5 ms·

If you own the place, why does your city or your neighbor have to have a say in how you manage your property? This is what I don't get. It's your place, you pai

If you own the place, why does your city or your neighbor have to have a say in how you manage your property? This is what I don't get. It's your place, you paid for it, it's yours. If they don't like what you are doing, then they should move. This anti-house sharing nonsense is just a ploy by the hotel cartels. If you don't own the place, and the owner is okay with you subletting, again what's the problem? This is one of the few things I don't ever get. Regulation on things that are not an issue in the first place.

Mikeb85 10y ago
Why don't I just buy the house next to yours and start a 100 seat restaurant? Maybe have a poolside bar in the backyard? Anyhow, zoning exists for a reason. Hotels are a business. You can't run any business out of your home. If you do allow any home to become a hotel, you're opening a huge can of worms...
- davidw 10y ago
  > Anyhow, zoning exists for a reason Yeah, to keep out black people, poor people and other undesirables who cannot afford single family detached homes: http://reason.com/archives/2014/04/02/zonings-racist-roots-still-bear-fruit http://reason.com/archives/2014/04/02/zonings-racist-roots-s... Also, to ensure that you must have a car to do anything at all. God forbid anyone build something like a corner store within walking distance. Other reasons here: http://www.nimbyngo.com/ http://www.nimbyngo.com/
  - sdoering 10y ago
    At least in Germany zoning laws are there to prevent businesses to intrude into residential neighborhoods. That means, I get to live in an area that is not "polluted" by noisy trucks driving up and down the street to deliver or collect goods - and so on. It also means, I am restricted in what I do with my own property in such, that I cannot build a factory inside my home/on my ground for the same reasons. Imho this is quite a reasonable policy. Some other zoning laws in German communities might restrict me from planting some trees while forcing me to plant a hedge from a small list of pre defined plant varieties - just to make sure the neighborhood looks homogenous. These laws do not make the slightest sense imho. Esp. as the allowed plant varieties oftentimes are not local but some stuff that is easy in handling and not that great for nature (no possibilities for birds to nest and such stuff).
    - davidw 10y ago
      I can understand the sentiment, but I think we've gone a bit too far with it in the US. In Italy, where I lived, there were certainly residential areas, but they were very close to businesses - from our house we could walk 5/10 minutes and be at a coffee shop, supermarket, our kids schools, a tram stop, a bakery, and a few other things. In the US, you have massive residential-only neighborhoods like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@44.1036878,-121.3081349,1586a,20y,106.49h,44.73t/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@44.1036878,-121.3081349,1586a,2... It's a car or nothing. Philosophically, you can say they just designed it wrong, but I think you can also make an argument that sometimes it's best to evolve complex things, via markets, rather than attempt a big up front design and then rigidly enforce that.
  - Mikeb85 10y ago
    Please, plenty of high density cities mix commercial and residential - still doesn't mean you can run a hotel or a restaurant in your flat. Hell, even in suburbia where I (begrudgingly) live right now, there's a grocery store, convenience store, 5 restaurants and 2 bars within a 10 minute walk (and at least 3 liquor stores).
  - seanmcdirmid 10y ago
    Isn't the illegal racial zoning of the past quite different from commercial/residential/tourist zoning of today? Or are they the same because they both contain the word "zoning" in them?
  - moptar 10y ago
    A lot of disagreement on this but it's basically true. Homeowners want to protect their investment and their comfortable lifestyle so they make sure local government restricts others from diluting what they have. If more houses could be built on the same sized sections, then poorer people would move in because they'd be cheaper. Poor people tend to be more of a disturbance to their neighbors so that would make the incumbents lose what they paid for when they bought their high priced properties in peaceful suburbia. Same goes for hotels which attract transient people that the existing property owners want to keep away. This happens on many scales. We don't want poor strangers living in our bedroom, on our lawn, in our suburb or in our country. So we have trespass laws, zoning and immigration restrictions to protect us from them.
  - gambiting 10y ago
    Please come over to Poland which has almost no zoning laws, and every other house has some sort of business in it - car garages, hair dressers, dentists - everyone runs their business out of their house. Your neighbour wants to open a sawmill in his garage? He sure can! And yes, people do have corner shops in their houses - amazing! Except that they get deliveries at 5am every day, so a 14 tonne truck is destroying your street and waking you up every morning - isn't it great? Maybe in US it was done to keep black people out. But I seriously doubt it, not everything has to have a racial undertone to it.
    - davidw 10y ago
      There's a limit somewhere, but in the US we've gone well beyond it. The town I live in specifies the minimum number of spots driveways must have (2), and that kind of thing is not abnormal. What would happen to all those people if they were forced to close their home businesses and rent an office somewhere else? What would happen to traffic?
- CalRobert 10y ago
  That sounds fantastic. I'd take it over several square miles of asphalt hellscape, which is your typical American residential neighborhood.
nowarninglabel 10y ago
So, note I don't take an opinion on either side, but one example of why it is a problem comes from some of my neighbors. They rented out their place on AirBnB. The people who rented it held a large party. Another neighbor went over to knock on their door and ask them to turn down the music. The renter took out a shovel and knocked the neighbor into a coma. Then the renter fled. This problem would be unlikely to occur from the owner of the house taking these actions, given the liability and inability to flee as easily.
Stasis5001 10y ago
It's a matter of zoning. If an area is designated as residential, then the city can stop you from building a hotel there. From there, it's at least a little reasonable to consider that a house used as a rental unit with new, paying guests every night being a hotel by all but name.
supster 10y ago
> why does your city or your neighbor have to have a say in how you manage your property zoning laws
rtpg 10y ago
Because there's usually agreements between neighbors about expected behaviour in the area. Things like "don't start yelling at 3 AM in the backyard", "Don't throw too many parties late at night", etc. Of course what you do inside your house is your own thing, but when it comes to extra traffic/noise/trash, having the house be a bunch of short term people makes it much harder for social pressure to work.
sanderjd 10y ago
Because we're living in a society, which means we trade some of our individual determination for things that society as a whole deems worthwhile. People are free to agree or disagree with individual policies, and make use of various avenues for making their opinions known, but it's pretty silly to feign ignorance of why things like property ownership are not completely unregulated. The concept of property "ownership" only exists at all because of the strong law-abiding society we are fortunate enough to live in.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago
  > The concept of property "ownership" only exists at all because of the strong law-abiding society we are fortunate enough to live in. That's the core point. There's no meaning to property ownership without a society that agrees on such idea and enforces it. It's not, and it never was, "I can do whatever because it's mine". I don't know where this idea of absolute ownership right comes from. You don't have and never had that right, unless you can enforce it with deadly force on everyone who disagrees. There's no heavenly light that proclaims a person can have absolute ownership over stuff and others need to respect that. Rights only exist in so much as they are recognized and enforced. Society is in a big part a mutual agreement to recognize a set of rights and laws, and a guarantee that others will enforce them if any member of society decides to forget about the rules. It outsources a lot of things you'd otherwise have to kill (or rather, get killed) over.
kristopolous 10y ago
This same wording could be used against that argument: If you (partially) own the (community), why does your neighbor have to have (more of) a say in how the community is managed? It's your (community), you paid to live there, it's yours. If they don't like what you are doing, then they should move. See, we expand this beyond the individual to a neighborhood wherein rules and boundaries can be set because this collective group that exists beyond the individual can be affected. People should be held responsible for their actions, right? And you don't trust the individual doing the action's opinion on who they think is actually being affected, right? This follows the same logic as having boisterous parties with loud music all night or shooting a pornographic movie on my front porch. Although, to be fair, in support of your argument, this was also the same logic which used to forbid black people from moving next door.
vidarh 10y ago
How would it affect your quality of life if I started processing hazardous waste out in the open on the property next to you? That is why your neighbour has a say: Because what you do on your property affects those around you. Yes, I chose an extreme example, on purpose to illustrate the point: there is some level above which almost all of us will agree that what you do on your property is a public concern. It is then down to a matter of degrees: At which point does what your neighbour do cause sufficient nuisance to give you a say in whether or not they should be allowed to continue doing it. The notion that those who don't like what you do on your property should move is just incredibly selfish - it implies that you put your rights above theirs, because without regulation what you do on your property can very well make it economically infeasible for your neighbours to choose to move even if they wanted to.
- davidw 10y ago
  > Yes, I chose an extreme example, on purpose to illustrate the point: there is some level above which almost all of us will agree that what you do on your property is a public concern. This is the crux of the question. I think it's very arguable that we've swung too far away from letting people do what they want with their property in the US, though.
mountaineer22 10y ago
Because what you do affects your neighbors. Why should I have to move if you decide to no longer use your bathroom, and instead build a make-shift outhouse on your property line by my home's entrance? Or you decide to rent to 4 families in a 1 bedroom/1 bathroom apartment? Also, watch what happens to "your" property when you stop paying property taxes for a number of years. There is also the concept of the "commons", which we share. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons If you were advocating for separate planets, then yes, I would agree.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  But we all know it goes far beyond that. Associations etc limit what color you can paint your front door! This principle gets its ugly tentacles deep. And every little rule tramples on the fundamental rule, Private Ownership. Freedom to do as we please with our persons and our effects. The death of 1000 cuts.
- toolz 10y ago
  What are airbnb hosts doing that affects their neighbors negatively? I'm genuinely curious.
thex10 10y ago
Because neighbors are scared shitless of their property values decreasing, and our society legitimizes this fear.

Mikeb85 10y ago

Why don't I just buy the house next to yours and start a 100 seat restaurant? Maybe have a poolside bar in the backyard? Anyhow, zoning exists for a reason. Hotels are a business. You can't run any business out of your home. If you do allow any home to become a hotel, you're opening a huge can of worms...

davidw 10y ago
> Anyhow, zoning exists for a reason Yeah, to keep out black people, poor people and other undesirables who cannot afford single family detached homes: http://reason.com/archives/2014/04/02/zonings-racist-roots-still-bear-fruit http://reason.com/archives/2014/04/02/zonings-racist-roots-s... Also, to ensure that you must have a car to do anything at all. God forbid anyone build something like a corner store within walking distance. Other reasons here: http://www.nimbyngo.com/ http://www.nimbyngo.com/
- sdoering 10y ago
  At least in Germany zoning laws are there to prevent businesses to intrude into residential neighborhoods. That means, I get to live in an area that is not "polluted" by noisy trucks driving up and down the street to deliver or collect goods - and so on. It also means, I am restricted in what I do with my own property in such, that I cannot build a factory inside my home/on my ground for the same reasons. Imho this is quite a reasonable policy. Some other zoning laws in German communities might restrict me from planting some trees while forcing me to plant a hedge from a small list of pre defined plant varieties - just to make sure the neighborhood looks homogenous. These laws do not make the slightest sense imho. Esp. as the allowed plant varieties oftentimes are not local but some stuff that is easy in handling and not that great for nature (no possibilities for birds to nest and such stuff).
  - davidw 10y ago
    I can understand the sentiment, but I think we've gone a bit too far with it in the US. In Italy, where I lived, there were certainly residential areas, but they were very close to businesses - from our house we could walk 5/10 minutes and be at a coffee shop, supermarket, our kids schools, a tram stop, a bakery, and a few other things. In the US, you have massive residential-only neighborhoods like this: https://www.google.com/maps/@44.1036878,-121.3081349,1586a,20y,106.49h,44.73t/data=!3m1!1e3 https://www.google.com/maps/@44.1036878,-121.3081349,1586a,2... It's a car or nothing. Philosophically, you can say they just designed it wrong, but I think you can also make an argument that sometimes it's best to evolve complex things, via markets, rather than attempt a big up front design and then rigidly enforce that.
- Mikeb85 10y ago
  Please, plenty of high density cities mix commercial and residential - still doesn't mean you can run a hotel or a restaurant in your flat. Hell, even in suburbia where I (begrudgingly) live right now, there's a grocery store, convenience store, 5 restaurants and 2 bars within a 10 minute walk (and at least 3 liquor stores).
- seanmcdirmid 10y ago
  Isn't the illegal racial zoning of the past quite different from commercial/residential/tourist zoning of today? Or are they the same because they both contain the word "zoning" in them?
- moptar 10y ago
  A lot of disagreement on this but it's basically true. Homeowners want to protect their investment and their comfortable lifestyle so they make sure local government restricts others from diluting what they have. If more houses could be built on the same sized sections, then poorer people would move in because they'd be cheaper. Poor people tend to be more of a disturbance to their neighbors so that would make the incumbents lose what they paid for when they bought their high priced properties in peaceful suburbia. Same goes for hotels which attract transient people that the existing property owners want to keep away. This happens on many scales. We don't want poor strangers living in our bedroom, on our lawn, in our suburb or in our country. So we have trespass laws, zoning and immigration restrictions to protect us from them.
- gambiting 10y ago
  Please come over to Poland which has almost no zoning laws, and every other house has some sort of business in it - car garages, hair dressers, dentists - everyone runs their business out of their house. Your neighbour wants to open a sawmill in his garage? He sure can! And yes, people do have corner shops in their houses - amazing! Except that they get deliveries at 5am every day, so a 14 tonne truck is destroying your street and waking you up every morning - isn't it great? Maybe in US it was done to keep black people out. But I seriously doubt it, not everything has to have a racial undertone to it.
  - davidw 10y ago
    There's a limit somewhere, but in the US we've gone well beyond it. The town I live in specifies the minimum number of spots driveways must have (2), and that kind of thing is not abnormal. What would happen to all those people if they were forced to close their home businesses and rent an office somewhere else? What would happen to traffic?
CalRobert 10y ago
That sounds fantastic. I'd take it over several square miles of asphalt hellscape, which is your typical American residential neighborhood.

nowarninglabel 10y ago

So, note I don't take an opinion on either side, but one example of why it is a problem comes from some of my neighbors. They rented out their place on AirBnB. The people who rented it held a large party. Another neighbor went over to knock on their door and ask them to turn down the music. The renter took out a shovel and knocked the neighbor into a coma. Then the renter fled. This problem would be unlikely to occur from the owner of the house taking these actions, given the liability and inability to flee as easily.

Stasis5001 10y ago

It's a matter of zoning. If an area is designated as residential, then the city can stop you from building a hotel there. From there, it's at least a little reasonable to consider that a house used as a rental unit with new, paying guests every night being a hotel by all but name.

supster 10y ago

> why does your city or your neighbor have to have a say in how you manage your property zoning laws

rtpg 10y ago

Because there's usually agreements between neighbors about expected behaviour in the area. Things like "don't start yelling at 3 AM in the backyard", "Don't throw too many parties late at night", etc. Of course what you do inside your house is your own thing, but when it comes to extra traffic/noise/trash, having the house be a bunch of short term people makes it much harder for social pressure to work.

sanderjd 10y ago

Because we're living in a society, which means we trade some of our individual determination for things that society as a whole deems worthwhile. People are free to agree or disagree with individual policies, and make use of various avenues for making their opinions known, but it's pretty silly to feign ignorance of why things like property ownership are not completely unregulated. The concept of property "ownership" only exists at all because of the strong law-abiding society we are fortunate enough to live in.

TeMPOraL 10y ago
> The concept of property "ownership" only exists at all because of the strong law-abiding society we are fortunate enough to live in. That's the core point. There's no meaning to property ownership without a society that agrees on such idea and enforces it. It's not, and it never was, "I can do whatever because it's mine". I don't know where this idea of absolute ownership right comes from. You don't have and never had that right, unless you can enforce it with deadly force on everyone who disagrees. There's no heavenly light that proclaims a person can have absolute ownership over stuff and others need to respect that. Rights only exist in so much as they are recognized and enforced. Society is in a big part a mutual agreement to recognize a set of rights and laws, and a guarantee that others will enforce them if any member of society decides to forget about the rules. It outsources a lot of things you'd otherwise have to kill (or rather, get killed) over.

kristopolous 10y ago

This same wording could be used against that argument: If you (partially) own the (community), why does your neighbor have to have (more of) a say in how the community is managed? It's your (community), you paid to live there, it's yours. If they don't like what you are doing, then they should move. See, we expand this beyond the individual to a neighborhood wherein rules and boundaries can be set because this collective group that exists beyond the individual can be affected. People should be held responsible for their actions, right? And you don't trust the individual doing the action's opinion on who they think is actually being affected, right? This follows the same logic as having boisterous parties with loud music all night or shooting a pornographic movie on my front porch. Although, to be fair, in support of your argument, this was also the same logic which used to forbid black people from moving next door.

vidarh 10y ago

How would it affect your quality of life if I started processing hazardous waste out in the open on the property next to you? That is why your neighbour has a say: Because what you do on your property affects those around you. Yes, I chose an extreme example, on purpose to illustrate the point: there is some level above which almost all of us will agree that what you do on your property is a public concern. It is then down to a matter of degrees: At which point does what your neighbour do cause sufficient nuisance to give you a say in whether or not they should be allowed to continue doing it. The notion that those who don't like what you do on your property should move is just incredibly selfish - it implies that you put your rights above theirs, because without regulation what you do on your property can very well make it economically infeasible for your neighbours to choose to move even if they wanted to.

davidw 10y ago
> Yes, I chose an extreme example, on purpose to illustrate the point: there is some level above which almost all of us will agree that what you do on your property is a public concern. This is the crux of the question. I think it's very arguable that we've swung too far away from letting people do what they want with their property in the US, though.

mountaineer22 10y ago

Because what you do affects your neighbors. Why should I have to move if you decide to no longer use your bathroom, and instead build a make-shift outhouse on your property line by my home's entrance? Or you decide to rent to 4 families in a 1 bedroom/1 bathroom apartment? Also, watch what happens to "your" property when you stop paying property taxes for a number of years. There is also the concept of the "commons", which we share. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commons If you were advocating for separate planets, then yes, I would agree.

JoeAltmaier 10y ago
But we all know it goes far beyond that. Associations etc limit what color you can paint your front door! This principle gets its ugly tentacles deep. And every little rule tramples on the fundamental rule, Private Ownership. Freedom to do as we please with our persons and our effects. The death of 1000 cuts.
toolz 10y ago
What are airbnb hosts doing that affects their neighbors negatively? I'm genuinely curious.

thex10 10y ago

Because neighbors are scared shitless of their property values decreasing, and our society legitimizes this fear.