More than once I’ve considered getting married in order to rent a house in Salt Lake City.
Thankfully, I didn’t have to. I just broke the law instead.
In Salt Lake City, it is illegal for more than three unrelated adults to live in any “individual dwelling unit.” That law, found in the Salt Lake City Code 21A.24.010, applies pretty much anywhere you would live in Salt Lake City that’s not a van down by the river, whether you rent or own.
So when I moved to Salt Lake City expecting to rent a house with some new friends, it wasn’t as easy as it could’ve been. My friends and I ended up elsewhere in the county (which has a slightly more lenient restriction of only four unrelated adults) and pretending there were only three of us in a house with seven bedrooms.
I was surprised to discover that such laws are common around the country. By my calculations, rent is cheaper when it is split among more people. And four people with incomes paying rent, for example, is more secure than one or two people paying for themselves and all the dependents in the house.
If one person loses a job, due to unforeseen circumstances like, perhaps, a pandemic, it would be easier for a bigger group to absorb the cost and avoid eviction. And the landlord avoids the hassle of housing turnover. So why all the roommate hate?
The internet tells me these laws sprung up out of fear of group homes for recovering addicts or people getting their footing after getting out of prison. If the fear is secretly about drugs, what does that have to do with who is related to whom? And how does limiting people’s housing opportunities help with the drug problem?
I’ve heard qualms about the potential for too many cars, and cars parked on the lawn. If that’s the concern, are existing parking regulations not adequate? There is a very reasonable concern that there will just be too many people in the house. Which is why there are occupancy limits, independent of any relationship-based regulation.
The law, it seems, stems from a Not In My Backyard (NIMBY) mentality. And it represents a huge blind spot in our approach to affordable housing.
The city is doling out millions of dollars in development incentives for affordable housing, though that may not be working as well as hoped. The Planning Division is also working on changing some regulations on the housing development front. Their Affordable Housing Overlay proposal is an exciting (and very pretty) stab at encouraging affordable housing development. The go-to incentive is easing regulations for properties that are deed-restricted to provide affordable housing for a certain time. They are asking for responses to two public surveys within the proposal, which close July 31.
How much money and effort would it save to simply let people live together and save money?
I know that roommates won’t save the world. Financial incentives and smart regulations that encourage building will be an integral part of the solution to the affordable housing crisis. But it is hard to believe that true affordability is the goal when there seems to be no discussion about the big, free part-of-the-solution right under our noses.
NIMBY isn’t serving us. Groups of roommates are not that scary. The half-jokes about getting married in order to be able to afford to live here legally are getting old. It’s time to get serious about affordable housing.
Eli Beck
Eli Beck grew up in Bluff and lives in Salt Lake City when he is not at work at a wilderness therapy program.