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Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

marginalrevolution.com

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Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#371

Post by bpt3 »

TimorousBestie wrote: post #212
bpt3 wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Property owners absolutely are entitled to stop efforts around them to increase housing supply or density, and I say this as someone who also has done similar work to you. 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.

> If a community wants to remain SFH-only, that is their right I’d be interested as to any country that recognizes this as an explicit right.

Explicit? Probably not. But zoning is handled at the local level traditionally.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#372

Post by array_key_first »

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.

When things are seen as undesirable by property owners and we want to understand why, the reason is almost always racism.

See also: HOAs, school districting, road construction, railroad construction, gentrification...

That's just America.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#373

Post by bpt3 »

tptacek wrote: post #370
bpt3 wrote: post #367

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well consider me convinced by your thoughtful response! I guess that overrides centuries of precedent.

There's been centuries of precedent for all sorts of things we'd recoil from now.

A community of SFH residences makes you recoil? You're an extreme minority if so, which makes this no better than your initial statement.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#374

Post by array_key_first »

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.

This is just a tragedy of the commons situation.

Obviously, every single existing property owner wants it to stop right now. Because more housing means more supply, means less money for them. They naturally want to pull the ladder up.

But if you just let them, then there's 0 new homes being built in the US. And then the economy implodes.

We have to toe a line necessarily. If you just allow the tragedy of the commons to happen 100%, then everyone loses. Everyone, including those who benefit.

Its like feudalism. Feudalism seems like a fantastic idea if you're a feudal lord. But... Its actually not. No, you lose too.

Imagine how much richer those feudal lords could have been had they not impeded the progress of Europe for hundreds of years.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#376

Post by tptacek »

ratelimitsteve wrote: post #317
hamburglar wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Barring restrictions is absolutely not “forcing” anyone to do anything. Take away all restrictions on my lot and I am still not forced to develop on it.

A law negating a covenant everyone entered into willingly and freely does kinda alter the deal after its made. I do wholeheartedly agree that removing zoning restrictions doesn't impinge on anyone's liberty though.

Covenants are already heavily regulated and have a pretty icky history in the US.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#377

Post by tptacek »

SoftTalker wrote: post #249
toomuchtodo wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a community wants to remain SFH-only, that is their right This is an opinion, not a right codified in statute, and state laws can be enacted to override local planning ability to prevent upzoning. People who live in their community are entitled to affordable housing (again, my opinion, maybe not yours). Property owners leave, property owners die; the path to success is to simply continue to grind against the nim…

I disagree that people are entitled to affordable housing where they desire to live. There are neighborhoods I could not afford to live in, and I am not entitled to live there. I live where I can afford, and this is the case up and down the market. If I want to live in some community, it's up to me to be able to afford it. That said, if I can afford to buy property and want to build higher-density lower-cost rental h…

The issue isn't that some communities are expensive. The issue is the deliberate engineering of extra housing expense extrinsic to the market itself using the force of law, which is a capability home rule grants exclusionary communities if not policed carefully.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#378

Post by punkbit »

physicsguy wrote: post #204

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…

True, rooms in London for GBP 1.3k, sharing a house with other 3 or 4 strangers!

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#379

Post by ndriscoll »

immibis wrote: post #352
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.

The whole theoretical conception of property rights is that a property right is the right to control what happens on your property, which implies you don't have the right to control what happens on other people's property, because that right belongs to other people. You can't eat your cake and have it. If you want property to be a neighbourhood thing then you should also be required to let the benefits of your own pr…

My neighborhood does in fact ban any kind of front yard fence, and I'd have to check but the only backyard fences I recall seeing are those around pools, which are legally required for child safety reasons.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#380

Post by ndriscoll »

msteffen wrote: post #348
bpt3 wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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/…

The suburbs I've lived in have spent far more on things that scale with population (primarily education) than things that scale with area. You also can't split revenue from downtown commercial areas out from surrounding residential like that. Are businesses "subsidizing" residents? Of course not. That doesn't even make sense as a question.
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