My friends and I were talking about when we had to share rooms in our youth( or them anyway, as my siblings were moving out when I came on the scene). I have two friends a boy and a girl who also shared a room with a younger brother. And then I have two other friends, both girls(sisters) who also shared a room.
Now according to the Two Girls, it is unlawful for there to be more than two children to a room and it is also unlawful for a girl and a boy to share a room past the age of 8.
My friends that are the boy and girl say that that is BS.
Personally I don’t know a thing about it, I know that if you use HUD there are some regulations about how many people can share a room( i think) so Maybe the two girls parents were in a HUD program, who knows.
So I thought I might as some people who might know, How many children can share a room and can boys and girls share a room past a certain age?
(it would seem to me that it would not matter how many kids are in a room as long as there is enough room for everyone, the boy girl thing however is iffy with me, but I guess thats an IMHO thing)
I don’t know about current laws, but my mother shared a room with her two sisters growing up. Perhaps she was being hyperbolic, like saying “It’s just criminal that…”. Then again, maybe my grandparents are criminals.
A) Any such law would be local. Not state, not national.
B) I have never heard of such a law dictating how many family members may share a room, and I doubt there is one anywhere in the U.S.
As a kid, I had a friend (male) who shared a bedroom with his sister until he was about 10 or 12 – I can’t remember precisely. She was about a year younger. I remember thinking it was kinda weird, though. It wasn’t like they had a tiny house.
Well, considering that I know of a lot of colleges that will put 3, 4, 5, or in really horrible cases 6 people (of the same sex, of course) into a room, I’m kinda doubting it. This seems like something that would be a regulation of an individual landlord or government agency rather than a law.
My brother and I never actually shared a room, but we both slept in the basement rec room during the summer until we moved into a house with central air conditioning when we were 10 and 14, respectively. It didn’t feel particularly weird; it’s not like you have any sexual interest in (or too many secrets from) your siblings.
I seriously doubt there are any regulations on the subject. If you have a two-bedroom apartment and three kids, and can’t afford anything bigger, what are they going to do about it? Evict you and put the kids on the street?
There is a long history of many siblings sharing rooms. And while there are issues with same-sex siblings doing so, it’s been a common practice throughout history.
My husband and I lived in family student housing in college. Since there were so few three-bedroom units, there were strict regulations about who could rent them, and their regulations sounded a lot like the ones your friend cited–you could get one if you had more than three children, or if you had at least two children of opposite sexes and the eldest was, IIRC, at least 6. So, if you had three girls, they all had to share, but if you had a boy and a girl, they only had to share until one of them turned six, and then you’d be eligible for a larger apartment.
I don’t think that you were forced to rent the larger apartment…maybe you were if you had four or more children (the rooms were small–I can’t imagine fitting three kids in there, much less four) but you had the choice of separating the genders of older children if you felt that was necessary.
And, obviously, they felt that there was nothing wrong with three children sharing a room.
Such regulations certainly do exist – almost any city will have a zoning section of their city ordinances, which nearly always includes specifications of how many people can occupy a dwelling.
For example, here’s a section from the Minneapolis Ordinances:
(R1 thru R6 refer to various zoning classifications.) There are many more, detailed sections about this in the ordinances.
Enforcement of these provisions, however, is less certain. It’s often hard for the city inspectors to know just how many people are living in a house. But you can get in trouble for violating these ordinances. Even to the extent of having your kids taken away by Child Protection, if you force them to live in sub-standard housing.
But t-bonham, note that the ordinances do not limit how many family members may share a dwelling, and that is the crucial point of this thread. The ordinances regulate how many unrelated persons may share the dwelling.
I know of a proposed regulation that deals with the right of immigrants to stay in the country. One of the prerequisites is that they have “proper housing”, which includes a minimum number of square metres available for each person (I think more for adults, less for kids, depending on the age) and kids of different gender above the age of 8 living in separate rooms.
This was discussed a lot in public (many local families did not meet these standards), and I think it never became law, actually.
But if there are no “unrelated persons” living in the house, how many family members can live in it? The way you’re reading it, Mom, Dad, and four kids could not all live in the same house!
The regulation sounds like an attempt to stop unregulated boarding houses, and to control things like off-campus apartments and fraternity housing near colleges - not to say that you can’t have a family of six or more people living together.
My brother and I shared a room until he was 13 and I was 10. Not problems at all. There were only 2 bedrooms in our house. Then untile we went to college my brother had a big room and I had a little room off of his and had to go through his room to get anywhere. No problems there either except it made me mad.
I grew up with 2 sisters and a brother in a 3 bedroom house. My mother took in a lot foster kids. (About 22 over the course of 15 years or so.) The Childrens’ Aid Society (as it was then) designated a certain number of square feet of bedroom space per foster kid, but didn’t have any regulatory power over us 3.
We just bunked the new kid in the same sex bedroom. The social worker would schedule visits every once in a while to ensure the kid had adequate sleeping quarters.
We would then play musical bedrooms. My brother or I would be “moved” to the basement rec room and the bedroom would be made to look like it was occupied by 2 people. After she left, everything went back to the way it was.
When they (the CAS) were in a bind, like discovering 2 abandoned kids and having no place to put them, they’d hit up my mother (who was a soft touch), and didn’t really care about the requirements. They knew the kids would get bathed, clothed fed and have a place to sleep until they sorted it all out.
My guess is that most jurisdictions have some regulations in place, but enforcement is spotty unless there is gross overcrowding or dangerous conditions. Usually, this is a by-product of some other problem and is only able to be used when someone reports a family to Child Services for neglect or abuse etc. I mean, how is anyone going to know you’ve stuffed a bunch of kids in the small bedroom and are using the big one for your den?