Spliting a bedroom for opposite sex children

[jnsd05]

There is a law in PA that states children of different sex that are school age must have their own bedroom. We are considering to buy a 2 bedroom home...I have a 9 yr old daughter and a 7 yr old son...can I legally put a divider up in the middle of the bedroom to seperate them? This would only be for a few months to get money saved up to add another bedroom on.

[Hu Flung Dun]

I don't know what would happen if it was your own house but my cousin was on the council housing list and she had a 6 yr old girl and a 8 yr old boy and under no circumstances would she get a two bedroom house. She was told that she would have to wait for a 3 bedroom house because of their ages they need a room each. Needless to say she is still waiting and living with family.

[JK2]

If it is only for a few months you could give the children a bedroom each and you & your wife could sleep on a sofa bed in the lounge perhaps. Or one of the children could sleep on the sofa bed.

[Goodsoulette]

A 9 year old and a seven year old? Don't worry about it. I am almost certain its not against the law.
The council use point scoring to decide what house size you need. You get points if same sex children share a bedroom and the older the children are the more points it is worth. At their age its worth 3 points, and the maximum given to these circumstances is 25 points. If it was against the law or considered extremely detrimental to their well being then the points would be a lot higher.

They arent going to suffer sharing for a few months or even a couple of years in my opinion,

[jno]

this is a UK site so the law is probably different from PA. I don't know what the law considers a 'room' but I imagine if the divider was solid and went up to the ceiling it would be sufficient, even if they still shared a door. As you say, it's only temporary and I doubt the police spend a lot of time enforcing such a prissy law.

[jnsd05]

Yes I am in United States. Why...? Is that a problem? I needed advice and I found this site. I'm sorry.

[Ethel]

This is a UK based site, and you are unlikely to get an answer pertinent to US law.

[jnsd05]

Ok, I'm very sorry. Thank you to all that tried to help, it was really appreciated. I'm also sorry that I wasted anyone's time.

[jno]

hi jnsd05, I spotted that you were in the USA and my answer still stands: this is likely to be a low police priority and if you do your best to partition the room for the length of time necessary I can't see you being prosecuted, in Pennsylvania or elsewhere.

[annie0000]

Hi jnsd05,

Don't be put off, I think what people were trying to say is that in this particular circumstance, as most users here are UK based, they will not really be able to help. I am sure that you you will have many other questions where it is irrelevant where you are based, so feel free to ask. You are certainly not wasting anyones time (expect perhaps your own!), people are free to answer or not as they see fit. We do also have a few US based Abers here, but I guess that it depends what state they are in whether they would know anything about the laws in Pennsylvania.

It is amazing the knowledge and information that you can find here.

Hope to see you again.

Annie XX

[sense4all]

We are in the UK but we love a challenge. You are very welcome, we do have regular US users who are very knowledgeable ... I have found a link that may be useful ...

http://www.housingalliancepa.org/issues/

Hope that will visit again to share some of your knowledge with other folks.

[s10driver]

Being from PA myself, I would think this is one of those old "blue laws" that never got taken off the books, if it exists. I wouldn't be concerned about it.