You all understand that the children fee is literally paying for enough space to house children? Do your cats have their own room? ;)

Social housing, which is “owned” by the community as a whole, is the answer. Not only for people who are not yet ready to own, but also for housing in general.

Vienna is a prime model for this, where social housing is frequently much cheaper than ever owning a home. Most families that start out in social housing cling to it their entire life because it is just so much more financially responsible.

You ever seen what half-arse parented kids will do? All of the above + holes and pest infestations

In Brazil is illegal for landlords or apartment buildings to charge or prohibit pets on their units. They are some laws around, like it should be as big as you can charge it on your arms, can't use the common areas unless designated pet areas and can't be loud at night.

It's provincial here in Canada but I vaguely remember some building having a no child rule and then losing a court case when the strata tried to evict folks who ended up having kids.

In the US, many mobile home communities require tenants be over the age of 55.

I’ve seen weird rules too, like 50% of the household must be over 55. So like if your spouse is younger but you are older than that is okay. This pretty effectively does a good job of restricting children just based on math and family dynamic without explicitly stating “no kids”.

One of my parents used to live in such a community. It was quiet as hell at night.

So restrictions like that are clearly legal and not considered ageism. (I might have considered living in that same community if I were old enough.) But apparently restricting children would be illegal?

It's not legal to charge pet fees if it's for a service animal so it's probably related to that in some.

For services animals they cannot even enforce size or breed restrictions. I have in laws that used this to get a pit bull for their child with Down Syndrome. It wasn't a fee dodge, the apartment had a blanket no pet policy.

I do agree with you as a childfree person who doesn't like children. Most of the time I blame/hate their parents instead. Like the parents of the kids upstairs. One of them has a "band". For the past year he's been trying to learn 3 songs almost every day in the evening. It's incredibly annoying to listen to this musically untalented kid when I'm tying to relax. Put some goddamned headphones on him, for fuck's sake.

Encouraging renters to have kids is a rare long-term investment strategy by the landlord class

No one is actually doing that, they're charging a fee to do nothing until someone complains enough that they'll send out a strongly worded letter hoping the person not picking up their dog poop will admit to it out of fear.

Wholeheartedly support, I wish my apartment complex did that. Dog poop all over the place.

I lived in a complex that required such samples from dogs. They still never did anything about all the shit lying around