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Comment by deckar01 | Hacker News Reader

This kind of zoning is pretty much unenforceable. There is no good way to tell the difference between guests and customers. Some people have noisy guests that bother their neighbors. Some people make loud noises cutting wood and doing personal projects with heavy machinery in their garage. Money exchanging hands is not the problem.

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>Some people make loud noises cutting wood and doing personal projects with heavy machinery in their garage. Money exchanging hands is not the problem.

I assure you there are plenty of people who think that loud noises, odors and "unsightly projects" are an issue even if no money changes hands. These people have far less leverage over tenants than they do over property owners so they seek to ban tenants

The zoning you speak of is enforceable enough. It doesn't need to be enforceable 100%, just enough to make the risk/reward not worth it. Remember, a large part of the busybodies motivation is "neighborhood character" (or some other shit like that). They don't care if you break the rules so long as you do so in a way they find agreeable. They want the power of arbitrary enforcement so they can screw you if you have tenants that throw loud parties (or whatever). It just so happens that it's easier to get draconian punishments attached to the zoning code than it is to get them attached to the petty crap the busybodies care about so they get rough proxies for the stuff they care about prohibited via the zoning code.

Yes. That's the point being made.

I'm pretty sure that was the point he was trying to make. The excuse often made for why rental properties aren't allowed is that tenants are often noisy or cause other problems. He was just pointing out that that can be a problem for owners as well, so whether it's a tenant or a owner that's being noisy is immaterial.

> These people have far less leverage over tenants than they do over property owners so they seek to ban tenants

What leverage do they have over a property owner?

Lol.

No way. Depending on the town, you'll either piss someone off, or a busybody will rat you out to the codes compliance people. Once that happens, they'll investigate and you're done.

When they figure out that you have guests, it's closed and the complainer is directed to do a noise complaint. If they figure out it's a business, you get cited.

>No way. Depending on the town, you'll either piss someone off, or a busybody will rat you out to the codes compliance people. Once that happens, they'll investigate and you're done.

For most of HN that is true because most of HN lives in wealthy cities or suburbs that have enough tax income that they can have a big enough government to the point where spending man hours chasing down that kind of stuff is important. Poor cities don't have the resources to go investigate busybody crap.

I've lived in lower income areas were code enforcement of things like that was common.

Regardless I think the gp makes valid point against the ggp. It's definitely not "unenforceable".

All cities in the US are wealthy. Same applies to Canada, Germany, Spain... Sure there are poorer people, but on the global scale the poor in Spain are still rich. (this isn't to imply the poor have it easy)

The article is completely focused on the US. In that context I assumed the person I was replying to was talking about relatively rich or poor US cities.

right, my point is that poor us cities will still act like the rich cities because they are not really poor.

Poor and broke are two different things. When people say "poor cities" they mean "broke" because while the cities may not be poor by global standards they're broke because they don't have enough $$ to pay for what they're supposed to pay for.

True, but the point is still all cities in the US have plenty of resources to enforce whatever arbitrary thing they want to. (note that the courts might strike down some for constitutional reasons). That they don't have the resources to do all isn't anything new, even the richest person in the world cannot afford to do everything.

You are mistaking the inhabitants for the city balance sheet. The inhabitants might be rich, but that doesn't mean the city government has the resources.

Maybe it’s a west coast thing. I lived in a fiscally challenged city (worst in the state I think), where the someone tried to repossess a fire engine for nonpayment of repairs. Code enforcement is a profit center.

They still managed to give my neighbor a $150 ticket for parking his commercial vehicle (Verizon Ford Taurus) in his driveway.

> The Department's highest priority for investigation and resolution of reported violations are health and safety-related. If evidence exists that a violation of Planning Code may have occurred, the Enforcement Planner sends a notice to the responsible party... High service demands can routinely cause cases to remain open for some time. These cases usually involve violations that do not constitute a significant impact.

https://sfplanning.org/resource/file-a-complaint

Most cities’ planning departments probably aren’t as slammed as San Francisco’s.

They only process 500 complaints a year. This is not a serious problem at the scale described in the article, so local governments do not allocate resources to it.

SFO sounds like a real mess. Code enforcement is a revenue maker

Money exchanging hands is not the problem.

Actually, I think that is the whole problem. Many of these regulations exist because the local government officials want to extract as much value as they can for themselves and their friends.

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