Is it just me, or is nearly everyone here a Redditor ?

If those ridiculous rules applied here, I’d have been breaking them continually since 2004.  Do similar rules exist in places like NYC?

There is now!

I’d be curious to know if they ran this past their legal counsel before passing such an ordinance.

And how easy will it be for him to sell, now that the community has boldly announced that it will change the laws on homeowners whenever it feels like it?

edited to add: I see that this particular fellow is being grandfathered in. Which tells me that they already know this is a law that will be selectively enforced. A wink to some homeowners, and a rap on the door for others.

Its not the neighbor, she is just being true to her beliefs and values, which many of us are brought up to hold.

We are programmed to value individualist thinking and devalue groupist. We are programmed to value owning lots of stuff and not to share our stuff.
We are programmed to distrust any type of group which we don’t understand. Watch out, they might be a cult !!!

I suspect that most of the “violators” who are reported just pack up and leave the neighborhood.

I’m not sure its been mentioned how important eliminating these unconstitutional occupancy limits are from a sustainability point of view. There are few things which lower our carbon/ecological footprint more than sharing resources – see the superb book, “The Sharing Solution” by Janelle Orsi, which helps people who do want to share understand the laws – many of which we must change.

To learn a LOT more about this topic generally, see the excellent 7-part series by Alan Durning, founder of the Sightline Institute – a major force in sustainability policy questions in the Pacific Northwest.

http://daily.sightline.org/blog_series/legalizing-inexpensive-housing/

In this series, Alan articulates the many arguments used by jurisdictions who constrain our ability to share our homes. Every single argument is shaky and some are blatantly unconstitutional.

Arguments that Durning addresses are:

1. Crowding – we can’t have density in our cities, now can we?

2. Health – isn’t crowding unhealthy? For disease and other nasty things, like the 99%, spread if we have too many people? Not in MY neighborhood.

3. Neighborhood Character – gotta keep out the riff-raff, now don’t we?

4. Noise – because every group is noiser, isn’t it?

5. Parking – oh my god, if there are more people, there are more cars to take all the parking. Of course, individuals with many cars (especially the 1% or event 10%) are fine, right?

6. Defending vulnerable renters – all shared houses are filled with the poor and oppressed, right?

Changing these limits is important work. Work that I’m committed to as I help to support sustainable shared living. Unfortunately, its just too easy to point at external challenges to sharing, like this new restriction. Most of the challenges around sharing our resources is our cultural programming that sharing is just for people who cannot afford to selfishly hoard their OWN stuff. As long as those of us with abundant resources treat those with fewer as lesser, we have a lot of work to do.

Thanks for all the thoughtful commentary. I really appreciate the chance to see the diverse thinking in these comments.

As for poly families, they might not always be welcomed by the neighbours, but I struggle to see a legal excuse to throw them out.  Not that merely being on the right side of the law will always stop a determined council from giving you trouble, but at least it helps.

I didn’t see anything about servants, actually – that’s a fascinating piece of probably-antiquated rulework. :)

As you’re probably aware, there is often specific zoning for some of the exceptions, such as adult family homes.

Slipping and sliding around the law is only a solution for those willing to make such difficult choices.