There’s a buzz growing that people whose homes have “unused” rooms (define “unused”?) ought to be renting out those rooms. The concept of “your own home” gets thrown out, of course.
Why Seattle-area homeowners keep vacant rooms instead of renting out | The Seattle Times
If you use a room for a home office, instead of a bedroom, is that “unused”?
If you use a room for a hobby or craft activity, is that “unused”?
The article and comments point out that politicians have made it difficult to be a landlord, and it can take 6-12 months to evict a tenant who is not paying rent. It’s a mess.
Meanwhile, in Australia some politicians have proposed taxing “unused bedrooms” (without defining “unused bedrooms”) as a way of forcing older adults whose kids have grown up, to sell their homes and move to smaller homes.
As I note in another post on this blog, the problem is, in the U.S. we have not built smaller homes for 35 to 45 years as home sizes became supersized. Even older, smaller homes, are no longer small as many have been remodeled, updated, and enlarged over the years.
The root cause problem is we have no built starter homes or smaller homes in decades. But here we are today with politicians and social media clowns turning into a divisive generational blame game.
