Ban roommate situations!
What the hell are they thinking? Is this some kinda stupid religious thing or something?
I’m guessing rich white NIMBY types who think their property values are going to go down if certain folk are able to afford to live in the neighborhood.
Think of Shawnee as the, uh, Pawnee, Indiana of Kansas. They have a pretty nice Parks & Rec department, though.
Stranger
It sounds like a zoning issue. There can be different regulations for single-family vs multi-family housing.
I remember these kinds of rules occasionally being an issue before same-sex marriage was legal. This rule only applies to households with four adults, but in other cities, an unmarried couple with kids might be too large to qualify as a “single family,” and while those rules were theoretically neutral as to the sexual orientation of the residents, (A) same-sex couples often seemed to attract more scrutiny and (B) there was no remedy for same-sex couples.
They don’t want ghastly poor people living in their city. And what if it causes traffic or parking problems? 
I’d like to know how they think they’re going to enforce this.
Yeah, the NIMBY morons in Saugus CA shouted down a Library for similar reasons. Oh, and homeless use the library.
FWIW, in the UK we have licensing schemes for “multi-occupancy housing”, and some local authorities do use them quite pro-actively to control overcrowding and poor management by the landlord.
But the definition is primarily based on defining a “household” and what amenities are shared, rather than moralising about relationships.
Nosy busybody neighbors will complain, which they are already doing.
My guess is the rich attempting to extract blood out of turnips maximum profits from the less wealthy.
Also:
What are the odds there are a couple of landlords on the city council?
That would appear to be 0:
https://cityofshawnee.civicweb.net/portal/members.aspx?id=10
My dad actually used to be on the Shawnee Planning Commission, which is where this regulation likely began. I haven’t heard of that particular living situation before, but from the article, it sounds like it would require a particular building layout, and you could likely regulate it through the permits system.
All right, I scrolled through, and I’m not convinced either way. Many people who own and rent property don’t do it as their full-time primary vocation. I know this, because I did it myself for a while. But in that kind of a biographical paragraph, I would have been described at the time as “a senior technology consultant to e-commerce businesses,” and my landlord sideline wouldn’t have been worth a mention. There are enough wealthy people in that list (dentist, executive, etc.) that I can easily see them owning an apartment building or a few rental houses for the extra income, while most of their attention remains on their primary job. That’s how it was for me, anyway.
Could be. But I don’t see how the proposed rule would benefit someone with a rental unit or two. In fact, if they were looking to expand, it would actively hurt them.
It is entirely unclear to me what problem this ordinance is attempting to solve? Who’s ox is being gored when two unmarried couples share a house, and who is relieved (in a legal sense) when they aren’t?
The idea that multi-family housing leads to undesirable outcomes for its neighbors, such as overcrowded streets, overtaxed services, or the presence of people with undesirable behavior patterns, is extremely common in the USA. This particular form of legislation seems to be especially intrusive into people’s private lives, but there are tens of thousands of locales throughout the country that have other types of ordinances designed to have the same effect. Single-family zoning, setbacks, minimum acreage, mandatory off-street parking, etc.
College towns often have similar ordinances to this one, to stop students from living outside of their designated area.
The council has probably been hearing from residents absolutely seething about this situation for years now. Constant bitching about That House Across The Street with eight cars and a two-car driveway, home to a constantly-rotating cast of young adults who aren’t quiet family types, and now the city has finally Done Something about it.
After college I and three other guys rented rooms in a 4 bedroom house. I presume that would be illegal under this law. smh
No. This article better explains what they are trying to limit/eliminate:
In this arrangement, individual tenants have leases of varying lengths, have separate secured access to their rooms, and often do not know or have relationships with the others who are also occupying the same single family dwelling," the memo continued, saying the rental arrangements are "not typical of common rental uses in single family districts that are occupied by family units.
Cad’s situation may have been in violation. For many roommate situations there are not separate lease arrangements, or secure entries.
Lots of college towns already ban that. Evanston, Illinois for example.