Not strictly necessarily. A single person could technically hire workers to repair the road or, hypothetically, do it on his own. Assuming no conflict-of-wills with the city hall…
But that would mean investing in something that is not the person’s property so it falls into the same category as your argument, which therefore holds.
Hartford?
or Wesst Hartford, luvey?
A principle of our legal system is that things go by what one actually is or does, rather than what one says they are or says they are doing. So saying that one is a servant does not count if one is not actually being a servant or doing servant work. Saying that one is requesting a DMCA takedown for copyright violation doesn’t make it true that a copyright violation has occurred.
How is it the city’s business anyway with whom you live in a house you own, short of being a hazard to public health? This seems very un-american to me, it’s like upper class reverse bolshevism. It would please me to see such regulations ruled unconstitutional in a court, but I fear the average judge might have a conflict of interest here.
But what “does” constitute DMCA violation is well-established in legalese, while my intuition suggests that what services a “servant” should be expected to provide, or how much you need to pay them, are extremely nebulous. It’s like having a shell corporation - “My other company pays me as a consultant to do… whatever!”
If your buddy is contracted by your collective company in another country that pays them $10 now for “domestic services” in a ten year contract and some indeterminate amount five years later, there is probably not much of anything the court can do. Just read the local bylaws/zoning/statutes/ordinances/etc and make your company accordingly. It might take a few thousand dollars, but be cheaper than the legal fees.
There’s a perfectly good reason for this law. You need a license to run a boarding house, and an unlicensed, uninspected boarding house can be a deathtrap for undocumented immigrants, so that license is a good thing. This very unusual group just doesn’t fit in with the zoning laws, but I think it would be reasonable for them to request a variance. They look educated and affluent, I’ll bet one of them knows how.
I don’t see how a boarding house licence is not 100% unrelated to the topic.
Is that context codified within the law, though? There’s a lot of laws that have been interpreted well beyond their original intent because of broad language…
The problem with doing that is that you then need to A) follow labor laws, and B) pay income taxes on that money “earned” from the servant “job”.
However, as I understand it, each of them OWNS part of the house. I believe that changes things considerably, since none of them are renting.
You are not boarding if you own the house.
Only for those who choose to live in one.
It seems unusual because most communities require people to own separate houses, cars etc. These laws exist for the purpose of discouraging such activity in favor of those which forces people to spend and earn more.
I think education doesn’t work in such superficial ways, and in any case, these factors should not affect their legal standing.
Not necessarily. If you are making your own mini-company for this, you get to choose your most favorable jurisdiction. An area which has minimal employee protections is quite unfortunate for those who work there, but can help if you are trying to avoid the minutiae of a “real” employment situation. And since it’s not a real job, why have real pay? They could be contracted as an intern (isn’t that how schools and halfway houses skirt this stuff?). Or otherwise paid something which merely sounds substantial. Like shares of your non-existent company! Or an otherwise worthless intellectual property! Something that would be hard to quantify - but ultimately amount to nothing. Then they could be a contractor who is subject to the minimal paper trail of another region with no pay or insurance to be concerned about.
Since when is that a concern in America? 
they can make up the shortfall with tips!
What about this? This could work pretty neatly here.
But you see, if a court were to rule that draconian zoning laws and restrictive housing covenants were illegal, that would constitute a government-enforced “taking” of people’s right to enhance their property value by controlling others around them.
(Those who attempt to protest that such laws and covenants are “takings” of others’ property rights to begin with are invited to file a complaint. The forms are at the planning office, in the drawer just below the bypass plans…)
Um, I haven’t seen a single pro-zoning-board/anti-resident-group comment here.
Maybe you shouldn’t write a response based on what you saw on one paper’s site or whatever and copy-paste it to everywhere you see your story repeated. It’s unfair to all the people here who clearly support you.
I would just worry that a city official with a hard-on for them might decide that going over that arrangement with a fine toothed comb looking for something they could pin a violation on would be a good use of taxpayer dollars.
Actually if a shell corporation is simply a sham in reality, then the law generally considers it a sham (if the law gets involved enough, which is admittedly rare).
I’m not saying it’s not very easy to get away with shams, but if you are caught, you have to face the reality that you were caught in a sham.
Whether or not law is sham can be pretty subjective. These laws are put forth as ways of formalizing arrangements between people, and making lots of assorted companies, trusts, foundations, etc to manage ownership, control, and accountability is precisely how things are done in the “real world” of corporations, governments, and wealthy people. Use of the term “sham” implies that somebody is being defrauded by this, which is not at all what I was suggesting they do. Making it an official, legal, no-money business arrangement merely makes it rather inscrutable. Especially if the company exists where a paper trail can’t easily follow. Their company would answer to the jurisdiction of wherever they make it, so on this end of things Connecticut gets no say. There is no “getting caught” if it’s done legally. If I establish that I am employed by some remote company to do nothing, and I get no taxable income from this, there really isn’t anything anybody can do to complain.
The only time the US would likely pursue rigorous investigation of something like this is if it seemed like the arrangement was being used to hide assets or income. But even very wealthy people still get away with this sort of thing all of the time - for better or worse. And since these people saved money for a shared living space, I am going to guess that their incomes and lifestyles are not going to set any flags which would provide incentive for anyone to dig. And they wouldn’t find anything if they did.
I don’t think it’s very subjective that
that you have a sham rather than a servant. Your mileage may vary.
Increasing population density illegally tends to lower property values, so the neighbors have a financial interest in preventing this.
Having said all that I’m completely in agreement that this sort of sham is a net benefit for society and likely would not be punished.
