Hacker News Reader

Comment by KptMarchewa | Hacker News Reader

>local regulations state that I am not allowed to live with more than 2 people unrelated to me

What? Where is that? It sounds insane and extreme overreach. How can somebody regulate with whom consenting adults choose to live?

View on HN

These kinds of regulations are extremely common (I might even go so far as to say they are the norm) in many US suburbs. Such restrictions are intended to prevent single-famiy homes from being used as large group houses. A probably intentional byproduct of the restrictions is also to keep lower-income residents out of desirable neighborhoods (by preventing for example, two families from occupying a large house that neither could afford individually). Minimum lot sizes have a similar consequence. If you're interested in getting into the history of housing restrictions, particularly as they pertain to efforts to limit lower-income (often minority) buyers, Richard Rothstein's The Color of Law is a good book to start with.

Occupancy limits are somewhat common in many cities/towns. But probably only enforced via neighborly complaint, so you don't really hear about them.

Just searching "occupancy limits city" popped up the limits for Boulder, CO: https://bouldercolorado.gov/occupancy-limits

The kind of thing where you're fine unless you're "a problem" for one of your neighbors

A problem as defined by your nosiest, most uptight, or most xenophobic neighbor.

Boulder is... special. A college town where a bunch of rich people decided to live. I've never seen a campus with so many non-students on it, just hanging out like they belong there or zipping through campus on their bikes at 40 mph. But most college towns have similar occupancy laws for neighborhoods where they want to keep students of the wrong sort out of.

If you have a family home, you probably don’t want 8 college students moving into the house next door to you. This was a restriction in my college town. As a student, I didn’t like it, but as a homeowner with a family, I completely understand.

> but as a homeowner with a family, I completely understand.

Why do you understand? Why would you care how many people live next door?

There are potential negatives, sure. Like noise or making a mess outside. But those are already covered by other ordinances, so just enforce those.

As a homeowner with a family, I wouldn't care if there are 50 people stuffed living in the house next door. As long as they're quiet and don't make a mess, it's none of my business.

Most people in the world live and raise families in the conditions where they don't control what happens behind the floor, walls and ceilings. This seems like very strong entitlement.

Most people in the world don't have time to post on HN, or even have the privilege of knowing it exists. You posting a reply here is a very strong entitlement.

But if they did, they would probably come here and reply that they don't want 8 drunken college bros constantly partying next to their house either.

62% of the world has access to internet. HN is also free. There is no vetting process to see that you are wealthy. Somewhere like philippines, even the dirt poor know English, so English isn't necessarily a barrier either.

Personal I live in a SFH, and I have a family. Even though I don't want 8 drunken bros living next to me, they have as much right to exist as my rather loud and surely annoying toddler has.

If you want to control who lives next to you, feel free to buy the neighboring properties.

That wouldn't help much - there would still be neighbors bordering your (now bigger) property, just further away. You need to buy an island instead.

Elsewhere on the thread you pointed out that fair housing laws mean that you don't get to control who lives next to you even if you're renting out those properties. So your only option would be to leave them empty.

Yes, you're correct.

Thankfully, I don't live in ancapistan, so I can vote instead.

Yes, and by voting the way that you do, you are creating a housing crisis.

I'd like for people expressing these political preferences to not be allowed to live in my neighbourhood either, but unlike you, I also recognize that you have as much right to live there as those 8 college students.

Actually if you live in the bay area, you live in an oligarchy. A great part of the renters in the area cannot vote and thus are not represented in this matter.

If foreigners could vote in San Francisco, the majority of which are renters, it would overwhelmingly crush this position.

8 people in an entire house? I don't see the problem.

3 college students could just about as easily be bad neighbors as 8.

Unless the idea is that 3 students would be too poor to live in that neighborhood, in which case a rule like that is even worse than I thought.

Regulations like this are common.

Usually you need to get a special license, have home inspections annually, pay various fees, etc. if you want to do so.

Regulations where you'd specify minimum floor size, or rooms per person make sense for me. It's about straight up saying you can't live with people without state sanctioning the relationship.

In my region, the rules are so incredibly precise. Things like washing up areas must have at least 3 bowels in. Toilets must have flush handles above a certain height and below another height. Radiators must have 6 heat settings... Etc.

The entire aim seems to be to make running such a house not illegal, but very difficult and very expensive.

Precise laws are usually because enumerating every single bad alternative is an issue, so they just tell you what is permissible.

Besides, such specificity is usually drawn from building code best practices, which advocate for standardization. Which means that manufacturers don't bother creating radiators with less than six heat settings.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com