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I didn't know who Carl Malamud was an hour ago, but he is close to being one of my heroes now. I moved in to a 160 year old house with a TON of problems recentl

I didn't know who Carl Malamud was an hour ago, but he is close to being one of my heroes now. I moved in to a 160 year old house with a TON of problems recently. I could tell by looking at a lot of the recent work that it wasn't done up to code, but I had no idea what the correct way to do the work actually was. Homeowners are allowed to do their own work in Chicago, even without a license, but obviously you still have to follow code. Now Chicago has it's entire building code online, but a lot of the code for things like electrical and plumbing are incorporated by reference. Most of the work I've done has been based on what the guys at the supply houses have told me code is. Most people probably wouldn't consider this a problem, because they hire licensed contractors, but I've also had work done by licensed contractors that doesn't meet code, and the only way I would have known is because I called somebody who had access to the actual code. Giving people access to the code allows people to know when they are being fleeced. On a similar note, access to the building code gave me the ability to back myself up with facts in an argument with a building super who didn't want to provide any place to lock my bike. Building code in Chicago requires a certain number of places for bikes to be parked, and the only way you can avoid having a bike rack outside is if you provide an indoor space for bikes. I initially asked the building manger nicely for a place to lock or store my bike, and he basically sent out a mass email to all tenants that belittled anyone who thought that the city bike racks two blocks away were unsuitable for locking bikes. Without access to the city code, I wouldn't have been able to call him out on his bullshit. I've since used the city code several more times in arguments with him, and I've brought my fellow tenants on board. It's a really powerful tool. Before we started using the city code, the building manger would just bully anyone who dared to bring concerns to him. After my experiences with the building super, I can really only see positive effects from open laws. There are a lot of people in positions of power who avoid following the law by bullying others into doubting whether they are in the right. Being able to use the law to back yourself up is very rewarding.

jhawkinson 10y ago
This may not be the best example. Bike parking requirements are generally part of zoning, not building codes, and generally apply only to new construction, not existing buildings. That appears to be true in Chicago: https://chicagocode.org/17-10-0300/ https://chicagocode.org/17-10-0300/ It's good that it was helpful in convincing the building superintendent to support bicycles, but probably not so great if that's not actually what the law requires. (Perhaps your building was recently constructed and the Chicago Building department or Zoning Administrator failed to enforce the zoning code?)
- Declanomous 10y ago
  I'm familiar with how zoning works. Buildings in Chicago are required to meet the code for when they were built, or the current code. The building manager tried to get away with breaking the laws a number of other times, but the bike parking issue was the easiest example. The building has a parking lot that was constructed to meet the current code, but bicycle parking was not added. Furthermore, the rack the building manager purchased to comply with the law was not a type allowed by the Chicago Department of Transportation, the entity responsible for determining which racks comply with the zoning law. Finally, the guy dropped the rack in the striped area of the ADA parking zone and didn't secure it to anything, which is also illegal. For an example of a time he clearly violated the law, he replaced our windows with ones that couldn't open, but insisted that he could only run the mechanical ventilation from 9 AM to 5 PM despite the building being occupied well outside of these hours. When he was called out on this fact, he tried to hide behind the noise ordinance, which has a specific exception for mechanical ventilation. He also tried to claim that we "chose" to be in the building while the ventilation was off, so ventilation didn't need to be provided, which is also false. No matter which year was chosen for the code, the building would not be allowed to be occupied without ventilation under any building code. Being able to look up the relevant ordinance on the internet and send him the link was extremely helpful. Furthermore, it made it a lot easier to find who was responsible for enforcing a particular area of the code, and then explain what law was being broken to them. Without the code online, I'm rather sure I'd have to hire a lawyer to get anything done. The city tends to respond to problems based on the length of time they will take to solve, and being able to contact the right department with the exact issue at hand speed up the process immensely. I can't even imagine how either the bike rack issue or the ventilation issue would have taken if I had to call 311 and try to get the phone number to the correct department. I once got a call back for some illegal dumping I reported two years after I had moved out of the apartment I was reporting the issue from.
  - Spooky23 10y ago
    In other words, landlords are scum. People like that will do anything. I lived in a building where due to some bizarre dispute with the city, the landlord removed the front door. He had a section 8 tenant, and section 8 requires that anything in the home be in good order. The door locks didn't work correctly, and that tenant reported him. He believed that removing the door would solve his problem, as a door that is missing is not broken. I ultimately escaped paying a few months rent when he was arrested for trying to set another building on fire.
tmptmp 10y ago
>>I didn't know who Carl Malamud was an hour ago, but he is close to being one of my heroes now. This. Real heroes seldom get the publicity they deserve. Truly amazing and (a heart rending story for me). >>That’s something the ABA people don’t necessarily get. A couple of standards, what’s the big deal? No, no, no… this is a fundamental rock-bottom issue on democracy.” This is what I like so much about the modern western societies (e.g. USA) with free market economy based democracies. Would you even imagine such a free access to information in any religious based society (e.g. Islamic countries) or in any communist country? I know, these modern western democracies are not perfect and need to be improved. It's getting improved (in this case regarding public access to public information) thanks to the heroes like Malamud, who are at work. After reading this, I again realized to a much greater depth that "the issue of public access to public information" is an extremely important aspect of democracy.
- cup 10y ago
  Why do you think a religious based society, an Islamic society for instance, would be any less transparent about public information?
  - zubat 10y ago
    Although I could not speak for Islam or the communist countries, the era of the Holy Roman Empire involved a lot of this information control - the church was economically supported through unchallenged belief in its authorities. Improved access to holy texts created the foundations of the Protestant movement.
    - spoonie 10y ago
      E.g. recently, scripture and mass was mostly in Latin, so even most of those who were literate had to rely on priests to interpret it for them.
      - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
        See also Marthin Luther; Protestantism.
imgabe 10y ago
I work in the building design industry and this is a huge problem. Building codes are developed and maintained by private associations of industry professionals (this is a good thing) and then released under copyright (this is a bad thing). A full set of all applicable building codes for any given structure can easily cost in excess of $1000. These are codes that have been adopted into law by the jurisdiction, but they are not made publicly available as all laws should be. Many people have noticed this and complained. The NFPA (National Fire Protection Association which maintains, among many others codes, the National Electrical Code) did somewhat acquiesce by release a "free" version of their codes through a crippled Java application intended to disallow any copying. It sort of worked a little, but at some point something changed (Java updated, probably) and I could never get the security settings right to allow it to run again. The amount of time that could be saved by having an HTML, hyperlinked (practically every section of any code references another section, or a word with a very specific, non-intuitive definition) edition of every building code publicly available would be enormous.
harryh 10y ago
No one is arguing that the code should be secret and unavailable to certain people. The only debate is how the creation of these sorts of things should be funded. Should they be funded out of the general tax base, or should they be funded by access fees for the people that use them the most? The latter doesn't seem like a horrible model to me. It's not unlike how road construction is largely funded by a gas tax.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  That's not it at all. Government likes model laws and codes because it's easy and they can just reference them -- that doesn't mean that the law should be limited in availability. The trade associations can still require payment for services, just like Red Hat can sell subscriptions to Linux. Public access to law is about more than building codes. In many cases, government has sold the rights to the law to companies like Thompson. I worked for a government agency that actually had to pay for a subscription to both the law and regulations that the agency actually produced.

jhawkinson 10y ago

This may not be the best example. Bike parking requirements are generally part of zoning, not building codes, and generally apply only to new construction, not existing buildings. That appears to be true in Chicago: https://chicagocode.org/17-10-0300/ https://chicagocode.org/17-10-0300/ It's good that it was helpful in convincing the building superintendent to support bicycles, but probably not so great if that's not actually what the law requires. (Perhaps your building was recently constructed and the Chicago Building department or Zoning Administrator failed to enforce the zoning code?)

Declanomous 10y ago
I'm familiar with how zoning works. Buildings in Chicago are required to meet the code for when they were built, or the current code. The building manager tried to get away with breaking the laws a number of other times, but the bike parking issue was the easiest example. The building has a parking lot that was constructed to meet the current code, but bicycle parking was not added. Furthermore, the rack the building manager purchased to comply with the law was not a type allowed by the Chicago Department of Transportation, the entity responsible for determining which racks comply with the zoning law. Finally, the guy dropped the rack in the striped area of the ADA parking zone and didn't secure it to anything, which is also illegal. For an example of a time he clearly violated the law, he replaced our windows with ones that couldn't open, but insisted that he could only run the mechanical ventilation from 9 AM to 5 PM despite the building being occupied well outside of these hours. When he was called out on this fact, he tried to hide behind the noise ordinance, which has a specific exception for mechanical ventilation. He also tried to claim that we "chose" to be in the building while the ventilation was off, so ventilation didn't need to be provided, which is also false. No matter which year was chosen for the code, the building would not be allowed to be occupied without ventilation under any building code. Being able to look up the relevant ordinance on the internet and send him the link was extremely helpful. Furthermore, it made it a lot easier to find who was responsible for enforcing a particular area of the code, and then explain what law was being broken to them. Without the code online, I'm rather sure I'd have to hire a lawyer to get anything done. The city tends to respond to problems based on the length of time they will take to solve, and being able to contact the right department with the exact issue at hand speed up the process immensely. I can't even imagine how either the bike rack issue or the ventilation issue would have taken if I had to call 311 and try to get the phone number to the correct department. I once got a call back for some illegal dumping I reported two years after I had moved out of the apartment I was reporting the issue from.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  In other words, landlords are scum. People like that will do anything. I lived in a building where due to some bizarre dispute with the city, the landlord removed the front door. He had a section 8 tenant, and section 8 requires that anything in the home be in good order. The door locks didn't work correctly, and that tenant reported him. He believed that removing the door would solve his problem, as a door that is missing is not broken. I ultimately escaped paying a few months rent when he was arrested for trying to set another building on fire.

tmptmp 10y ago

>>I didn't know who Carl Malamud was an hour ago, but he is close to being one of my heroes now. This. Real heroes seldom get the publicity they deserve. Truly amazing and (a heart rending story for me). >>That’s something the ABA people don’t necessarily get. A couple of standards, what’s the big deal? No, no, no… this is a fundamental rock-bottom issue on democracy.” This is what I like so much about the modern western societies (e.g. USA) with free market economy based democracies. Would you even imagine such a free access to information in any religious based society (e.g. Islamic countries) or in any communist country? I know, these modern western democracies are not perfect and need to be improved. It's getting improved (in this case regarding public access to public information) thanks to the heroes like Malamud, who are at work. After reading this, I again realized to a much greater depth that "the issue of public access to public information" is an extremely important aspect of democracy.

cup 10y ago
Why do you think a religious based society, an Islamic society for instance, would be any less transparent about public information?
- zubat 10y ago
  Although I could not speak for Islam or the communist countries, the era of the Holy Roman Empire involved a lot of this information control - the church was economically supported through unchallenged belief in its authorities. Improved access to holy texts created the foundations of the Protestant movement.
  - spoonie 10y ago
    E.g. recently, scripture and mass was mostly in Latin, so even most of those who were literate had to rely on priests to interpret it for them.
    - semi-extrinsic 10y ago
      See also Marthin Luther; Protestantism.

imgabe 10y ago

I work in the building design industry and this is a huge problem. Building codes are developed and maintained by private associations of industry professionals (this is a good thing) and then released under copyright (this is a bad thing). A full set of all applicable building codes for any given structure can easily cost in excess of $1000. These are codes that have been adopted into law by the jurisdiction, but they are not made publicly available as all laws should be. Many people have noticed this and complained. The NFPA (National Fire Protection Association which maintains, among many others codes, the National Electrical Code) did somewhat acquiesce by release a "free" version of their codes through a crippled Java application intended to disallow any copying. It sort of worked a little, but at some point something changed (Java updated, probably) and I could never get the security settings right to allow it to run again. The amount of time that could be saved by having an HTML, hyperlinked (practically every section of any code references another section, or a word with a very specific, non-intuitive definition) edition of every building code publicly available would be enormous.

harryh 10y ago

No one is arguing that the code should be secret and unavailable to certain people. The only debate is how the creation of these sorts of things should be funded. Should they be funded out of the general tax base, or should they be funded by access fees for the people that use them the most? The latter doesn't seem like a horrible model to me. It's not unlike how road construction is largely funded by a gas tax.

Spooky23 10y ago
That's not it at all. Government likes model laws and codes because it's easy and they can just reference them -- that doesn't mean that the law should be limited in availability. The trade associations can still require payment for services, just like Red Hat can sell subscriptions to Linux. Public access to law is about more than building codes. In many cases, government has sold the rights to the law to companies like Thompson. I worked for a government agency that actually had to pay for a subscription to both the law and regulations that the agency actually produced.