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Comment by gibsonf1 | Hacker News Reader

The requirements for residential units are primarily the International Building Code, which are the expensive ones. The city only manages planning, such as a residential use can go in a certain area. To actually build, you need a building permit which has to conform to City and State building codes [2], which right now is basically the International Building Code [1]. And yes, it would cost a fortune to convert office into residential use. However, if office buildings become truly deserted and can be bought at very low cost, then it can start making financial sense.

The building codes have evolved over time to protect life/safety of the occupants, so not something you would want to have the City bypass.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Building_Code [2] https://sfdbi.org/codes

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Many of those codes have been designed to protect incombents from competition and various other forms of encouraging one form of living (car dependent) over others.

Plenty of people in Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, etc live happy lives in much much smaller living areas. This makes them more affordable. But building codes in many places in the USA disallow making places that small.

Other examples of questionable codes are codes that require parking spaces, codes that require front yards, codes that require backyards, etc....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CCOdQsZa15o

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnKIVX968PQ

(I'm an Architect who has built in SF)

Parking spaces, front yards, back yards, building heights, building types, density etc are all City Planning functions, and you're right, have little to do with life/safety typically, and in many ways are quite destructive by making walkable livable cities very difficult to do now.

The Building codes, on the other hand, have evolved with each disaster over the last century or two - a building collapsing in an earthquake, people dying in fires, etc. So those have real life/safety protection as a primary directive.

One San Francisco-specific building code that might make it difficult to subdivide an office building into smaller rooms is SFBC 1204 https://codelibrary.amlegal.com/codes/san_francisco/latest/s... that requires almost all habitable rooms to have a window for natural light. In San Francisco, we trust mechanical ventilation, but for some reason we don’t trust electric lights. I think this code is an obsolete holdover that has nothing to do with health or safety anymore.

>But building codes in many places in the USA disallow making places that small.

Given how little exercise people get and that we are typically glued to a screen (tv, laptop, or phone) during waking hours, I could see an argument for lowering floor space minimums.

Code minimum bedroom sizes are pretty small: https://buildingcodetrainer.com/minimum-bedroom-size/

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