others. People who want to join an HOA are entitled to do that, and people who don't are entitled to not, but that's different from the law because the law is not optional or voluntary. It is, by its very nature, a restriction on the liberties of people without their express consent. What you're talking about is very, very different and deserves to be discussed independently of this.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#310

Post by imgabe » Tue, Sep 23, 2025, 7:48 PM UTC

SoftTalker wrote: post #238

xphos wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

The thing with a boarding house is it's not targeted specifically at people who are currently homeless. It's just for anyone who wants to save money on housing. Maybe people who just moved to a new city and haven't found a place to live yet, or people who are just starting out and not making much money. It gives them a place to live before they become homeless.

It would also usually have the landlord living there, and they would be invested in the place because it's their source of income, so they aren't going to tolerate people smearing crap all over the walls or tearing out the wiring to sell for drugs or ranting and raving all night long.