Why can’t we have more boarding houses? 14 people can each get a 220-square-foot room and then share 3 bathrooms, a large kitchen, and a living room. It bothers me that this kind of dwelling is illegal.
it's not illegal, if it were dorms would be illegal, it's just not many want to go this route and it's probably not profitable for developers, there's a number of intentional communities that do this sort of thing or everyone has tiny homes without a kitchen and they maybe share one big kitchen in an out building or something....
Incidentally, 150 years ago rooming houses were something like 30% of the rental market. But because they tend to house low-income people, zoning laws have been put in place to make them illegal. I guess people think it would be better for the poor to live under a bridge somewhere else than in a rooming house in their neighborhood.
By the way, a rooming house is different from someone just renting out a couple extra bedrooms in their house -- those are owner-occupied homes and are therefore not considered rooming houses.
