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There's even lower hanging fruit than that. I have a 6 bedroom house, but local regulations state that I am not allowed to live with more than 2 people unrelate

There's even lower hanging fruit than that. I have a 6 bedroom house, but local regulations state that I am not allowed to live with more than 2 people unrelated to me. Plenty of parking, tons of people looking for housing, but legally I am forced to keep 3 bedrooms empty.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
gnopgnip 5y ago
Many of these laws are a family plus two unrelated people. There have been broad changes in how a family is defined in this context.
adflux 5y ago
Good point, never thought about that. Here in the Netherlands, it used to be "common" to house other people than your direct family for some time, e.g. during harvest season.
paxys 5y ago
Agreed. Heck I know several people who prefer to keep their condos/houses empty rather than rent them out at market rate because of 100% tenant friendly city and state laws. Someone can move in and refuse to pay rent, refuse to leave, use your house as a drug den, destroy your property and lots more, and you can do nothing about it. At that point the city is just incentivizing homeowners to contribute to the housing crisis.
- Teknoman117 5y ago
  > Someone can move in and refuse to pay rent, refuse to leave, use your house as a drug den, destroy your property and lots more, and you can do nothing about it. This is one of those things that really just confuses me. It's like no one could agree on happy medium between "landlord can eject you whenever they want for whatever reason" and "no one can make you leave, ever, for any reason". And to whoever downvoted you, there are some places in the bay that are demanding 6 months rent up front in order to move in because they can't do much if you stop paying rent.
  - TimPC 5y ago
    These laws are hard to get actually correct. The major problem is court delays. There is a very high bar for kicking someone out before they get their day in court about whether it is fair to do so. This seems eminently reasonable but there is also a severe shortage of judicial services that result in court dates over a year out to resolve such issues. In that year of time, it's quite possible for a tenant with maybe $5K to their name to accumulate $500K in damages and debts. For many such tenants it is a cost they could never repay in their lifetimes which means even if the landlord gets the desired verdict they'll never see the capital they wanted. I agree there are places in the world that are so biased against landlords that they don't even try to get this problem correct but I think for many cases the problem isn't bad laws but rather the delays to being able to execute reasonable actions to limit damages. I'm not sure what a good solution is for many cases because I think it would take fairly extreme evidence to kick someone out without their day in court if they decided to fight it. I do agree with landlords it should be easier to kick someone out if they stop paying rent and that fact is adequately documented. I mean stop paying rent in the sense of an appropriate pattern not a single late payment.
    - bombcar 5y ago
      From what I've heard is a common thing for landlords to do is a "pay to vacate" where they show up at the door with $1k in cash if the tenant will just leave.
      - dntrkv 5y ago
        > show up at the door with $1k in cash In SF, there have been six-figure buyouts to remove tenants from rent-controlled properties.
        mikeyouse 5y ago
        Sure, because those tenants signed contracts with perpetual leases (as also understood by the landlords who provided the contracts). Evicting in SF means you can't turn your property into a Condo (only a TIC) - so to maintain the value of the condo conversion option, landlords pay tenants to leave. The buyouts are proportional to the rent difference so it's not surprising that someone who's rent is increasing from say $1k/month to $4k/month would need a large sum of money (that's taxable!) to be convinced to leave. Call the buyout $100k -- best case scenario, it's taxed as capital gains so you'd take home $85k. At $3k/month increase in rent, you'd be looking at a little over two years before you're below water. Housing in California is broken in 1,000 different ways but the tenant buyouts seem to be pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.
- mentalpiracy 5y ago
  Why should we use this as an example? You’re talking about people who are throwing away money by leaving assets idle - and implying that they obviously don’t know how to operate in this market.
  - paxys 5y ago
    > You’re talking about people who are throwing away money by leaving assets idle No, they are watching their assets shoot up in value every day without any operational burden. > and implying that they obviously don’t know how to operate in this market When did I say that? In fact what they are doing the most logical thing.
    - jjav 5y ago
      > > You’re talking about people who are throwing away money by leaving assets idle > No, they are watching their assets shoot up in value every day without any operational burden. It's not either/or. They might be watching the property value go up every year, but they are simultaneously throwing money away by leaving it empty. They could have been profiting from both sources but chose to profit only from one. (Often rationally, since a bad tenant can destroy the property and never pay, but still.)
  - cellis 5y ago
    As a potential landlord who is doing this very thing right now, it isn't really "throwing money away", because of asset appreciation. If you get stuck with a bad tenant it's way more hassle than if you had just let it sit and AirBnB'd it every once in a while. Especially for properties where the rent is less than the appreciation per month.
    - vincentmarle 5y ago
      You are neglecting opportunity costs: if you could earn double (appreciation + rent) instead of just appreciation, you're leaving money on the table.
      - 5y ago
- ForHackernews 5y ago
  The obvious solution is to just expropriate them and turn them into public housing. It's working in Berlin.
  - schrijver 5y ago
    Or tolerate squatting, which used to be the case in the Netherlands.
- scruple 5y ago
  A home 2 doors down from myself had been empty since the neighborhood was built in 2016 until 2020 when rental prices in our neighborhood blew through the ceiling. I always assumed their financial calculus was such that the appreciation alone, on an empty home, was a better prospect to them than what they could've gotten in rent in those earlier years (weighted against upkeep/maintenance vs. leaving the place empty and coming by every 6 weeks to inspect the place -- which is what they were doing). Now that these homes are renting out for nearly 2x the mortgage price they have a tenant. I'm unsurprised to hear that it's commonplace. It's just... upsetting.
  - setr 5y ago
    For someone renting out a single home, I think it’s the risk of a bad tenant much more than the basic calculations — as GP said, there’s really nothing you can do about it. I personally know a case of a misbehaving tenant not paying rent beyond the first two months pre-payment, submitted a fraudulent check for the first actual payment, had neighbor complaints endlessly with repeat HoA fines (fines given to owner, of course) — and 1.5 years to evict.. It also turned out he had started subletting it out for the same rent that he himself wasn’t paying. That kind of thing can get you into a deep hole pretty quickly, and there’s not even much filtering you can do ahead of time, even with third party verification
    - scruple 5y ago
      Like another commenter mentioned, you'd real think that in the interest of addressing the housing shortage that there be some better solutions for these problems on both ends of the spectrum.
  - lelanthran 5y ago
    > I'm unsurprised to hear that it's commonplace. It's just... upsetting. Law of unintended consequences. Make it almost so expensive to evict that an eviction can wipe away years of profit, and landlords will rather have the place empty while it appreciates.
- gnicholas 5y ago
  A friend bought a duplex in Berkeley. Due to the tenant-friendly laws there, she will only rent to international university affiliates whose roles/visas will require them to leave after a year or two. Interestingly, she is very YIMBY and liberal, and even has a PhD in urban planning. But no one wants a forever tenant!
  - MiroF 5y ago
    You're not a liberal if you're casually violating fair housing law :) Everyone wants to call themselves a liberal or progressive nowadays, it's bizarre. These things are about actions, not self-assigned labels.
    - rdtwo 5y ago
      Liberals can break laws just like conservatives can. Free country
      - Dylan16807 5y ago
        Sure they can! But ongoing intent to break certain categories of law will also mean that certain political labels are incorrect.
        rdtwo 5y ago
        Nah labels are based on how you want others to behave not how you behave yourself
    - Cederfjard 5y ago
      Just curious as an outsider, what laws are she breaking by doing that?
      - deleted 5y ago
        [deleted]
      - MiroF 5y ago
- flir 5y ago
  Sounds like those places need a land value tax, too.
- tristor 5y ago
  > prefer to keep their condos/houses empty rather than rent them out at market rate because of 100% tenant friendly city and state laws. Someone can move in and refuse to pay rent, refuse to leave, use your house as a drug den, destroy your property and lots more, and you can do nothing about it. I'm in this situation right now. The only way I'll rent it out is if I personally know the tenant and their personal character. Otherwise, I'd rather leave the property empty. I didn't buy it as a rental, rather I paid off my primary residence and then had to move, so just kept it. I don't want to go outside the law, but that would be my only option as a landlord if someone tried to abuse me/my property, since the law offers me no meaningful protection. To avoid that liability, I simply don't rent.
  - schrijver 5y ago
    This is so alien to me. Why don’t you sell the place? Staying the owner of this place makes it so that you can’t spend your money tied up in this house, and this house can’t provide its roof to someone. Seems like both of you loose.
    - jjav 5y ago
      > This is so alien to me. Why don’t you sell the place? Selling might trigger a very large tax liability, depending on original cost vs. current price. When that is the case, it's better to keep it in case you might want to return to the area in the future.
      - HWR_14 5y ago
        The first $500k of appreciation is tax free. The rest is long term capital gains. If you want to minimize taxes, you should sell your house every time it appreciates in value by 500k and buy a new one. As long as you don't do so more than once every 2 or 3 years, which is how long it takes to reset the tax free increase.
    - iso1631 5y ago
      Presumably value appreciating more than selling it and investing in other assets that are as safe.
- mistrial9 5y ago
  > you can do nothing about it lies, damn lies, and landlord lies..
- schrijver 5y ago
  The parent you’re replying too has no problem with tenant-friendly laws: rather, these occupation limits are both tenant and owner unfriendly, because you can’t live together in non-family arrangements that you might prefer (as a tenant or as owner). I sympathize. With regards to your example, if you’re rich enough to be able to afford leaving a property you own empty, then I have little sympathy. It seems like their cities and states should introduce a sizeable vacancy tax. Or, as they did in Amsterdam in the 1980ies, tolerate squatting. And yes, maybe see if there’s something that can be done about backlogs in eviction court, but the baseline for me is that it should never be feasible for an owner to leave their house empty.
aksss 5y ago
I wonder if you could find exemptions for refugees. Seem to be a lot of those lately. Not ignoring the sad irony of this, but if you want to put that space to use there may some allowable loopholes.
- pge 5y ago
  I am working through this right now with a house that I recently bought. No way around the restrictions, but we did find one loophole. Two related families (eg two families in which the respective fathers are brothers) can live in the same house, at least under the way the restrictions are written where I live. We are able to house two refugee families in the same house legally as a result, but it's a shame that it is not easier to do, and possible with two unrelated families.
KptMarchewa 5y ago
>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?
- londons_explore 5y ago
  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.
  - KptMarchewa 5y ago
    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.
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      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.
      - HWR_14 5y ago
        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.
- dave5104 5y ago
  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 https://bouldercolorado.gov/occupancy-limits
dopamean 5y ago
Is this in the US? I've never heard of this before and am curious to learn more. It sounds like something that is nearly unenforceable.
- zo1 5y ago
  It doesn't have to be enforceable. But as soon as you do this, any potential hiccup like having to evict tenants or go to court for anything minor, and the state/police find out about your little "unenforceable" violation.
  - notch656a 5y ago
    People on AirBnB generally are not 'tenants' and kicking them out is as easy as trespassing them, optionally with a Sheriff if they refuse to leave. You're reading way to much into Sheriff Bill worrying about what's happening. The AirBnB side is typically a civil matter.
LegitShady 5y ago
Thats because your neighbours probably won’t like you opening a rooming house in their residential neighborhood without some kind of consultation with them on the zoning and appropriateness of such a thing. I’ve seen houses where every room (including the living room) is occupied by a foreign student and the ‘landlord’ is running a slum rooming house. Thats what you’re not supposed to be able to do without getting approval. It impacts you negatively to avoid impacting your neighbours without consulting with them.
tonyarkles 5y ago
As a curiosity, since you're probably better versed in this than I am, does the situation change if you yourself didn't live there? I'm pretty sure around here (300kperson city in Canada), the rules are different if one of the roommates is the owner or if it's a purely rental property... which seemed even more confusing!
devoutsalsa 5y ago
House Hacking, Extreme Edition: legally adopting your roommates.
delusional 5y ago
Why do you have a 6 bedroom house if you only need 3 bedrooms? It sounds like you're annoyed that you can't turn a profit on your 3 bedrooms and the housing problem is really a tangential concern.
danans 5y ago
What a terrible policy. Do you mind sharing where this is?
knodi123 5y ago
> legally I am forced to keep 3 bedrooms empty. Not at all! Look into what it would take to lease them out to a self-storage facility. :-P
MattSayar 5y ago
But what does enforcement look like?
Peanuts99 5y ago
As someone not from America, this seems insane to me. Who's stopping you from renting not living with people you aren't related to and why the hell are they allowed to tell you what to do with your own bedrooms? Equally, is 6 bedrooms normal? Sounds like a lot of cleaning.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

gnopgnip 5y ago

Many of these laws are a family plus two unrelated people. There have been broad changes in how a family is defined in this context.

adflux 5y ago

Good point, never thought about that. Here in the Netherlands, it used to be "common" to house other people than your direct family for some time, e.g. during harvest season.

paxys 5y ago

Agreed. Heck I know several people who prefer to keep their condos/houses empty rather than rent them out at market rate because of 100% tenant friendly city and state laws. Someone can move in and refuse to pay rent, refuse to leave, use your house as a drug den, destroy your property and lots more, and you can do nothing about it. At that point the city is just incentivizing homeowners to contribute to the housing crisis.

Teknoman117 5y ago
> Someone can move in and refuse to pay rent, refuse to leave, use your house as a drug den, destroy your property and lots more, and you can do nothing about it. This is one of those things that really just confuses me. It's like no one could agree on happy medium between "landlord can eject you whenever they want for whatever reason" and "no one can make you leave, ever, for any reason". And to whoever downvoted you, there are some places in the bay that are demanding 6 months rent up front in order to move in because they can't do much if you stop paying rent.
- TimPC 5y ago
  These laws are hard to get actually correct. The major problem is court delays. There is a very high bar for kicking someone out before they get their day in court about whether it is fair to do so. This seems eminently reasonable but there is also a severe shortage of judicial services that result in court dates over a year out to resolve such issues. In that year of time, it's quite possible for a tenant with maybe $5K to their name to accumulate $500K in damages and debts. For many such tenants it is a cost they could never repay in their lifetimes which means even if the landlord gets the desired verdict they'll never see the capital they wanted. I agree there are places in the world that are so biased against landlords that they don't even try to get this problem correct but I think for many cases the problem isn't bad laws but rather the delays to being able to execute reasonable actions to limit damages. I'm not sure what a good solution is for many cases because I think it would take fairly extreme evidence to kick someone out without their day in court if they decided to fight it. I do agree with landlords it should be easier to kick someone out if they stop paying rent and that fact is adequately documented. I mean stop paying rent in the sense of an appropriate pattern not a single late payment.
  - bombcar 5y ago
    From what I've heard is a common thing for landlords to do is a "pay to vacate" where they show up at the door with $1k in cash if the tenant will just leave.
    - dntrkv 5y ago
      > show up at the door with $1k in cash In SF, there have been six-figure buyouts to remove tenants from rent-controlled properties.
      - mikeyouse 5y ago
        Sure, because those tenants signed contracts with perpetual leases (as also understood by the landlords who provided the contracts). Evicting in SF means you can't turn your property into a Condo (only a TIC) - so to maintain the value of the condo conversion option, landlords pay tenants to leave. The buyouts are proportional to the rent difference so it's not surprising that someone who's rent is increasing from say $1k/month to $4k/month would need a large sum of money (that's taxable!) to be convinced to leave. Call the buyout $100k -- best case scenario, it's taxed as capital gains so you'd take home $85k. At $3k/month increase in rent, you'd be looking at a little over two years before you're below water. Housing in California is broken in 1,000 different ways but the tenant buyouts seem to be pretty minor in the grand scheme of things.
mentalpiracy 5y ago
Why should we use this as an example? You’re talking about people who are throwing away money by leaving assets idle - and implying that they obviously don’t know how to operate in this market.
- paxys 5y ago
  > You’re talking about people who are throwing away money by leaving assets idle No, they are watching their assets shoot up in value every day without any operational burden. > and implying that they obviously don’t know how to operate in this market When did I say that? In fact what they are doing the most logical thing.
  - jjav 5y ago
    > > You’re talking about people who are throwing away money by leaving assets idle > No, they are watching their assets shoot up in value every day without any operational burden. It's not either/or. They might be watching the property value go up every year, but they are simultaneously throwing money away by leaving it empty. They could have been profiting from both sources but chose to profit only from one. (Often rationally, since a bad tenant can destroy the property and never pay, but still.)
- cellis 5y ago
  As a potential landlord who is doing this very thing right now, it isn't really "throwing money away", because of asset appreciation. If you get stuck with a bad tenant it's way more hassle than if you had just let it sit and AirBnB'd it every once in a while. Especially for properties where the rent is less than the appreciation per month.
  - vincentmarle 5y ago
    You are neglecting opportunity costs: if you could earn double (appreciation + rent) instead of just appreciation, you're leaving money on the table.
    - 5y ago
ForHackernews 5y ago
The obvious solution is to just expropriate them and turn them into public housing. It's working in Berlin.
- schrijver 5y ago
  Or tolerate squatting, which used to be the case in the Netherlands.
scruple 5y ago
A home 2 doors down from myself had been empty since the neighborhood was built in 2016 until 2020 when rental prices in our neighborhood blew through the ceiling. I always assumed their financial calculus was such that the appreciation alone, on an empty home, was a better prospect to them than what they could've gotten in rent in those earlier years (weighted against upkeep/maintenance vs. leaving the place empty and coming by every 6 weeks to inspect the place -- which is what they were doing). Now that these homes are renting out for nearly 2x the mortgage price they have a tenant. I'm unsurprised to hear that it's commonplace. It's just... upsetting.
- setr 5y ago
  For someone renting out a single home, I think it’s the risk of a bad tenant much more than the basic calculations — as GP said, there’s really nothing you can do about it. I personally know a case of a misbehaving tenant not paying rent beyond the first two months pre-payment, submitted a fraudulent check for the first actual payment, had neighbor complaints endlessly with repeat HoA fines (fines given to owner, of course) — and 1.5 years to evict.. It also turned out he had started subletting it out for the same rent that he himself wasn’t paying. That kind of thing can get you into a deep hole pretty quickly, and there’s not even much filtering you can do ahead of time, even with third party verification
  - scruple 5y ago
    Like another commenter mentioned, you'd real think that in the interest of addressing the housing shortage that there be some better solutions for these problems on both ends of the spectrum.
- lelanthran 5y ago
  > I'm unsurprised to hear that it's commonplace. It's just... upsetting. Law of unintended consequences. Make it almost so expensive to evict that an eviction can wipe away years of profit, and landlords will rather have the place empty while it appreciates.
gnicholas 5y ago
A friend bought a duplex in Berkeley. Due to the tenant-friendly laws there, she will only rent to international university affiliates whose roles/visas will require them to leave after a year or two. Interestingly, she is very YIMBY and liberal, and even has a PhD in urban planning. But no one wants a forever tenant!
- MiroF 5y ago
  You're not a liberal if you're casually violating fair housing law :) Everyone wants to call themselves a liberal or progressive nowadays, it's bizarre. These things are about actions, not self-assigned labels.
  - rdtwo 5y ago
    Liberals can break laws just like conservatives can. Free country
    - Dylan16807 5y ago
      Sure they can! But ongoing intent to break certain categories of law will also mean that certain political labels are incorrect.
      - rdtwo 5y ago
        Nah labels are based on how you want others to behave not how you behave yourself
  - Cederfjard 5y ago
    Just curious as an outsider, what laws are she breaking by doing that?
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    - MiroF 5y ago
flir 5y ago
Sounds like those places need a land value tax, too.
tristor 5y ago
> prefer to keep their condos/houses empty rather than rent them out at market rate because of 100% tenant friendly city and state laws. Someone can move in and refuse to pay rent, refuse to leave, use your house as a drug den, destroy your property and lots more, and you can do nothing about it. I'm in this situation right now. The only way I'll rent it out is if I personally know the tenant and their personal character. Otherwise, I'd rather leave the property empty. I didn't buy it as a rental, rather I paid off my primary residence and then had to move, so just kept it. I don't want to go outside the law, but that would be my only option as a landlord if someone tried to abuse me/my property, since the law offers me no meaningful protection. To avoid that liability, I simply don't rent.
- schrijver 5y ago
  This is so alien to me. Why don’t you sell the place? Staying the owner of this place makes it so that you can’t spend your money tied up in this house, and this house can’t provide its roof to someone. Seems like both of you loose.
  - jjav 5y ago
    > This is so alien to me. Why don’t you sell the place? Selling might trigger a very large tax liability, depending on original cost vs. current price. When that is the case, it's better to keep it in case you might want to return to the area in the future.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      The first $500k of appreciation is tax free. The rest is long term capital gains. If you want to minimize taxes, you should sell your house every time it appreciates in value by 500k and buy a new one. As long as you don't do so more than once every 2 or 3 years, which is how long it takes to reset the tax free increase.
  - iso1631 5y ago
    Presumably value appreciating more than selling it and investing in other assets that are as safe.
mistrial9 5y ago
> you can do nothing about it lies, damn lies, and landlord lies..
schrijver 5y ago
The parent you’re replying too has no problem with tenant-friendly laws: rather, these occupation limits are both tenant and owner unfriendly, because you can’t live together in non-family arrangements that you might prefer (as a tenant or as owner). I sympathize. With regards to your example, if you’re rich enough to be able to afford leaving a property you own empty, then I have little sympathy. It seems like their cities and states should introduce a sizeable vacancy tax. Or, as they did in Amsterdam in the 1980ies, tolerate squatting. And yes, maybe see if there’s something that can be done about backlogs in eviction court, but the baseline for me is that it should never be feasible for an owner to leave their house empty.

aksss 5y ago

I wonder if you could find exemptions for refugees. Seem to be a lot of those lately. Not ignoring the sad irony of this, but if you want to put that space to use there may some allowable loopholes.

pge 5y ago
I am working through this right now with a house that I recently bought. No way around the restrictions, but we did find one loophole. Two related families (eg two families in which the respective fathers are brothers) can live in the same house, at least under the way the restrictions are written where I live. We are able to house two refugee families in the same house legally as a result, but it's a shame that it is not easier to do, and possible with two unrelated families.

KptMarchewa 5y ago

>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?

londons_explore 5y ago
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.
- KptMarchewa 5y ago
  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.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    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.
    - HWR_14 5y ago
      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.
dave5104 5y ago
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 https://bouldercolorado.gov/occupancy-limits

dopamean 5y ago

Is this in the US? I've never heard of this before and am curious to learn more. It sounds like something that is nearly unenforceable.

zo1 5y ago
It doesn't have to be enforceable. But as soon as you do this, any potential hiccup like having to evict tenants or go to court for anything minor, and the state/police find out about your little "unenforceable" violation.
- notch656a 5y ago
  People on AirBnB generally are not 'tenants' and kicking them out is as easy as trespassing them, optionally with a Sheriff if they refuse to leave. You're reading way to much into Sheriff Bill worrying about what's happening. The AirBnB side is typically a civil matter.

LegitShady 5y ago

Thats because your neighbours probably won’t like you opening a rooming house in their residential neighborhood without some kind of consultation with them on the zoning and appropriateness of such a thing. I’ve seen houses where every room (including the living room) is occupied by a foreign student and the ‘landlord’ is running a slum rooming house. Thats what you’re not supposed to be able to do without getting approval. It impacts you negatively to avoid impacting your neighbours without consulting with them.

tonyarkles 5y ago

As a curiosity, since you're probably better versed in this than I am, does the situation change if you yourself didn't live there? I'm pretty sure around here (300kperson city in Canada), the rules are different if one of the roommates is the owner or if it's a purely rental property... which seemed even more confusing!

devoutsalsa 5y ago

House Hacking, Extreme Edition: legally adopting your roommates.

delusional 5y ago

Why do you have a 6 bedroom house if you only need 3 bedrooms? It sounds like you're annoyed that you can't turn a profit on your 3 bedrooms and the housing problem is really a tangential concern.

danans 5y ago

What a terrible policy. Do you mind sharing where this is?

knodi123 5y ago

> legally I am forced to keep 3 bedrooms empty. Not at all! Look into what it would take to lease them out to a self-storage facility. :-P

MattSayar 5y ago

But what does enforcement look like?

Peanuts99 5y ago

As someone not from America, this seems insane to me. Who's stopping you from renting not living with people you aren't related to and why the hell are they allowed to tell you what to do with your own bedrooms? Equally, is 6 bedrooms normal? Sounds like a lot of cleaning.