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Comment by stegosaurus | Hacker News Reader

The issue is that taking away that choice is damaging to many people. I think that the statement "most people in the West agree" glosses over an important detail - perhaps most people who have the money agree, and the others are forced to go along with it.

I would far rather have a home that has 'risky banister railings' if that meant I could actually afford it.

Mental health is as important as physical health, if not moreso - what's worse, risk of eviction, or having to pay attention near the stairwell? I get that this is an isolated example, but I'd take worse insulation, no solar, worse security, everything, if it meant I could get a home and slowly improve it myself with time.

If that means I have to live rurally - so be it - but as far as I can tell that means living outside of the country I was born in (UK), which is quite sad.

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I have broadly libertarian leanings too. But this isn't just about _you_. This is about your guests, your children, the person that buys your house next, the person that lives next door (in the event of a fire). I agree that the housing situation sucks right now, but the solution is to embrace smaller residences and lots of tallish buildings. I'm currently vacationing in Vietnam. It's a terrible annoyance dealing with exposed wires and crappy houses. Someone didn't have money for a drain, so they threw their (still very hot) excess soup from their pot out the window and it got all over me.

I think you should be able to build it the way you want, and if you wish to rent it, or sell it, then it has to brought up to standards. I bought a house with deck railings that were far apart even though I had a 3 month old baby. We kept the door to the deck locked, and I installed railings the following Spring. I grew up in Brooklyn, but I now live in rural East Java, Indonesia. Yep, life is very different, but I like it. You adapt. Some people choose not to, and that is their perogative. I think rent control is a big issue in the sense that it allows people who can truly afford a higher rent, a nice lifestyle. A friend lived in TriBeca NYC, paying $600 per month for a > 2000 sq. ft. loft in an area of million dollar lofts. She could afford it, or to move to Brooklyn at the time, but did not want to leave the luxury afforded to her by rent control. It's not old people eating cat food out of cans in unheated apartments as much as people protray it. I lived in Chelsea, NYC in the late 1990s. I paid a fair rent, a lot of older people paid rent control, or their grandkids who lived there while they lived elsewhere in the suburbs. I spoke to the owner of the building, who showed me the boiler that was constantly in need of repair. He said he wanted to buy a new one, but 90% of the tenants were paying around $400 per month rent. The boiler installed was over $100K. I like to see both sides. My belief is we should do away with rent control, let the market stabilize, build affordable housing up to code, and ride the wave until it becomes a better situation. Subsidies, and delaying the solution is only creating more disparity.

>This is about your guests,

who consented to the conditions of your house when entering. If he is not sure he ought to hire a civil engineer to inspect and verify the safety status of the house or ask the host to do it.

>your children,

who is your ward and is subjected to the decisions of its parent with regards to all of life choices

>the person that buys your house next,

ditto the guest situation except for buying

>the person that lives next door

this is the only legitimate case for regulation, to protect the public and/or third party.

>so they threw their (still very hot) excess soup from their pot out the window and it got all over me.

This is not a problem of housing but of manners. You can get rid of hot soup without infringing of other people's ability to walk around the public area and not be wet.

I don't have children. I can't afford them.

I think the solution is to move away from cities. I'm planning to do so. I'm just going to be sad if it means leaving my country because you don't want me anywhere near you, even if it means I'm on the horizon from your window.

It really is mostly about the land value, with a bit of local planning opposition. Allowing people to build un-code houses would save a surprisingly small amount of money in the short term at the cost of all sorts of long-term problems.

In the UK if you want a house but are completely agnostic about where, there's Stoke-on-Trent; the council were selling houses for £1 on the condition that the new owner renovated them to code. Otherwise, rural living in Scotland is also quite cheap.

What makes you think you can't live rurally in the UK?

Isn't the problem the cost of the land? 100k for a house that's up to code financed over 30 years should be reasonably affordable?

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