People build whatever here and all the stuff paranoid people claim would happen, didn't. Code inspections eliminated 20 years ago.
I imagine the code scam and it's costs result in untold deaths and exposure, or money lost that could have been spent on healthcare, education, or healthy foods .
Having said that, we built a house in California, where the NIMBYs have weaponized code enforcement, and we could have built the same house (to higher quality and lower environmental impact) for about half the price and in half the time if it weren't for the planning commission.
The time mattered a lot, since that meant we paid rent + mortgage interest for an extra year.
To add insult to injury, the building inspectors missed all sorts of obvious problems, and the planning commission approved plans with gaping issues. I don't think they found anything that improved the house itself, but they definitely repeatedly rejected permit applications, and failed inspections for nonsense reasons.
So, in true Monty Python style, we'd have been better off financially if we'd built a house or two that fell over, sank into the swamp, etc.
The problem I see with legislative approach (esp. if it's a bureaucracy - unelected officials making decisions), is that they could be biased (e.g. lobbied) too, representing the interests of developers - which can be good in some cases (The Dog in the Manger NIMBY areas), but can be bad in other situations. There must be some middle grounds.
I have a friend who bought land in my community (suburbanish/ruralish California) with the intention of building his "dream home" and moving in. He's finding that the costs of permitting, studies, hearings, inspections, engineering, and other bureaucracy are about 1.5X what building the actual structure will cost. Granted, he should have done more research first before buying the land, but he didn't and now the land may just stay vacant forever or until he finds a new "sucker" buyer for it. It should be dead simple. Buy the property, start pouring the foundation the next week.
Perhaps a law requiring that every municipality have a "standard plan" for a 1x, duplex, quad, and 10 unit building that cannot have any disapprovals once the lot is passed.
Some time ago, outside of the US, I rewired my grandpa's old shack once, which was gradually built from whatever he had at hand back then (totally not to any code, like literal twists of copper and aluminium wires, idk how that shit held up for over 60 years), and the local code was mostly a bunch of "do things the right way please, don't do stupid shit"-grade standards that totally made sense to me. Plus some local opinionated defaults (so anyone looking at something wouldn't be caught by surprise). Although, I haven't went through any formal inspections (only unofficial LGTM nod from a friendly certified electrician), just replaced obvious "to scared to live here" hazards with less obvious ones.
But I have no idea about the US codes and how complicated those are.
Column A, Column B. They often require reasonable things. But the actual approval process is sort of a crap shoot.
In most places its the bureaucracy - sometimes two cities with identical rules on the books will be completely different, because one is using permits and permit re-application fees as a major budget item, the other has one inspector who is always gone fishing.
However US zoning is often a mess. Often you are not allowed to build something you might want to because the neighbors say no.
And some States have not elected to enact building codes, leaving that responsibility for bodies like cities and counties.
And some cities and counties within those states have also not enacted building codes, or they might even do their own thing.
So, it's largely impossible to generalize a thing like that in the US, where we've got 50 different states, ~3,000 counties within those states, and nearly innumerable cities within those counties.
A person in Chicago, Illinois (home of the Great Chicago Fire) will have a very different set of rules in their area than a person in Meigs County, Ohio (which is approximately "what rules?") would.
I've been saying for years that regulation is written for the wealthy.
Someone who will never be able to afford a home doesn't give a fuck if their wiring has an 0.1% chance of going wrong or if their bedroom has a window or whatever. It's better than a tent or a shitty landlord, and it's how most people lived only a couple of generations ago.
The Iroquois Theater Fire…The Chicago Fire…the list goes on and on.
> result in untold deaths and exposure, or money lost that could have been spent on healthcare, education, or healthy foods
This type of policy often get so entrenched precised because its benefits are visible and wildly publicized in such cases of disaster, whereas its downsides are hidden (by all the people who lose out on having a home of any kind because they cannot afford the higher costs of code-burdened construction). It's the political equivalent of "privatize the profits, socialize the losses".
The real minimum standard of housing is not what is mandated by code; it's sleeping on the street.
We have real world case studies of situations where building code didn't exist and the outcome wasn't a magical utopia for lower income housing.
There are plenty of ways to increase housing supply and lower costs that don't compromise on building code, safety, livability, etc.
The government as a whole has many levers it can, should, and does pull: zoning and planning reform, tax breaks for affordable developments, supporting/subsidizing more people getting into trade jobs, etc.
But those levers should not include letting people build sketchy shacks piled up on top of each other.
Where would the people who lived in Kowloon Walled City have lived instead, had it not existed? That's the question. Four drafty walls and a roof that sometimes leaks is better than none.
> building code didn't exist and the outcome wasn't a magical utopia for lower income housing
Well, yes, a magical utopia isn't going to exist no matter what we do.
> those levers should not include letting people build sketchy shacks piled up on top of each other
In the US, building codes mandates a floor in building quality (and therefore the price) that goes far, far beyond "sketchy shacks", and zoning in large parts of the country simply forbids high-density (and therefore more cost-effective) residences.
As a concrete example of the former, the 2020 National Electrical Code mandated that outdoor HVAC units (e.g. the condenser that sits outside of the house) be protected by ground-fault circuit interrupters. This turned out to hopelessly front-run market reality, because existing GFCI breakers caused nuisance trips all the time when applied to HVAC equipment; so much so that the NFPA walked it back and issued an exemption to this rule until late 2026, when hopefully better breakers can be on the market. But in the meantime, this caused additional expense, delays, and uncertainty in homebuilding. This is just one minor example out of countless additions to the various building codes in recent years.
Of course, the people who write such codes like to say that "every line is written in blood". But remember, making something safe, like anything else, doesn't come without a cost. There is no free lunch, and everything is a tradeoff. We can build an amazingly well-insulated, net-zero house that is very comfortable to live in, has no VOCs, will never cause an electric shock to an occupant, will not catch fire, etc. for $5,000 a square foot; but approximately nobody will be able to afford such a house.
> The government as a whole has many levers it can, should, and does pull
Often times they're not levers, they're ratchets ;-)
You might not have that issue, and if so, that's great.
And yes, I'd also rather live in Kowloon than on the street.
There is no magical utopia being referenced here. Just cheaper housing for people who have lower standards.
1. regulation specifications beyond minimal health/safety, service interfaces
2. regulatory reporting enforcement burdenBuying some tools, using some common sense and building a structure on a plot of land is accessible.
Once you do everything "by the book" and allow no room for gradual upgrades (it all has to be there from day 1) it's now a profession and is essentially out of reach of the average person.
I'm not in the US but I can afford to buy multiple homes now as a result of aggressively pursuing wealth when I was younger. Not everyone is in that position, most people are bus drivers or nurses or whatever and struggle to make rent.
It’s not evil for a town to prefer that developers come in and build housing in volume to enable the growth the town desires versus individuals coming in and building one offs.
This forum can't take a joke or read intent at ALL -- bunch of fucking stiffs
"self insuring" a house that's not built to code is like driving a car without insurance because you finished paying it off. If someone is harmed by your property and you don't have accidental death and dismemberment liability insurance you are f. u. c. k. e. d. fucked.
Houses aren't falling over or catching on fire. Neighborhoods look like any other fairly prosperous area in the Midwest.
Getting a mortgage and an insurance policy was not arduous or particularly expensive.
A self selecting group of people willing to build their own places taking on their own risks is not a good model for ‘what would happen if we got rid of building and fire codes?’
People who aren’t willing or able to figure out how to build their own house to an adequate safety standard are going to need to rely on being able to do things like buying a house someone else built. Inspection codes protect those people.
And when you factor in people wanting to live in denser groupings like in a town or city… well, how many times did San Francisco burn down before they figured out fire codes?
Inspection codes are supposed to protect those people. As currently implemented, they often don't because they force people into ... alternate living arrangements due to strangled housing supply. It's not even the code per se that's the problem. It's the weaponized bureaucratic incompetence around its enforcement.
How does one find these areas?
Pretty short sighted
Generally speaking, any unincorporated land.