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Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

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Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#321

Post by ndriscoll »

ratelimitsteve wrote: post #313
bpt3 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

you used the word "entitled" though, and that has a specific meaning. why would nimbys be "entitled" to stop high density housing but yimbys not be "entitled" to do it? this contradiction resolves itself very neatly in a system where yimbys get to do what they want with their property and nimbys get to do what they want with theirs. It only gets complex when one person wants complete control of their property and als…

Because "yimby"s go to higher government to force localities to adopt rules they vote against, i.e. they get their way with authoritarian policies that apply outside of "their backyard". Some even think there should be national laws! They want their policies applied to essentially an entire continent. Nimbys typically don't care about things that are not part of their locality. San Francisco wants giant skyscrapers? Cool, none in my city, thanks. That's why we chose to live in an area that bans high density.

From what I've seen the actual policies being pushed by "yimbys" seem much closer to yiyby.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#322

Post by ratelimitsteve »

petsfed wrote: post #271
potato3732842 wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The whole race thing is a red herring. Pretty much every "racist" law outside of the former confederacy was written with the Irish in mind and last I checked they were just as white (technically whiter if you want to hair split) as the wasps who championed those laws. Those people back then were trying use government force to make it harder for people to live in ways they didn't like in the via regulation all the sam…

One thing you can never depend on racists for is consistency . There are political cartoons drawn by fascists from the 1920s that attempt to stave off accusations of racism by pointing out that they include Italians (then show Mussolini as a racist caricature of a black man), as if Italians aren't widely considered white . If you look at how the British and later Americans talked about the Irish "people" or "race", y…

Just for curiosity's sake, when you talk about Italians being widely considered white what context is that in? Because you later talk about anti-Irish racism in the US in the 20s and 30s and the experience was pretty similar for Italians in the US in that time period as well. I have living relatives that can give you firsthand accounts of open, organized, violent anti-Italian racism in Pittsburgh pre-mid WWII.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#323

Post by philipwhiuk »

nradov wrote: post #166
philipwhiuk wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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, esp…

Because that’s what your source said?

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#324

Post by lo_zamoyski »

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 don't know what the racial origins are, but I have grown skeptical of many racial explanations, because they're often simplistic, speculative, and often lack a comprehension and awareness of the greater social context and events occurring around the middle of the century, like the intentional weaponization of "racism" against ethnic neighborhoods that were not assimilating into the ever-nebulous category of "whiteness". (Mass migration is one classic instrument, as are highways and bad urban planning. In the first case, mass migration from the South was used to break up ethnic neighborhoods in the North, causing their scattering across the suburbs to hasten assimilation. You could have used practically any outside group, but the convenience here was that it exploited the moral high ground of the civil rights movement, allowing opposition to mass migration to be cast as an expression of racism.)

However, ascribing opposition to "fear of the unknown" as a motivator is likewise lazy. It works from the assumption that a) the nuclear family is arbitrary and thus have no presumption in their favor, and b) that there is no tolerance for substitutes for the nuclear family, in the strict sense. It's not like most people are clamoring to live in a polyamorist sex commune, so it's not a good explanation.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#325

Post by Aurornis »

jojomodding wrote: post #258

This seems insane. Living in shared flats is very common in Germany presumably most of Europe. (I'm not talking about boarding houses.) It's not unheard of for them to include eight otherwise unrelated people (as long as there's enough space for everyone). Living in such a shared flat is basically the norm for college students and a formative experience for most. It's kinda shocking that this is illegal in some count…

> Living in shared flats is very common in Germany presumably most of Europe.

It's common in the United States, too.

This is one of those weird laws that's on the books but is almost never enforced.

Any college town will have houses full of college students. In my experience, the only enforcement actions were when landlords were renting out houses to more people than they had rooms, so they had situations where one person was living in a closet or an attic or other space that doesn't have proper fire egress. They don't mess around with that once it's discovered.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#326

Post by supertrope »

coryrc wrote: post #272
alistairSH wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree - I only meant reasonable in relation to typical home sizes. If there's a grand old 6 bedroom house in a downtown area, it would probably make sense to allow 6 unrelated tenants. My only concern there would be homeowners subdividing rooms ad infinitum to get more tenants. But, there are probably solutions to that that don't involve arbitrary caps on household size.

Or, you could let people decide how large a bedroom they are willing to rent and stop micromanaging/over-regulating every bit of real estate, which is why the costs are too high.

The original intent of such regulations was not having tenements where people would perish in event of a fire. In 2016 36 people died in the Oakland Ghost Ship warehouse fire.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#327

Post by reactordev »

Paradigm2020 wrote: post #291
reactordev wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Before the money is up... Move to thailand / malaysia / vietnam / mexico ? Do research online ? Not sure where you / other siblings are based but find a place w good and cheap flight connections. Changing sucks. Being forced to change even worse so maybe talk about options (Or even a cheaper place in the usa) Good luck

Dude, she’s in her 80s and needs the assistance.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#328

Post by silviogutierrez »

jedberg wrote: post #311

Edit: I was wrong, this was just made up by college kids. See comment below. Fun fact: In some college towns, they can only have fraternity houses but not sorority houses, because they still have laws on the books that define a house of prostitution as any house with at least three unrelated women living there.

Ackchyually… I think this is apocryphal.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brothel-laws-sororities/

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#329

Post by lazyasciiart »

duped wrote: post #292
jaredklewis wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems unreasonable to me unless there is some reasonable justification as to why 4 is legal but 5 is illegal. Like I can see why life in a house with 5 people might in some ways be more difficult than life in a house with 4 or 3, but I don't see why it should be illegal. People can think about these things for themselves and decide what works for them. Sure, most houses won't accommodate 5 roommates, but there als…

> Maybe we can just let people decide how many electrical outlets and parking spots they need? The last people I expect to know how much of a resource they need are small business owners. Parking regulations are there when there isn't sufficient street or garage parking. It should be obvious that a restaurant needs more parking spots than say, a dry cleaner, so they shouldn't have the same burden. Parking capacity is…

> if you spend some time in municipal spaces you find out quickly this isn't decided by politicians, but by city planners and managers

Unfortunately parking mandates and other building regulations are often set directly by politicians. There was some interesting insight into the political input to Seattle’s proposed planning updates last year - https://www.theurbanist.org/2024/04/16/planners-proposed-big...

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#330

Post by lazyasciiart »

standardUser wrote: post #300
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…

College living in not comparable to SROs, in part because college kids are privileged, in part because college towns abide, and primarily because they are transient. A tenement full of grown men in SROs is an entirely different beast.

Yes, it is much more directly effective in housing people who would otherwise be homeless.
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