City Outlaws Roommates

Last week, city council members in Watertown, New York, which is 70 miles north of Syracuse, voted 3-2 to outlaw roommates.
A woman living on Thompson Boulevard in the city brought concerns to the council because she said her [next-door] neighbor was living with his fiancé and two other roommates and didn't want to see it become a regular thing.

During a public hearing before the vote, Mr. Hartman tried to convince council members that he invited his friends to live with him because he had just purchased the house last February and needed some help because he “was just starting out.” “All I’m trying to do is live a normal life, a quiet life,” he said. But the three council members who supported the change said the city had to make sure that the characteristic of Residential A zones are protected. Other zoned districts allow for such arrangements, they said. [The neighbor who complained] gathered 80 signatures on a petition requesting that unrelated people not be allowed to live in a single-family house in a district zoned Residential A.

Article


Are you kidding me? This can't be for real, can it? This is in New York . I tried a Google Search on the headline, and didn't find much. It's on Before it's News as well (yeah yeah I know).

Can this even be legal? I mean, how are minimum wage workers supposed to live? Boxed up in apartments only? If something like this is legal and other municipalities start doing it, will they have 'married/not married' zones?

I hope this ends up in the hoax bin. This is ludicrous.

Oops forgot the link to the original article I found.

Here is an alternate source for the information that is not "before it's news".

Not sure of the legitamicy of this site.

Sounds like a woman we used to call a busy body or 'nosy neighbor'. She needs to mind her OWN business.

What happened to freedom in even base concept?? Now, it's not enough to outlaw subletting in some places by code/ordinance? Now we get told what friends or others may share a room of our house for a period. Hmmm..

Someone remind me why I'd WANT to own a house if I didn't already own mine? The benefits to ownership (such as it is with a mortgage) are vanishing, one by one.

That would suck, but make sense to fill the 'tents'.

btw here is the source:
Roomates to be rezoned??

Oh well just one more law to break while I ILLEGALY sub let my spare room in order to break even on a life of debt slavery.

What a filthy disgusting criminal I am, I brake the law I should be in jail with the rest of those dangerous plant smokers.

At Monday night’s public hearing, Mrs. Cavallario said she hoped Mr. Hartman and his friends “would be grandfathered in” and continue to live there. But she said the situation should not become “normal in our neighborhood.”

Wow...what a bitch! She 'hopes that the people whose lives she's disrupting will be ''grandfathered in?'" how compassionate of her.

Thanks for posting the newspaper article, person! I don't know why I didn't think of looking for that- or why it didn't show in the google search.

Of all the things I've read on this and other sites regarding nanny state/big brother etc. et al...this one irks me to the point of being completely flabbergasted.

Someone needs to take that lady and throw her into .. Oh I dunno.. China.

Then she can whinge about who's living next door.

If indeed this lady exists.

In all fairness, things like this can get out of hand.
Ive seen it where a family will move in aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and friends, before long you have 10 people in a 3 bedroom house or apartment.
They are usually loud, coming and going at all hours of the day and have cars parked all over the place.

reply to post by winofiend


Yeah I dont think she's gonna be a big fan of Shanghai billionaires riding around in Ferraris and exploiting all that goes with living in a futuristic technological super state.

“If a law is unjust, a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so” - Thomas Jefferson.

Stop letting these swine take your rights and make ridiculous laws, otherwise you’ll have another independence war on your hands. It’s far better to die on your feet than live on your knees... If these happened where I lived and I owned a house with roommates, there is categorically no way I’d be cutting them out. As far as I’m concerned, Government and council should be allowed to make laws without taking it to the people (who they actually f*cking serve. We do not serve them) to vote on, fairly. Executive Orders should only be used in genuine times of urgent emergency and strictly nothing else.

I guess they’re afraid that if they take these insane laws to a public vote they’d be squashed every time. Instead, they’ll just make laws behind closed doors and make criminals of genuine, hard working, reasonable law abiding people. Disgusting.

Originally posted by Juggernog
In all fairness, things like this can get out of hand.
Ive seen it where a family will move in aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and friends, before long you have 10 people in a 3 bedroom house or apartment.
They are usually loud, coming and going at all hours of the day and have cars parked all over the place.

Apparently only the friends would cause the neighbor heartburn, not the family.

[The neighbor who complained] gathered 80 signatures on a petition requesting that unrelated people not be allowed to live in a single-family house in a district zoned Residential A.

reply to post by Hushabye


I cannot vouch for the legitimacy of the story,but it is legal.
Although,that doesn't make it right.

Why this is just what people want. Locals making their own laws. Right people? You know get rid of the big Gov and let the small local gov take care of things.

I agree, they can move to some place where they can vote to have all the roommates they want.

Or likewise, fight to vote in new lawmakers who won't vote about roommates

reply to post by MrSpad


5 people voted because of a petition signed by 80 people in a town of almost 30,000 people. I wonder if it would pass if most of the residents of proper age voted?

This is the level of goverment they are using to pass restrictions that the feds cannot......
Community laws cannot be passed that violate civil and constitutional laws.....
This is just more bull#.