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Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

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Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#81

Post by nradov »

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…

No, that type of arrangement isn't common. Very few people want to rent a bedroom as a business office. And most renters looking to sublease a room do so because they need the cash: paying them less doesn't solve their problem.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#82

Post by mothballed »

AnotherGoodName wrote: post #32

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.

If it's illegal you're in a situation where the landlord likes money and the tenants like not being homeless. In a house where 4th amendment rights are strongest.

In practice I think it's about impossible to enforce. Code enforcement or police would need a warrant to enter, and in most jurisdictions the complaints are public record far enough ahead of time anyone with the slightest bit of foresight would get ahead of it.

In my county sometimes I monitor the local complaints, mostly initially when I was looking at properties because I did not want to live next to a neighbor who likes to be a busybody to the code enforcement. There are a number of properties that just lock their gates whenever a code complaints happen or tell code inspection to kick rocks, by the time they come back with a warrant the situation is faked well enough they can't do anything.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#83

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#84

Post by _fat_santa »

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…

> or is it only illegal to separate leases for each room

Based on personal experiences I would say that it's only individual leases that are illegal. I lived in an SRO back in college without even realizing it was an SRO, rooms were rented out individually and everyone had a separate lease.

The more common version of this is to just do it privately with your friends or other people that you meet. If that's illegal then that will be news to me and like half my friends that currently live with roommates. Doing it privately raises a number of issues around housing discrimination. A landlord cannot stop you from renting a unit/room but there's nothing stopping a roommate from refusing to sign with you if they don't like some characteristic about you, granted in reality you probably wouldn't want to have that person as a roommate anyways.

Granted there might have been laws in place where I used to rent that capped the number of un-related folks living together but in my experience the landlord never brought it up, likely cause they knew enforcement would just never happen.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#85

Post by drdec »

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…

> Immediately post-college, I shared houses with other 20-somethings. It was always a single lease

I did this in grad school BUT they were 100% separate leases (in NY state, not the city though). Not sure if the whole thing was just illegal or what TBH but that was the standard for apartments around the university.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#86

Post by bluGill »

plasticchris wrote: post #12
pavel_lishin wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One moment you allow growing food in your front yard. Next moment, you've got a rat infestation living 5 to a burrow and 8 of them are moving into your house. My pet peeve is yet some other thing that might have downsides.

Everyone has a different peeve, and they all conflict. That’s why population density correlates with regulation.

regulation itself is fine. However the details matter and all too often the regulation is in the wrong place. Writing good regulations is hard. There are always unintended concequences, and most are not even willing to ask what they might be much less debate if we can/should accept them.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#87

Post by mattkrause »

throw0101d wrote: post #71
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…

> The article doesn't make this clear... is sharing a house illegal, or is it only illegal to separate leases for each room? A private bedroom but shared living/cooking space is generally called a rooming/boarding house : * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boarding_house * https://www.toronto.ca/community-people/housing-shelter/mult... There is a separate contract with each tenant (i.e., multiple contracts), and each te…

My impression is that boarding house usually includes some services (cleaning, maintenance, food) from the owner or an employee who lives on the premises.

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#88

Post by nradov »

Traster wrote: 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…

The UK has also had extremely high immigration rates since the 1980s. Whether that's good or bad policy isn't my place to say, but it certainly places extreme pressure on the housing market.

https://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/resources/briefings/lo...

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#89

Post by erfgerfgwertg »

deadbabe wrote: post #55
profsummergig wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

2nd order effects. One moment you allow multiple unrelated people to share a house. Next moment they're living 5 to a room and there are 8 cars parked in their front yard. My peeve is about banning of growing food in your front yard in many states. So much available land going waste growing grass (that is not even fed to cows).

Aesthetics matter. You grow food in the front yards, pretty soon front yards will look like shit, then the homes look like shit, and then your life feels like shit.

I think you hate dogs! Front yards were always a dog toilets, and were always full of shit!

Re: Restrictions on house sharing by unrelated roommates

#90

Post by [deleted] »

itake wrote: post #70
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…

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…

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