Right. Collapse is the most visible result of flouting codes, but the fire safety stuff is huge. And disasters related to that are not unheard of in CA.
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the thing i’d wonder about: who builds one affordable housing unit? you’d normally want a whole building’s worth, or the seemingly modern way: ten ground floor shoebox units in a new high priced development.
there should be economies of scale. a per unit cost of 900k seems… broken
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Oh, totally. I guess I just meant when you figure, here’s a minimal renovation to add a kitchenette and bathroom, and not including labor or management or permitting costs, it doesn’t seem that far off for a complete unit to cost that magnitude more when accounting for all those extra costs, you know? And that’s not even thinking of land prices.
Still way too high-cost overall, but as a ratio…meh.
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Yeah.
Siphoning off public funds I absolutely disapprove of, but I also have a fondness for stories about people who have made hidden illegal housing, whether it’s the “mole people” of NYC, the guy on Nantucket who built the underground apartment in the woods, or the kids in Rhode Island who sectioned off an unused part of a mall to use as a hangout.
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Yup. A garden fence that’s 10 cm to high is one thing, but anything that compromises structural integrity or fire safety, evacuation and all that is another matter entirely.
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Sure, I’m just saying that comparing the cost of turning an existing office into a living space can’t be compared to the cost of building a new residential structure, permits or no. Pretty much any office space could be converted into a decent living area for under $50K if you’re willing to ignore zoning laws.
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Am I missing something skimming the comments, or shouldn’t the reason that an apartment in that area costs $900k to build has less to do with codes (though I am sure it has SOME effect to make sure it is built right), and more to do with the property values and cost of living of the area? I mean, it can’t cost that much all over CA, even places that have similar codes.
I have a friend who lived in San Jose before moving to Texas and they definitely complained about how expensive everything was.
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So the first guy gets caught and the other guy doesn’t stop. 
I hope there were some federal transit funds involved so they can face federal charges as well.
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Yeah, in this case I’m not all that worried about fire safety. Only one residence, so the potential or major disaster is minimized. But when people talk about sub-dividing an old big box store into ~100 units I have to take issue. It is going to be difficult to ensure safe egress and by the time you add a minimum of plumbing and electrical, it would have been easier and cheaper to tear down the original building.
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Many decades ago I was invited along on a trip with my then girlfriend’s family to visit their family in WV. I really don’t remember where we were, but it seemed like we went from state highway to single lane dirt road up the side of a mountain very suddenly, finding ourselves in a two or three story home with neither electricity nor running water. As I recall, I did not get a warning about this before we arrived, the surprise being part of the fun of the trip for my gf’s mother. (Although I wonder if she had at least a little disappointment, since that wasn’t my first experience with such a home, nor with an outhouse.)
I don’t remember details, but even my teenage and somewhat hormone rattled brain wondered about just getting materials up to that location. I was familiar with people still living in houses build in the 1800’s from some of my own relatives. (“Building code …? What’s that?”) But I don’t recall any of those being built on the side of a mountain (or at least a flat spot on the side of a very tall hill) or being more than a single floor.
I really wish I either had some pictures of the house or remembered more details. I do recall it being a pretty spot, kind of like a private campground, but I might have a different opinion on safety and stability if I saw it today.
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This. There is the property value of the land and value of the structure. You can easily plop down a $200k house on a $1M plot of beach front property. Or you can take that same house and drop it on one acre of $100k land much further away from civilization. All of a sudden the same structure has a $900k difference in terms of a realty sale.
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maybe they never pulled permits?
went house hunting 3 years ago and was appalled at how many blatant DIYs that didn’t have any permitted work done anytime recent. even listings that included un-permitted room additions including bathrooms. joe public doesn’t know and additionally i find many realtors to not have your interest at heart at pointing out these issues. of course once it gets to the inspector a lot of this should come to light, but i feel that people just use this as a bargaining tool in that the seller lowers the price a little and the buyer proceeds.
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one of these is WAY easier to spot from standing in the middle of the street in front of the property.
(just plant some bushes next to the fence. no limit on how tall they can get 
)
A fire in a crowded commercial building can be deadly regardless of if it was started by a careless smoker hiding their butt in a trash bin, or by an improperly wired outlet in a hidden residence. Even just smoke in a crowded room can cause an almost instant panic. It’s panic that turns crowds into stampeding hordes, with people shoving others aside to get themselves out the exit doors first.
Trampled to death, burned to death, or death by smoke inhalation are all outcomes that the codes take into account.
There are reasons behind every rule in the building codes. Just because the code books don’t publish “or else X will happen” at the end of every rule doesn’t mean the rules are arbitrary or unnecessary.
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“bigger the budget, the more we can get away with”
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Neighbours have said that they saw an inspector in only a couple of days before it came down. I will say that they didn’t post any permits until after it came down, and then they magically appeared on the front door.
My own house was a largely DIY project from the 1980s; beautiful design sense (the owners were a filmmaker and his choreographer wife), and shit workmanship. I’m sure there were no permits, and I’ve been bringing it up to code since.
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The problem with removing building codes is less from one person building their own house which then collapses on them, it’s that companies would build a bunch of unsafe builds and sell them to people.
(A friend of mine just had to temporarily move out of their new house in Chepstow, because the builders had fitted unsafe floor beams for the second story, across an entire housing development.)
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One thing I have noticed is that there is a certain crowd who will never, and I mean NEVER place blame at the feet of the corporate overlords for things like price gouging. And even if they can be brought to admit that these people might have engaged in such a thing, will wave away any suggestion at punishing them because apparently we need this specific set of billionaires for anything in society to happen, forgetting that CEOs are just as replaceable as anyone else.
But getting back to the affordable housing tangent, I do feel that one thing governments can do to bring down costs is to simply not charge for permits and codes and such for affordable housing projects. Or charge less. How much does it actually cost the municipality to approve construction? I’m willing to bet that number is always a lot lower than what the permit costs.
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This. In a few Bay Area counties, permit fees are astronomical and sometimes redundant. The point of the codes is safety, it shouldn’t also be incentivized as a cost center for counties to rake in cash. In Santa Cruz County, it was going to cost me 150K + to get small prelim inspections knocked down in order to get a building permit. Then add the cost of inspections during construction. Years ago, codes and permits were required but fees were perfunctory. It is certainly a false binary choice to say that we need to keep our current code structure and the associated fees, OR have no building codes. We could have more up-to-date, clear and relevant codes with nominal processing fees that don’t bloat the cost of development, thereby making new construction accessible to more Bay Area residents.
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I’ve used this before as well. We needed to acquire some new computers for modeling and simulation, but anything over $2K becomes a ‘capital expense’ and has to go through a very long expense approval process. So instead by purchasing individual computer parts with total receipts for each purchase under $2K, we were able to buy all the parts for the computers and build them ourselves. The spent budget was the same, it was just a lot easier and faster to avoid the red tape of the approval process.
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