Live data from Hacker News

Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

marginalrevolution.com

341–350 of 418 posts

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#341

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 p…

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

Let me introduce to the concept of rubber laws, a beloved tool of every totalitarian states. I now pass over to GPT:

“Rubber laws are vague catch-all offenses—like old vagrancy or ‘disorderly conduct’ laws on steroids. Because they’re so unclear, authorities can always say you broke one, and they use that flexibility to target inconvenient people. In the U.S., the Supreme Court generally strikes down such vague laws under the void-for-vagueness doctrine—but authoritarian systems keep them precisely because vagueness makes selective enforcement easy.”

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

> Nimbys typically don't care about things that are not part of their locality

Yimbys go even smaller. They don't care about things that are not in their backyard.

You want an apartment building on your land? Cool, none on my land thanks.

If you care about freedom, go with yimbys. The nimbys are the ones putting encumbrances on your property.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#343

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…

Because the property-owning voter block are experts at inventing contrived reasons that they pretend to care for the safety of tenants, by implementing policies that drive up rent and property prices by regulating housing into more scarcity. A good way to do this is to start screaming about fires as soon as you start packing more people in, no matter that it comes at the expense of tenants being less to afford medici…

Mass casualty events get a disproportionate amount of attention. Like the 2016 Oakland Ghost Ship warehouse fire.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I wonder, is this kind of arrangement common No. They want $X per month, they don't want significantly less than $X per month. In Portland, Oregon, a private single-person WeWork office is around $600/month. There are almost no roommate situations that are going to be available for that price.

There are tons of roommate situations in Portland for around that price: https://portland.craigslist.org/search/roo?max_price=700#sea...

Around doing a lot of heavy lifting in that sentence. Many fewer available at $600! I also think you're ignoring that you're going to be contributing to utilities in many of those share situations.

I think the WeWork price now is $599 last I checked.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

> Nimbys typically don't care about things that are not part of their locality Yimbys go even smaller. They don't care about things that are not in their backyard. You want an apartment building on your land? Cool, none on my land thanks. If you care about freedom, go with yimbys. The nimbys are the ones putting encumbrances on your property.

Obviously I don't care about that freedom. Just like I don't care about the freedom to put up ugly billboards on your land. That's why we bought a home in an area that bans those things. It also requires ugly parking lots to be set back behind a tree line, and new residential developments must have bike trails that connect to the wider network. I'm happy for you to live somewhere where you have that freedom though. I know "no rules" appeals to some!

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#346

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Nimbys typically don't care about things that are not part of their locality Yimbys go even smaller. They don't care about things that are not in their backyard. You want an apartment building on your land? Cool, none on my land thanks. If you care about freedom, go with yimbys. The nimbys are the ones putting encumbrances on your property.

Obviously I don't care about that freedom. Just like I don't care about the freedom to put up ugly billboards on your land. That's why we bought a home in an area that bans those things. It also requires ugly parking lots to be set back behind a tree line, and new residential developments must have bike trails that connect to the wider network. I'm happy for you to live somewhere where you have that freedom though. I…

So you don't care about other people's freedoms but yimbys are bad because they're "authoritarian". Got it, totally cool, logical, and consistent.

You could just be honest and say "I want to use government power to suit my needs, even if it costs other people. But no one else can do that". It's pretty selfish but at least we'll know where you stand.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#347
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…

There are all kinds of desires local communities might have that are proscribed by state law. Why should this one be different? If you don't want those laws passed, organize for a candidate who will oppose them. If the state goes the other way on a land-use issue within that state, it's hard for me to see why there's some moral mandate that local NIMBYs be allowed to overrule them.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#348
post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If a community wants to remain SFH-only, that is their right, even if other people who can't afford to live there or would just like to see higher density would really like them to change their mind. The only reasonable way for them to be entitled to prevent density is for them to own the property and not build anything. >If a community wants to remain SFH-only, that is their right, even if other people who can't af…

> The only reasonable way for them to be entitled to prevent density is for them to own the property and not build anything. Of course. > Well then those people should buy the land and keep it low density. Can't afford it? Too bad. Pro-housing folks aren't trying to force people to do something with their property, it's the other way around. Pro-housing people in my area absolutely are trying to force people to do th…

Honestly the biggest reason I became a pro-density advocate is because low-density communities are almost always tax-revenue-negative[1], given that the cost of things like roads, water and sewer infrastructure scale with land area. What NIMBYs often seem to want are the amenities of city living (like a sewer instead of a septic tank in your yard) without the people, and that just doesn’t work.

[1]: https://youtu.be/7Nw6qyyrTeI

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#349

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…

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.

We're discussing zoning codes that were essentially set in the 1940s and 50s, and have only been incrementally adjusted since then. "Democrat/Republican" wasn't a salient distinction for this issue at the time (and much of the Democratic base had the opposite racial salience.)

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#350
post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not illegal. I with 3-4 unrelated people in college from time to time. There was one group that rented a massive house and had 15-20 people living in it.

I've definitely done it in places (in the US) where locally it was not legal. But it's not like the cops ever checked and caused us trouble about it, so it's easy to get away with it if there aren't other legal issues going on.

Even where it's not legal, there's often ways around it - if one student is willing to be the "fall guy" so there's only ever one person on the lease.

The SRO bans went explicitly against a form of "hotel" really which was more individualistic.

An example is seen in Blues Brothers, before Carrie Fischer remodels it; probably to install higher density.

Post reply on HN