So co-habitating folks who live in a house with only ONE persons name on the deed/mortgage . . . now the 'owner' has to collect rent?

I think the idea is that EVEN IF the owner doesn't collect rent, there are still 4 unrelated people living in the house. The fact that they aren't renters doesn't change anything.

I'm not promoting the law, by the way.

on how many persons can occupy them. Sometimes the numbers are different for unrelated people as compared to related people.

But that's not a zoning thing, just an occupancy thing. Again, when I've heard of this, it's been in connection with apartments.

I do wonder if placing limits on occupancy for a single family home can actually be done. I do hope this is fought in the courts.

to many people in a confined area can be bad for health and hygiene and causes other issues with neighbours such as taking up the whole street for parking etc. not sure what the answer is but there does need to be limits.

now mayby the city should help with extra housing but without some sort of zoning and controls would you want to live there.

And you bet your ass they pass stuff like this all the time.

They couldn't explicitly keep students from renting certain apartments, so to get the same effect they said "non-related people" can't rent apartments together in certain parts of town.

thought the ordinance stated in Watertown, no more than 4 unrelated so these people were not in violation to begin with. I heard they took that particular sentence out of the ordinance, leaving it to mean you have to be related I guess. I know a 2 bed seems cramped for 4 people, the two roommates would have to share the second bedroom while the couple takes the master, but times are tough. A lot of people have to have roommates to help cover their mortgage/rent and that's exactly why the owner of the home has his fiancée and 2 roommates there. I'd rather share a small two bedroom house with 3 other people than be homeless. I grew up not far from Watertown, it's not exactly the most prosperous city out there.

But this also begs the question - what about gay couples who are not married? They wouldn't be considered "related". What if you only had one roommate in a two bed? As it stands it seems like none of those are acceptable.

It seems ridiculous to me - I keep thinking I'm missing something here. Can anyone fill the blanks for me?

One of them may be sleeping there. If there are finished rooms in the cellar, those often aren't counted in the "official" number of bedrooms. Similarly, a finished attic room may not be counted.

That's what most of these ordinances were intended to prevent.

There were a lot of these ordinances enacted in the 60s to prevent hippie communes, or groups of students from finding cheap housing. A college town I lived in had an ordinance that limited the number of sexes that could occupy a dwelling to the number of bathrooms in the dwelling.

There have been cases where religious communities were ousted because of this kind of zoning rule. You know how nuns are with their wild praying!

And all those Habits on the clothes lines. Ewww.