> 2/ From a legal discriminatory standpoint, the law doesn't have much protections for people blocking certain raises or genders from renting.

Probably an unpopular opinion, but why is this a problem? When you're living in such close quarters with people, you should have some freedom in choosing who you're living with. The classic example would be a "female only" household that doesn't allow men for real or perceived safety reasons. There are also cultures/religions where cohabitation with those of the opposite sex is taboo.

The race angle is more thorny, but I'd rather lean in the direction of allowing people to choose who they co-habitate with.

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Taek 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

Some freedom? My house is my safe space, it's the place I go when I'm exhausted, when I'm sick, when the rest of the world sucks.

I should have a very high degree of freedom over who is allowed to share that space with me and I shouldn't have to justify not allowing another person (stranger or not) to co-habitate.

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alistairSH 3 days ago | parent [-]

If you want that degree of freedom, a boarding house or shared occupancy is not for you. Pay up for dedicated solo housing.

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zozbot234 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

The amount of people in a boarding house or shared occupancy is low enough that they can easily be all mutually trusted friends or acquaintances to one another. Why should people be forced by law to admit strangers that they might not be fully comfortable with into that kind of tightly-knit arrangement?

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alistairSH 3 days ago | parent [-]

In a true boarding house, the landlord/owner controls who lives there - each room is rented individually. Individual tenants have zero control over who lives in the next room.

But, yes, if you have a typical shared home, where 4 people get together and rent a home at once, yes, you do have that control (and should have it).

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bilbo0s 3 days ago | parent [-]

Actually, if they rent the home, then they still don't have that control. The landlord does. S/he is free to put someone you don't like in the upstairs unit. Or even in the 5th bedroom of the house if it's a room letting type situation.

No matter what. You rent? Yeah, sorry. The landlord makes the rules.

The hypothetical foursome would need to purchase their property. At that point, they would be able to control for who could live there.

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SoftTalker 3 days ago | parent [-]

If a group of tenants and the landlord all sign a "joint and several" lease for a house or multibedroom apartment, nobody can make changes until that lease agreement expires (at least not without the agreement of everyone on the lease).

If it's an SRO lease where they are leasing just a single room and access to common areas then yes the landlord can lease rooms as he can find tenants for them.

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bilbo0s 3 days ago | parent [-]

Material point is that people are misapprehending the direction of control here.

The tenants have zero control.

The only people allowed to reside at the property, are people the landlord has allowed to do so. Those approved residents are not allowed to then decide to allow different people to reside at the property. Even new tenants sought out in an attempt to sublease, will have to be endorsed by the landlord. Not the current tenants.

People on this thread appear to believe tenants get these rights. No. Tenants get a different set of rights. They can decide who they want to live with. But they cannot decide who they want to live with in a given landlord's house. The landlord gets the right to decide who can reside at the property. Full stop. That the tenants believe X is a great guy is irrelevant to the deliberations of the vast majority of landlords. If you insist on living with X, then you'll have to find another property to rent if X is not agreeable to the landlord.

And the law backs up the landlord's dispassionate disposition on approving residents.

Basically you can choose your roommates, and you are then constrained in the places you're allowed to reside. That constraint being only those places willing to accept all of your roommates.

	▲	coryrc 3 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		> Those approved residents are not allowed to then decide to allow different people to reside at the property. Even new tenants sought out in an attempt to sublease, will have to be endorsed by the landlord. Not the current tenants. Depends on what your lease says. The owner can give that option. The landlord cannot legally give you the right to weigh in on a separate lease (SRO) if you'll make decisions using a protected class (i.e. you only want a particular sex in the SRO).
	▲	rexarex 3 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Depends on where and local laws. In San Francisco you can swap roommates out one for one and they landlord can not reasonably stop you. They can request an application if they want but they can’t reject them unless they have a very good reason. Most landlords don’t bother to waste their time.
	▲	alistairSH 3 days ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		Yeah, you're being way more pedantic than I was a few posts up. My point was only that in an SRO/boarding house situation, the tenant has no control, and at any given point in time, the tenant in the next room could change. And in a shared home "joint and several" lease situation, the tenants control who can live in the home at the beginning of the lease (but, yes, they're effectively locked into that arrangement for the duration of the lease). Yes, in both cases, the landlord generally has more power than the tenants. That wasn't my point.
	▲	SoftTalker 3 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		As a practical matter, the landlord will be happy to lease to any group of people who all want to live with each other and who are financially qualified to pay the rent. And if the landlord is being selective on the basis of race or other protected class, that's flat-out illegal.

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3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[deleted]

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ajsnigrutin 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Or just be free to choose your roommates.

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TimorousBestie 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> Probably an unpopular opinion, but why is this a problem?

Because it makes it relatively more difficult for minorities to obtain housing, see sibling comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45348212

> The classic example would be a "female only" household that doesn't allow men for real or perceived safety reasons. There are also cultures/religions where cohabitation with those of the opposite sex is taboo.

The solution to the “female only” or the religiously observant household is for the renters/buyers to self-select and organize themselves. I don’t see why the landlord/seller needs to mandate it.

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dec0dedab0de 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think it's because the only two options being presented are a group of people signing one lease with one landlord. Or a group of people individually signing leases with the landlord.

So basically, the problem is for people that can't find a group on their own. Or for a landlord who wants to act like every room is an apartment, when they're clearly not.

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bsghirt 3 days ago | parent [-]

You can't find a group of people to share a lease with, but you want to live in a residence which excludes people by race or gender? Sounds like a you problem.

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bluGill 3 days ago | parent | next [-]

There are a significant amount of people who care about gender such that it makes sense for landlords to discriminate by shared unit. They should have a mix of male only and female only units. (and if they want mix units). In the US not enough people care about the religion of their roommate to be worthwhile trying to find a fair solution to those who care (if you do care you can ask at your church).

It is important to ensure that when you allow such discrimination it is by unit and that landlords not be allowed to discriminate overall

	▲	itake 3 days ago \| parent [-]
		The problem currently isn't the landlords, but the tenants and subtenants. Maybe if landlords could offer more shared housing, this problem would go away. But tenants frequently look for people of the same gender or race to rent a shared housing. The other (smaller) issue I think is house hackers (landlord occupied properties). The landlord doesn't own multiple units and is effectively "airbnb-ing" out rooms for short term leases.

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TimorousBestie 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, I don’t get it either. The typical roommate situation around here is between two or four in one unit. Maybe it was harder in the days before the internet, but I expect that even then the kinds of tight-knit religious communities that would be opposed to cohabiting outside the faith would have the internal social networking infrastructure to solve this problem.

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itake 3 days ago | parent [-]

How does social media solve the issue? I don't think it matters if the landlord or the tenant is advertising sexist/racist housing opportunities, its still sexist and racist, blocking certain groups from accessing housing.

Landlords can't advertise racist/sexist whole-unit housing. Primary tenants shouldn't be allowed to advertise racist/sexist housing either.

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TimorousBestie 3 days ago | parent [-]

> How does social media solve the issue?

Huh? Who said anything about social media? Churches and other religious organizations are basically designed to promote and foster these kinds of in-group relationships.

> Landlords can't advertise racist/sexist whole-unit housing. Primary tenants shouldn't be allowed to advertise racist/sexist housing either.

It would be very strange to tell someone they can’t decide their own roommate because their selection would be “racist/sexist.” I’m trying to imagine how you would even go about enforcing that at the individual level. Is your plan to assign housing randomly with some centralized lottery system? Extract affadavits from prospective tenants?

Do you believe it’s sexist for a heterosexual woman to use a dating website to look for a husband and not a wife? I don’t see why your logic wouldn’t apply there.

	▲	itake 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		You mentioned the internet. Way more people look for housing on social media than on church websites. If non-profits and governments can operate SROs, hacker houses can operate co-ed inclusive housing, I don't see why people feel they . Are we talking about dating or housing? Society agrees everyone deserves a place to live. Society (mostly) agrees that no one deserves romance.

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itake 3 days ago | parent | prev [-]

> The solution to the “female only”

Landlords/sellers aren't typically the limiting on gender (because they legally cant), but the renters/buyer's "self-select" process is sexist/racist. People post advertisements on FB looking for a new roommate of certain type.

If anything, landlords in my area subrenting / house hacking are better at managing a home with mixed race / gender than people "self-selecting" with racist/sexist ads.