[crote]

Landlords and HoAs have been doing this for ages, it has just mostly impacted less well-off people until now.

Want to do some nails as a side hustle, sell homemade goods via the internet, or make extra cash repairing people's cars in your garage over the weekend? Sorry, contract says no, enjoy your eviction for "operating a business" or "commercial use of the property".

Banning WFH or charging extra for it is just the logical next step. You're working, so that's commercial use! And you're saving money by not having to rent an office and causing extra wear & tear to the property, so to a landlord it is obvious that you should be paying extra - why should you get to freeload, after all?

[al_borland]

Operating a business out of your home is a different story. The issue there is customers coming to the home, which means traffic and a general disturbance for neighbors. That's very different than someone sitting at home on a Zoom meeting.

[goodmythical]

Is it really so different? What is the difference in impact to the owner/neighbors/community if I am: 1.) Working remotely as an employee, 2.) Working remotely as a contractor, or 3.) Working remotely as an employee of the company I own?

Certainly you can't run a shop front in a residential setting, but it's not the "operating a business" part so much as the "serving customers in person" part that would cause a disturbance.

I only mention it because I have seen people who sell their art on etsy getting these kinds of eviction notices for "operating a business" and the claimed issue is not that the tenant is making art but specifically that they are profitting from it finacially.

[al_borland]

I’d be curious to hear both sides of the story on the Etsy thing. I’d imagine for anyone to even know it was happening it would need to reach a level of scale/disruption that made people start asking questions or complain.

I think with most of these rules, they are there to give them some teeth incase something gets out of hand in one way or another, and are often only enforced if something becomes a problem. Alternatively, they’re used to get someone out who is a bad tenant/neighbor, and they need to find a technicality to boot them out for everyone else’s sanity.