The Shawnee city council in Kansas City, US, have enacted a new law, banning people from living together if they aren’t related (i.e. not married, not siblings or cousins, etc.).
At first, you might think, “Here we go again, religious fanatics attacking couples who aren’t married and people who are LGBTQIA,” but you’d be wrong. This policy applies to everyone, even to cis heterosexual binary people cohabiting who will never have sex (e.g. straight women only, straight men only).
This is about preventing young adults from splitting the cost of rent and saving themselves money, about forcing them to pay exorbitant rents. Bigotry may be part of this, but primarily it’s greedy property owners and corrupt politicians on the take. They want to force single people to live alone and bear the cost of skyrocketing rents while wages stagnate.
There is no “crime”, so why are they legislating this? It won’t increase their revenues. Instead, it will drive young single, people out of the city or leave them homeless. The clowns running that city clearly didn’t think this through when they took kickbacks from property owners. They’ll probably raise rents to “compensate for lost revenue”.
But what else would expect from a state run by corrupt republiclowns that bought into “supply side economics” and drove the state into bankruptcy?
Co-living rentals banned in this Johnson County city after unanimous council vote
On Monday, a Johnson County city unanimously voted to ban a living arrangement aimed at helping tenants decrease the amount of rent they pay.
The Shawnee City Council voted 8-0 to ban co-living, becoming among the first Kansas City area municipalities to prevent the practice, which has gained popularity in recent years as rent and home prices have soared.
The new ordinance defines a co-living group as a group of at least four unrelated adults living together in a dwelling unit. The ordinance stated that if one adult is unrelated to another adult, then the entire group will be classified as unrelated.
The practice, which includes things like sharing a kitchen, living room and community areas, started to gain popularity as rental and housing prices continued to increase across the United States.
“Co-living has become increasingly popular because of its cost effectiveness and greater flexibility in cities where rents are high for young professionals,” The Washington Post wrote in 2019.
[. . .]
“Over and over again, what rose to the surface was the cost of housing was the thing that was impacting people’s ability to be healthy,” Baughman said [Kristy Baughman, director of education and planning for United Community Services of Johnson County].
Juliana Hatfield, “Landlord” (lyrics found here):
What baffles me most about this is the news stories present it as though ‘having roommates’ is some revolutionary new concept, not something that’s been a mainstream part of culture for centuries.
So Kansas wants to ban “Three’s Company”?
WTF?
Recently I ran across some news headline (I don’t have the time/energy/stress reserves to actually read the entire articles, but I sometimes skim some headlines) about how millenials and zoomers are buying houses as friend groups, instead of as individuals/couples. Which, doesn’t surprise me at all? Like, if the people running things make the traditional methods ineffective/inaccessible, people are going to find different ways to do things…
So, I imagine this is part of seeing housing as an investment opportunity/profit generator, instead of a basic human necessity.
do you want socialists and communists? because this is how you get socialists and communists. (insert archer ants meme)
Ahhh, but in the end, bigotry and greed are just two sides of the same coin. There’s no bigotry that doesn’t seek to elevate the in group at the expense of the outgroup, socially and economically.
I mean, they’re not just banning roommates, they are even banning a single parent of two moving in with a new partner before marriage.