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Comment by vorpalhex | Hacker News Reader

Some of these were removed from zoning because they weren't fantastic housing. I've been in a bunch of those old boarding houses (several existed near my university) and they were relatively terrible structures with minimal privacy and universal rodent issues.

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But they were cheap. Which is a really great thing when you are broke but still want to go to college.

If the health situation is bad enough, it's just making externalities via health risks for everybody those residents interact with, since they're now vectors for whatever diseases crop up.

Sure. Hypothetically. But banning and entire class of building because someone says they saw rats seems a bit heavy handed.

Yea but in many cases the alternative isn't "good housing" it's living in your car or a shelter. That has other health risks.

lol - how is this any different from living in a house with other people?

For reference - I lived in a very clean SRO in a co-op building. We all kept it looking good.

Unless the health risks are greater than those for homelessness, we shouldn't care.

Absent additional research, my prior is that homeless disease vectors are probably worse, since people in that position have fewer shelter options from the elements and more direct exposure to the public.

Houses don't have to be perfect, they just have to be better than what we have right now. I mean, even in a bad situation... there are rats on the street. It's very difficult for me to imagine someone in that condition looking at a house and saying, "no, the street is cleaner."

Maybe there's an extra perspective I'm missing.

There still needs to be a solution that exists somewhere between "fantastic" and homelessness. Creating more options allows people to choose the best solution for their own situation.

Non-fantastic housing should be banned?

If housing represents potential health issues to it's occupants such as lead paint, fire hazard or drastic rodent issues, we generally require those issues to be corrected before it can be sold.

These are banned for new construction though, and new construction would not have lead paint, and would be inspected for fire hazards.

And most cities require those issues to be corrected by the landlord all the time, and if they aren't you have a case to pay your rent in escrow until the problem is fixed.

Is this abused? Sure. But its a lot better than living in a tent on the street where you are guaranteed rodent issues along with far worse health hazards.

The fact that some houses with shared living space in the past had health hazard is not a good argument for banning all such houses. We don't ban Chinese restaurants because some violated health codes, we don't ban station wagons because potheads disproportionately own them, etc.

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